Latest Viva Connections topics

Back in the day, SharePoint developers reveled in the ability to craft pixel-perfect intranets and websites, wielding full control over branding assets. However, this era of limitless customization came at a cost - considerable technical debt. If you built an intranet with custom branding, you had to account for every web part, how it was used, and how it was branded, often at the expense of performance. The good news is all that changes in the new modern brand center as it is slowly giving us back customization options.

In this episode of Ask Sympraxis we begin by looking at the home and start page experiences in Microsoft 365 through the lens of the Maturity Model. The journey begins at level 100, where some users have isolated site collections. These site collections lack interconnectedness. At level 200, this could include the utilization of the Microsoft Viva Connections Home Experience, which consolidates news and conversations from various sites, along with surfacing the SharePoint app bar navigation. At level 300, we witness the adoption of hub sites. Level 400 sees the usage of Home Site capability, declaring a site as the home site and surfacing it in Viva Connections. At level 500, multiple home sites emerge, catering to diverse task-based requirements and accommodating audience targeting.

Is having employees complete their Microsoft 365 profiles the most effective method to enable a searchable “area of expertise” property in our employee directory? There are multiple approaches to achieve this, and your decision should depend on your long-term goals and platform extension capabilities. The simplest solution is to utilize the existing “skills” and/or “you can ask me” sections in SharePoint User Profiles. To enhance this solution, you can map the values from the skills section to a refinable string managed property, enabling the use of PnP Modern Search for a user interface with filtering capabilities. Another option is to leverage Azure Active Directory (AD) to store skills and expertise values, which can be displayed by any application consuming Azure AD. Alternatively, you can consider using a third-party solution like LiveTiles Directory or developing a custom solution tailored to your specific needs.

This week on Ask Sympraxis we are focusing on managing links to external resources or tools in your intranet. Join us as we dive into the current state and limitations, the Maturity Model approach, and a few customizable solutions. Current state and limitations

As with many people at the start of a new year, we decided to begin 2023 with a new year’s resolution. However, we tailored ours a bit. We like to call it a New(s) year’s resolution as our goal is to teach you about SharePoint News and how it can improve your communication this year!

As announced in September at Microsoft IGNITE, Microsoft Viva Connections will have new capabilities including Viva home. This new Viva home experience will surface all the Viva modules you’re licensed for, all the adaptive cards you’ve added to your dashboard, Yammer conversations, SharePoint news and navigation through the SharePoint app bar, frequent sites, and followed sites etc. One of the best parts is that all of this will be accessible through Microsoft Teams with minimal configuration. Viva home is an excellent place to begin your intranet journey, especially if you have had not had the time or skill set to make a SharePoint Communication Site to centralize your content across the tenant.

It is impossible to condense all of Ignite into a 30-minute session so we have rounded up these highlights. For more robust details and further explanation on the announcements, please check our resources. In this session, we focus on the three main areas that correlate best with the common work we do at Sympraxis: Administration, Intranet & Employee Experience, and Customization, Integration, & Extension.

Announcements at the conference Feature Status Roadmap ID Graph connectors for Confluence, Jira, ServiceNow General availability 86516 & 86517 SharePoint tenant rename Public preview (with tenants under 5,000 sites) 82162 New app catalog experience General availability 88844 Viva Topics integrated with Yammer topics In preview 72184 Lists Android App General availability 70704 Learning Pathways & Viva Learning integration H2 2022 N/A Adaptive Card Extension Design Gallery General availability N/A “memberOf” rule for dynamic groups “Coming soon” N/A Adaptive Card Extensions Design Gallery Newly launched is an Adaptive Card Extensions Design Gallery that is available in the Microsoft Store to install to your tenant. It includes 12 design samples of adaptive card extensions that can all go on the new Microsoft Viva Connections dashboard. They are designed to showcase the art of the possible for demo purposes only with static or demo-based data. This enables users to visualize custom solutions to meet their business needs.

Site Scripts/Site Designs Templates Site Templates are incredibly useful. They allow users to establish information architecture on new sites. These templates don’t have to be the whole site, rather simply componentry. It’s a very powerful engine and a lot can be done with it. Content Hub Sync Site Script Action This feature was added into Site Templates, and grants users the ability to work with the content type hub.

What is Viva? Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform with 4 components: Viva Connections, Viva Insights, Viva Topics, and Viva Learning. What is employee experience? “Employee experience is the sum of all interactions an employee has with their employer. It is the structure and culture of the organization and how the employee perceives the company overall” (Source: https://www.inc.com/elizabeth-dukes/the-employee-experience-what-it-is-and-why-it-matt.html). This may be things like the physical environment where an employee works, tools and technology the employer provides, and how the employer demonstrates commitment to health and success of the employees.