M365 Changelog: Observer role is being retired in Viva GoalsM365 Changelog:

MC690604 – In an effort to simplify the access and permissions landscape in Viva Goals, Microsoft will be retiring the ‘Observer’ role from Viva Goals.

When this will happen:

Microsoft will be rolling out this change in mid-December 2023.

How this will affect your organization:

Today, organization administrators can assign certain members in their organization in Viva Goals as observers. Observers, as opposed to Regular members, can’t create, edit, or own OKRs. They have only read-only access to the entire organization.

Going forward, all members in Viva goals will behave like regular users. Organization administrators can use the existing permission settings to control who can create, edit or own OKRs in their organizations. 

Organization administrators will no longer be able to use the “User type for new users” setting assign the observer role to any new users when this change is implemented. Additionally, going forward, the “Invite policy” setting will only have three options – ‘Only admins’, ‘Only admins and team admins’, and ‘Anyone in the organization’.

Organization administrators will start seeing a banner indicating the retirement of the observer role starting early December 2023.

What you need to do to prepare:

• In preparation of this change, Microsoft recommends that you configure the “User type for new users” setting to “Regular users” to minimize any impact.
• Microsoft recommends you configure OKR creation settings according to your organization’s requirements keeping in mind that the Observer role will be retired.
• Additionally, if you have configured the “Invite policy” setting to Regular users, Microsoft recommends you change that setting to “Anyone in the organization”