With Viva Connections, employees can see the content relevant to them based on the resources they follow. The content is delivered to the users from various sources or feeds including SharePoint, Yammer, and Stream. The feeds provide a tailored experience to users by bringing the most relevant content to them. It is important to get your content ready for the content feeds using SharePoint, Yammer, and Stream.
In this chapter, you will look at the different ways in which organizations can publish content that appears in the Viva Connections feed and how organizations can get the most out of the feed by combining the different types of content.
To create an engaging experience for your employees with feeds, consider defining your content with both SharePoint and Yammer.
Basics of Feeds
Feeds provide a personalized view to your employees that shows news, conversations, and discussions relevant to them. A feed can surface the content relevant to the users from SharePoint, Yammer, and Stream. Users can see the content from the sites they follow or are a member of on SharePoint, as well as any community they follow on Yammer.
Which feed content is rolled up to the user?
Which content takes precedence?
How frequently does the feed get updated?
How does the content get ranked?
How can we shape the content in the feed?
User Experience for Feeds
Viva Connections provides a seamless user experience for both mobile and desktop users.
Mobile Experience
Viva Connections mobile experience , Feed tab
Desktop Experience
Viva Connections, app bar
Feed for Viva Connections
Sources of Content Feeds
News from SharePoint: The news from the home site, organizational news sites, and sites you follow are shown.
Posts from Yammer communities: Conversations from all company communities, communities you follow, and well-featured posts from public communities are shown.
Videos from Stream: Stream videos published as video news links or embedded in the news posts are shown.
Content feed from various sources
In Figure 7-4, you can notice the content coming from various feeds including the following.
SharePoint
News posts from the home site
News posts from organizational news sites
News posts from frequently visited and followed sites
Boosted news from followed SharePoint sites
Yammer
Posts from the All Company community
Announcements from the All Company community
Featured posts on public communities
Posts from followed communities
Stream
Videos from Stream (built on SharePoint)
Video news links from organizational news sites
Videos embedded in news feeds
The feed experience is unique to every user based on the content they follow and have permission to.
It is important to note that not all the content sources are required to be configured, but it’s nice to have them configured to get the best engaging experience. Not all content sources have equal weight.
User Experience for a Content Refresh
From the users’ point of view, it is important to understand how the content is delivered and refreshed for them.
When a home site is set up in SharePoint, it may take up to a week for content to appear in the feed. After this period, it may take up to an hour to get the latest content delivered to the feed.
For mobile users, they see the refreshed content every time they open the Viva Connections app or when they manually refresh with the pull-down action.
For desktop users, the content gets refreshed every time they visit the app or when they refresh manually by clicking the refresh link from a ribbon.
Content Ranking
To have an engaging user experience, it is important to present them with fresh content. If they see the same content each time they visit the Viva Connections, they might get bored and start to lose interest.
It is important to understand how the content is ranked and presented to the users.
Chronology
0 to 4 days: Fresh content, appears at the top
5 to 8 days: A bit of old content, starts to push down in the feed
9 to 30 days: Older content, pushed down in the feed
Content chronology by age
Content Promotion
Sometimes the chronology is not sufficient to present the fresh content to the users. The content creator has some control over the freshness of content by using features such as boosting news in SharePoint and featuring conversations in Yammer. The boosted and featured content is placed at the top of each bucket.
Based on the permissions, an individual will have access to part of each bucket. The content creators should ensure engaging content at each bucket.
User Actions on Feed
Reactions to a post
Comment on a post
Reply to conversation
Share the post
Save post for later
Role of Content Creator
The content creator plays a limited but important role in presenting fresh content to the user. The content creator does not have huge control over the content to be seen by an individual. However, they can balance the needs of the business against the wishes of the audience.
Promote important news: Content creators can increase the visibility of official communications by using the boost feature on SharePoint.
Highlight important conversations: Content creators can feature the conversations from Yammer public communities to bring visibility.
Publish from official sources: Content creators can post the important content from the SharePoint home site or an organizational news site to be seen as important content, instead of posting it from any team or communication site. The content published from the official sources affects the ranking.
Feeds from SharePoint
Let’s explore SharePoint as a source for feeds. Modern SharePoint news is a good candidate for the feeds. If a communication site is set as a home site, it is automatically configured as an organizational news site.
Organizational News Site
In a SharePoint intranet, we can designate a specific site as an organization-level news site. This site will act as an official source of information for the organization.
News from the organizational news site on the SharePoint start page
Designate a SharePoint Site as an Organizational News Site
Unfortunately, we do not have a UI option to designate a site as an organizational news site . You will need to use PowerShell for this purpose.
Adding the news web part to home page
SharePoint administrators can specify up to 250 sites as organization news sites. It is worth setting the home site as an authoritative organization news site as well. A communication site set as a home site automatically becomes an organization news site by default.
Follow these steps to set a site as an organizational news site :
- 1.
Download and install the latest version of the SharePoint Online Management Shell.
- 2.Connect to SharePoint Online as a SharePoint administrator or Global administrator.
Connect-SPOService -Url https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com
- 3.Set a site as an organizational news site by running the following command:
Set-SPOOrgNewsSite -OrgNewsSiteUrl https://contoso.sharepoint.com/sites/ContosoNews
Bring the News Experience to Users
- 1.
Navigate to the SharePoint home site.
- 2.
Edit the home page.
- 3.
Add the News web part.
Figure 7-7 shows how to add a News web part to the SharePoint page.
News web part , setting the news source
- 6.
As shown in Figure 7-9, optionally select and order news from the web part property pane.
News web part , reordering the news
- 7.
The News web part will show the recommended news, as shown in Figure 7-10.
News web part in action
News Boost Feature
The boost feature in SharePoint prioritizes the news and announcements to make them visually appear at the top. The boosted news appears at the top in the Feed web part for Viva Connections and Viva Connection feeds.
- 1.
Open a SharePoint news to boost.
- 2.
In the Ribbon, click Boost.
- 3.
In the panel, set the Boost option to On.
- 4.
The news can be set to be boosted until a date.
- 5.
If you choose to boost multiple news, order the news boost sequence.
News boost feature
Boosted news shown with visual precedence
Insights and Analysis
To maintain the interest of end users in Viva Connections, it is important to carry out insights and analysis on the content presented to them. SharePoint Online provides out-of-the-box insights and analysis. It helps to understand the user engagement by their visits to the content.
Site and page-level analytic s is by default enabled in SharePoint Online. The page owner or member of the site can view the analytics from the top of the page.
SharePoint page analytics
Usage data is collected and visualized based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The daily unique viewers, views, average time spent per user, page traffic by time trends on the site and page can be viewed for the last 7, 30, and 90 days. The calculation algorithm of page views is designed to filter out repetitive, continual operations by the same user on the same item, such as when a user repeatedly refreshes the page.
SharePoint page analytics
Yammer
In simple terms, Yammer is your organization’s Facebook where everyone can share information, have meaningful discussions, reply, and add reactions to the discussions. It is your social network to engage with everyone in the organization. Connecting people through communities is at the heart of Yammer. Yammer helps to find like-minded people to give employees a connected feeling within an organization.
Join a Yammer community: A community in Yammer is formed by like-minded people to share ideas and carry out discussions. Join the communities of interest. Yammer will also suggest to you the communities to join based on your interactions on Yammer.
Create a Yammer community: To connect like-minded, create a community if one does not exist. Invite your colleagues to join it.
Take a part in conversations: Be part of the community by sharing your ideas and thoughts. Use Yammer’s features to like and reply to the conversations . Grab the attention of colleagues by using the @mention feature.
- Start a discussion in style: While you start a discussion, choose whether it is a general discussion, a question, a poll, or praise for someone. Create an engaging message in Yammer in the following ways:
Ask a question
Poll the community
Praise a colleague
Share photos or video
Attach files
Link to internal or external resources
Express yourself with a GIF
Add a hashtag or topic
Feature a Conversation
You can amplify a Yammer conversation by using the Feature Conversation option in Yammer.
- 1.
As shown in Figure 7-15, in a Yammer conversation, click the more options icon and select Feature Conversation.
Yammer feature conversation
- 2.
As shown in Figure 7-16, select the end date and time for the featured conversation .
Yammer featured conversation end date
In the case of multiple featured conversations , the one expiring first will be shown at the top of the feed. There is no limit on the number of featured conversations that can be set. The admin’s local time is considered for the feature end date and time. Conversations can be featured from both public as well private communities. It will be shown only to those who belong to those communities.
Deploy the Communities App
If the organization is already using Yammer, then this optional step is easy to configure to bring Yammer communities into Microsoft Teams. The Communities app is available in Microsoft Teams to drive engagement in organizations with Yammer communities. The app is enabled by default. Once configured, it works across web, mobile, and desktop experiences.
The Microsoft Teams administrator can pin the communities for everyone to collaborate better. Enabling the Communities app inside Microsoft Teams enables everyone to have a conversation with Yammer communities without leaving the Microsoft Teams experience.
Communities app in Microsoft Teams
Insights and Analysis
Insights are helpful to track user engagement. Insights in Yammer are available out of the box.
- 1.
Head over to Yammer.
- 2.
Open the Yammer community.
- 3.
Click the About section.
Yammer community About section
All insights are calculated in the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time zone. Community insights are available for periods of the last 7 and 28 days. A time interval can be selected from the drop-down list at the top. Also, community insights can be exported in CSV for time periods of the last 7, 28, and 365 days.
Click See More to view detailed insights about the Yammer community. It shows insights into people and content.
Active People
This section provides the number of active people in the community and their activity trends compared to the previous period. The user activities refer to posting, reading, and reacting to a message in the community.
These trends will help you to understand the user engagement in the Yammer community .
Yammer insights on active people
Active Members and Nonmembers
Yammer insights on active members and nonmembers
Content Insights
Yammer insights on the content
For public communities, any member of the Yammer network can see the insights. For private communities , only members of the community can see the insights.
Microsoft Stream (Built on SharePoint)
Microsoft Stream is a popular video app in Microsoft 365 suite. It helps users to create, manage, and discover the videos. The new version of Microsoft Stream has been revamped to be powered by the content management feature of SharePoint.
Steam has two versions, as follows:
Microsoft Stream (Classic)
The old version of Stream will now be called Microsoft Stream (Classic ). The old version was an independent app, where videos were stored separately from other Microsoft 365 apps.
Microsoft Stream (Built on SharePoint)
The new version is referred to as Microsoft Stream (built on SharePoint ). When you upload a video in the new version of Microsoft Stream, it will be automatically stored in SharePoint. The videos across all Microsoft 365 apps (SharePoint, OneDrive, Yammer, and Microsoft Teams) are referred to as Stream videos.
Migrating to Microsoft Stream (Built on SharePoint)
At the tenant level, you do not have to make any updates to migrate from the classic version to the new one. Microsoft will roll out the updates in phases.
You can migrate existing content from Stream (Classic) to Stream (built on SharePoint) at your own pace.
The migration tool will be available in the SharePoint Admin Center from Microsoft for the content migration.
Permissions will be migrated by the migration tool.
Video News Links
Videos are an engaging way to interact with the users. Videos hosted in SharePoint and OneDrive can be published to the Viva Connections feed.
Publishing video news links is a two-step process.
Step 1: Create a Sharing Link
- 1.
Select a video from SharePoint or OneDrive.
- 2.
Click Share.
- 3.
Specify the intended audience.
- 4.
Copy a link.
Creating a sharing link for a video
Step 2: Publish the Video as a News Item
- 1.
Navigate to a SharePoint organizational news site.
- 2.
On the home page, click New ➤ Video news link.
Publish video as a news item
- 3.As shown in Figure 7-24, in the configuration panel, specify the sharing link generated from step 1.
Figure 7-24Video news link properties
- 4.
Configure the properties for the video news item .
- 5.
You may optionally specify a schedule to publish the video news item later. Also, you may specify audience targeting.
Videos from Stream (Classic)
External videos (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
Conclusion
The feeds provide a tailored experience to users by bringing the most relevant content to them. A feed can generally surface the content relevant to the user from SharePoint, Yammer, and Stream. We explored getting the content ready for the content feeds using SharePoint, Yammer, and Stream.
In the next chapter, we will explore preparing a strategy to enable Viva Connections and its rollout in MS Teams.