M365 Changelog: Updates to adding topics to posts in Viva Engage

MC700930 – New developments to adding topics to posts within Answers in Viva are being extended to all topic experiences in Viva Engage (Yammer). Adding topics to posts helps improve the visibility, engagement, and organization of content.

These updates will help employees select a topic by providing more topics to choose from, coaching tips, and additional room for supporting topic information. Questions will also have the topics field open by default to help encourage the use of topics on questions and drive higher likelihood of a response.

For this rollout, only Viva Engage tenants migrated to Topics in Viva will see these updates. Topics in Viva Engage are available for all Viva Engage users with or without a Topics license. Individuals licensed for Topics in Viva will gain premium benefits, such as access to topic cards when hovering over a topic, access to topic pages, access to AI mined topics, and use of the premium topic management experiences.

Note: If you organization is not using Viva Engage you can safely disregard this message.

Why is this change happening?

Answers in Viva is expanding to Viva Engage communities. To align experiences for Viva Engage users and to extend the value of new developments to a wider audience, we are extending updates to topic picking to all networks that have been migrated to use Topics in Viva.

Last year, we announced the General Availability of Topics for Viva Engage. In support of this change, topic migrations began for Viva Engage networks in Native mode and will continue until all Viva Engage networks have migrated to use Topics in Viva. The migration to Topics in Viva creates a consolidated set of topics for use across Microsoft 365 and helps capture and share knowledge from all experiences using Viva Topics.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 374596

When this will happen:

Standard Release: Updated topic picking experiences will begin rolling out in January 2024 and will continue to roll out to all Viva Engage networks in Native mode that have been migrated to use Topics in Viva.

How this will affect your organization:

No action is needed from admins. Customers who have not yet migrated to the latest in topics for Viva Engage will not see the updates described for topic picking. Customers awaiting topics migration can contact your customer account manager or Microsoft Viva Engage support to file a support ticket to prioritize your topic migration.

What you need to do to prepare:

More information is available:

• Topics in Viva Engage
• Set up of Answers in Viva

Additional information