New Viva Engage Admin experiences releasing next month

Originally posted by Microsoft Jan 9, 2023 Viva Engage, Yammer 0 Comments

Next month, new admin experiences will be available within the Viva Engage Teams app for Microsoft Viva customers.

When this will happen:

Standard Release: We will begin rolling out early February 2023 and expect to complete by early March 2023

How this affects your organization:

New admin capabilities for licensed Viva Suite customers when ‘Viva Engage Communities & Communications’ service plan is enabled:

Engage Admin Center Controls available to the following roles: O365 tenant admins/ Global admins, Engage/Yammer admin and corporate communicator role
Manage corporate communicator roles: Corporate communicators can create/manage new social media #campaigns, identify leaders and their audiences
Identify official leaders and configure their audiences: Using Azure AD groups, add official leaders and connect them to their audiences (organizations). Users identified as leaders will appear in the leadership corner directory, their activity will be highlighted in leadership corner for members of their audience, and they can connect directly with their audiences with storyline announcements
Add/View/Manage campaigns: Engage (and Yammer) admins and corporate communicators can create and manage new social media campaigns
Enable or disable features for your organization: Global admins, Engage (and Yammer) admins can choose to enable or disable certain features (like storylines, stories and leadership corner) for users

New admin capabilities for licensed Viva Suite and/or Viva Topics customers when ‘Viva Engage Knowledge’ service plan is enabled:

Assignment of Knowledge managers in AAD: O365 tenant admins/ Global admins can assign users to the Knowledge manager role through AAD
Knowledge managers sync to Engage application as Answers admins: new/ existing knowledge managers will sync to the Engage application as Answers admin. The syncing will likely begin to rollout in phases before GA and knowledge managers will be included on the admin.csv data export file
Align Viva topics management and Answers administration: For the best experience, Global admins can assign the same users that manage Viva Topics to manage Answers within the organization.
Engage Admin Center Controls available to the following roles: O365 tenant admins/ Global admins, Engage/Yammer admin and Answers admin/ Knowledge manager
Enable or disable Answers and Rewards for your organization: Users with the appropriate license will see Answers on by default in Viva Engage. Global admins will be able to enable or disable the Answers and/or Rewards experience through the Engage admin center under Feature management

Note: To use Answers customer tenants will need to be in Native Mode and require Yammer topics being migrated to Viva Topics.

What you need to do to prepare:

You will need to take up appropriate steps below, within the next 30 days to provision Engage experiences for your users.

Since the above mentioned service plans are already assigned to the users / employees by default, admins should cross-verify to ensure correct set of users are entitled for new experiences, and as needed, should un-assign the licenses from specific users using this guidance
If needed, admins can assign licenses to additional employees using this guidance
Admins should have the appropriate license to configure Engage features in the admin center
Admins should prepare to identify corporate communicator roles, official leaders and their audiences
Tenant Admins and Viva Topics admins should prepare to identify Answers admins that are familiar with community management and/or Viva Topics management
Customer tenants will need to be in Native Mode and require Yammer topics being migrated to Viva Topics to meet technical requirements to use Answers
If desired, disablement of Engage experiences will be available upon GA

Message ID: MC495323