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M365 Changelog: Viva Connections – Apply brand colors across all Connections endpoints using themes

MC680961 – Soon you’ll be able to further customize the Connections experience by applying the themes available in SharePoint to reflect organizational brand colors across desktop, tablet, and mobile.

If you can edit the Connections experience, you have two ways to use this new feature:

Current process: Editors can change the color theme by using the ‘Change the look’ panel under site settings for their home site. The same color theme will also apply to their Viva Connections experience on Teams desktop, tablet, and mobile.
New process: Editors can go to the top right corner of the Connections desktop app and open the overflow menu. There, they will find a new option called ‘Change the look’. This option lets them choose a color theme that will impact both the Connections theme and the home site theme.

Note: This feature will be released along with or after the tenant has received the refreshed landing experience for Viva Connections desktop.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 180793

When this will happen:

Microsoft will begin rolling out this feature to targeted release customers by mid-November 2023.

This is expected to become generally available to all customers by the end of February 2024.

How this will affect your organization:

Once the feature is released to your tenant, you will notice the following changes to your Viva Connections experience:

The home site color theme will reflect automatically in the Connections desktop, tablet & mobile experiences, with a few exceptions noted below.
If you have never selected a theme for your home site, the default SharePoint theme will still reflect across the home site and the Connections experience.
If you are using a Connections experience without a home site, there will be no visual difference, however after the release of this feature you will have the option to change the color theme.
If you have been using an accent color under app customization feature in the Teams admin center for theming for the Connections mobile experience, once the feature is rolled out, the accent color won’t apply to the Connections experience, however it will continue applying to the Teams chrome surrounding the Connections experience, e.g. the app icon outline color on the Teams chrome will be sourced from the accent color setting.

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There are a few exceptions where the selected theme will not apply:

If an end user has selected dark mode on their mobile or tablet device, the theme colors won’t be applied to their Connections experience. The dashboard and other Connections components will render in dark mode with the default color.
Dark themes (has the property isInverted=True), won’t be applied to the mobile experience. If the dark theme is selected, mobile will continue showing Connections with the user’s selected mode (light or dark) and the default colors.

Microsoft is continuously listening to your feedback and will send a separate communication once these exceptions are removed.

What you need to do to prepare:

It’s recommended that you share information regarding this upcoming feature and the following steps with your team managing home site and Connections experiences.

Review the existing home site theme and ensure it meets your organization’s branding needs. Theme changes can be made using the SharePoint theming framework and the existing methodology to upload a custom theme.
Confirm that the primary theme color is also set up as the accent color under app customization options in the Teams admin center. This will ensure a consistent theming experience, regardless of the source of the color.