Microsoft Teams Gets New Facebook-Like Social Network ‘Viva Engage’

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Microsoft unveiled its plans to integrate Viva Engage within Teams at Inspire 2022. The company announced this morning that the Facebook-like enterprise social networking platform is now generally available for customers.

Viva Engage is built on Yammer, and it helps employees connect with their colleagues, ask questions, and share news and strategies. It also provides several other features such as virtual events, pinned conversations, and the ability to send notifications to Outlook, Teams, and Viva Connections.

Microsoft Teams Gets New Facebook-Like Social Network 'Viva Engage'

Viva Engage to add storyline & stories

In September, the Viva Engage app will add a storyline section that features posts, short videos, images, and other content. It should help employees to share news, achievements, and personal interests. Users will be able to see stories posts within a storyline view in the app. The stories feature will be available in public preview in the next few months.

“Viva Engage also brings new features—storyline and stories—which enable employees to connect with colleagues by sharing their thoughts, knowledge, and experiences through conversations and videos. On the Storylines tab, the feed shows posts from peers and popular posts from across the network, and the Following feed lets you catch up on updates from people you follow,” the company explained.

How to get started with Viva Engage

The new Viva Engage app, storyline, and stories are enabled by default for all Microsoft 365 commercial customers. Meanwhile, IT admins can head to the Teams Admin Center to deploy the app in their organization.

Additionally, administrators can use Teams app policies to install and pin Viva Engage to the Teams app bar for all desktop and web users. Mobile users will be able to find the app in the app tray. The Viva Engage app supports the same privacy, security, compliance, and manageability policies configured for Yammer.

Microsoft is also planning to bring the storyline and stories features to the Yammer app across all platforms. Moreover, the company will also update the Yammer Communities app for Outlook to better align with the Viva Engage experience. Let us know in the comments below if you think Viva Engage will help you connect with your colleagues.