New Viva Connections Desktop experience is now available worldwide

We are excited to announce general availability of the refreshed Viva Connections desktop experience which offers a more intuitive layout and introduces several requested new features including branding capabilities, sending announcements, a revamped Resources section, and support for different card sizes.  

Here are the updates that we expect our new layout will offer:  

• Announcements - Important time sensitive information surfaced on desktop, mobile and tablet  
• Hero section - This new section focuses on org news
• Dashboard layout - The Dashboard section is evolving to be more fluid with inline expansion
• Resources - Introduces a new section for company curated links different from global navigation. The new section allows for more flexibility to have a unique list with visuals like icons. 
• Viva Suite links relocated - Viva suite links have been moved to the bottom of the experience and will offer links that the user is licensed for with a description next to each explaining what each is. 
• Full page feed - Full page feed treatment now exists with its own pivot shown at the top of the page. 

With this update, the main changes are visible in the desktop experiences, but some of the branding assets are also visible across the different devices. We will be rolling out further updates also to the mobile and tablet experiences within spring 2024.

How will this affect your organization?

• Feed will now be in the viewport of your Connections page. Your communication team can share important organizational news with employees which would surface in the hero section on top of the page. 
• Updated resources experience will replace the current global navigation. You will be able to manage a list of company links with support to add icons and images, along with URLs, that showcase your company's brand and vision. In addition, a user managed section for employees to manage their own links is planned to be released in the second phase of this update.  
• Users will be notified of new announcements through the Viva Connections app through the Viva Connections app on desktop, mobile and tablet.  

With the provided changes, you can have more powerful branding capabilities which will enable you to adjust the experience based on your company objectives.

Here's a video where Nancy Handa, Leslie Thomas & Vesa Juvonen from Microsoft are covering the key changes with live demos.

Resources

Here are the key resources to get started with the Viva Connections and the new capabilities.

• Microsoft Viva Connections - Product overview
• Overview of Viva Connections - Microsoft Learn documentation
• Using announcements in Viva Connections - Microsoft Learn documentation
• Introduction to Viva Connections Announcements - YouTube video 
• What’s new with Viva Connections: Resources update! - Announcement blog post
• Overview of Viva Connections extensibility - Build custom experiences for the Viva Connections and integrate it with your Microsoft Teams and SharePoint solutions
• Viva Connections partner apps in the Microsoft store / AppSource - available to be installed to your dashboard

Frequently asked questions

Q: Is this experience fully available for Viva Connections worldwide?

A: Yes, with certain exceptions. News and header section updates are enabled now worldwide with the normal production tenants and the Change the Look feature is now gradually getting rolled out to normal production tenants as well.

Q: Will you release matching updates as this for the mobile experience?

A: Yes. We will provide separate updates around the mobile experiences as the rollout new features there. You can already now see some branding changes based on the dashboard configuration, but there will be further updates and improvements in mobile soon.

Q: I could not find the Change the Look feature from my tenant? Is this already fully available?

A: This feature is currently being rolled out worldwide as this blog post is published. If the feature is missing currently from your tenant, it will be available there soon.

Q: That's pretty cool - what are the extensibility options of this UX?

A: We do cover those in the associated video, but in short you can change the Viva Connections logo, header picture, theme and provide custom Viva Connections cards in the dashboard section based on your business requirements.

Q: Any other new features which are coming out for the Viva Connections?

A: This is continuously evolving area as we keep on rolling out new features and improvements. In the video we talked about the future mobile updates to align on the desktop experiences. We also are rolling out more options to control which news are surfaced on the hero top section. Resources section will also start supporting audiences soon, which will enable more personalized experiences. On the dashboard side, we are looking into supporting new card types and to provide more configuration options. We will keep on sharing updates as things are ready to be used. There will be a plenty of new great features within spring 2024.

Q: I'd like to surface relevant business data and actions from my business apps to the Viva Connections users, can this be done?

A: Yes. You can use SharePoint Framework to build extensibility for your Viva Connections deployment and expose the relevant business data and actions for your users across the different Viva Connection experiences.

Let us know what you think. Your feedback is more than welcome 🧡