Limiting duplicate topics in Microsoft Viva Engage

Originally posted by Microsoft Mar 29, 2024 Uncategorized 0 Comments

Microsoft Viva Engage will limit topic creation to unique names to prevent duplicate topics. This change will begin rolling out in late April 2024 and will affect users attempting to create duplicate topics. No action is required from admins, but users should be notified of the change.

To limit duplicate topics in Microsoft Viva Engage, topic creation by users in Viva Engage will be limited to only unique topics by name. Existing duplicate topics will not be removed or impacted by this change. 

When this will happen:

General Availability: Rollout will begin late April 2024 and will complete for all tenants migrated to use Viva Topics by early May 2024. 

How this will affect your organization:

Users attempting to create topics in Viva Engage with the same name as an existing topic will see an error message and will be blocked from creating the duplicate topic.

Viva Engage was integrated with Viva Topics to support a consistent topics experience across select Microsoft 365 experiences (SharePoint, Teams, Outlook) and allows for community-sourced knowledge to be accessible across an organization. In Viva Topics, duplicate topics by name are permitted, but similar topics are merged algorithmically. By preventing users from creating duplicate topics by name, users will be encouraged to use existing topics and accidental creation of duplicate topics will be blocked. Also, with the retirement of Viva Topics, limiting duplicate topic creation by users from Viva Engage will reduce duplicate topic cleanup.

What you need to do to prepare:

This rollout will happen automatically with no admin action required. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.

Message ID: MC761260