Microsoft is turning collaboration tool Yammer into Viva Engage to better align with Microsoft Viva, the company’s employee experience platform within Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.
The Redmond, Wash. IT giant last year launched Viva Engage, which it calls an “evolution” of the Yammer Communities app in Teams. Now, all of Yammer will become Viva Engage and the Yammer brand will be retired, the company says.
This change will begin next month as Microsoft plans to add new features to Viva Engage designed to spur leadership engagement, expression, events and knowledge discovery.
Starting next month, users will see updates to the Communities app for Outlook and Yammer mobile apps for iOS and Android. Outside of branding changes, there will be no changes to features, capabilities and investments for Microsoft 365 customers, but the company will continue to build new capabilities into the unified Viva Engage solution.
“We are excited about how this change will create a unified Viva Engage experience throughout the web, mobile, and other endpoints and bring consistency for Yammer and Viva users,” writes Seth Patton, general manager of Microsoft 365, in a blog. “This evolution makes way for new Viva capabilities powered by Viva Engage and will streamline features, resources, training, documentation, and support for customers.”
The company is also beginning to roll out new capabilities in Viva Engage that were initially announced in September 2022, including Leadership Corner, a new space for leaders to connect with employees, showcase resource groups, hold events and more. Leaders can track engagement through metrics that gauge employee entitlement and guide discussions.
Leadership Corner also includes AMA events to help drive further engagement. The feature is designed to modernize standard town hall experiences through upvoting, Q&A and other engaging discussion features.
Another new tool includes Answers in Microsoft Viva to help employees find answers from peers by surfacing similar questions that have been answered, recommended topics and experts, top solutions and more.
Microsoft is also adding new advanced analytics in Viva Engage to help organizations drill down into a variety of dashboards with dedicated metrics for personal analytics, audience analytics, campaign analytics and global answers.
For IT admins, Microsoft is adding a new Admin Center in Viva Engage where admins can complete tasks and assign roles and responsibilities for licensed Viva Suite users. All content moderation and other admin policies from Yammer will remain the same, Microsoft adds.
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