Maximising the benefits of your investment in M365 - Apps

During the pandemic, millions of people turned to Microsoft Teams to facilitate remote working and virtual meetings, they saw the number of active daily users go from 45 million in March 2020 to 145 million a year later. This blog looks at how apps like Viva and Yammer aren't necessarily being used to their full potential and how businesses can maximise their M365 investment with these.

Viva

Microsoft Viva is a new employee experience platform integrated into Microsoft Teams geared at enhancing employee communication, knowledge, learning and insights in the modern workplace. Some features are free however some require additional licensing. Viva comprises of four separate modules :

• Viva Connections: Integrates your SharePoint online specifically the homesite typically used for an organization’s intranet natively into Teams. It utilizes Yammer for social communities and Stream for video sharing.
• Viva Topics: An intelligent knowledge discovery platform using AI to automictically search and identify topics in the organization. Bringing all the subject matter together into one place for employees to easily gain the required knowledge they are searching for and connecting them to the subject matter experts of the desired topic.
• Viva Learning: A central hub of learning content to allow employees to search for and share courses relevant to their skillset using free and subscription-based content providers such as LinkedIn, Pluralsight, EDX, Udemy, as well as Microsoft Learning to name a few. Giving managers the ability to manage and track their teams learning all in one place.
• Viva Insights: Personal Insights are available for free creating better wellbeing for employees by offering the ability to “wrap up” their working day with a virtual commute, mindfully disconnect with the help of headspace video’s, stay connected with the team, protect time to focus on their tasks as well as the ability to send praise to their fellow colleagues. With additional licensing, manager and leader insights provide advanced tooling to analyze their specific teams or whole organizations working practice providing various analytical data reports of their activities.

Yammer

An online social network for the organisations allowing employees to connect with each other by building communities to share knowledge, experiences, have conversations, hold surveys, or ask questions about the communities they are part of.

Kaizala

Kaizala is a secure messaging and work management application similar with the likes of WhatsApp however is under the jurisdiction of your companies Microsoft 365 suite and adheres to any GDPR, data protection and retention policies that apply to the company data held in M365.

The main function is the send\receive instant messages from your colleagues and contacts however there are some additional features such as coordinating tasks, submitting invoices

It’s deployed in the form of a free app available on android or IOS or can be accessed via a browser.

Sway

Sway providers employees with the ability to create and share reports, stories, newsletters and presentations in a new and interactive way, a great alternative to PowerPoint.