Key concepts for Viva Engage administrators
Welcome to your Viva Engage experience! Using Viva Engage changes the way your company does its work. As an admin, you have a significant role in helping your coworkers get comfortable with Viva Engage.
Your best resource and the page you should add to your Favorites is Overview of the Viva Engage admin center. This page has links for everything you need to set up and configure Viva Engage. It describes the key concepts you should know and key decisions you should make before you open Viva Engage for business.
Create a plan
To start, identify who can administer Viva Engage for your organization. Viva Engage has several types of admin roles:
Admin role Permissions Engage admin Engage admins have the most permissions and are responsible for key decisions about how to use Viva Engage in your company. They manage security-related tasks and configure and customize Viva Engage. Corporate communicator The admin role that focuses on content management. They create and manage campaigns and identify leaders within your company. Community admin Community admins configure and customize their communities and manage their day-to-day operations. For more information on admin role assignment and the business functions performed by each admin role, see Manage administrator roles in Viva Engage.
Set up your Viva Engage network to match your organization's goals:
Configure and customize your network. Set up a usage policy to keep conversations appropriate and useful.
Review the security and compliance features and define your data retention and export plans.
Make sure your domains are set up correctly in Microsoft 365. By default, your Viva Engage internal network is only available to employees whose email addresses match the domains verified in Microsoft 365.
If all your domains are verified, you're all set. For more information, see Manage Viva Engage domains across their lifecycle.
If your organization has business units with different domains, Viva Engage can help you join these domains into a consolidated network. You can also create external networks for each business unit or a singular external network for all employees to access. To view details on these options and merge or create networks, see Combine multiple Viva Engage networks.
Decide if your network users can use Viva Engage to collaborate with people outside your organization.
Your internal network, also known as a home network, is a private and secure collaboration space where employees connect with their coworkers. Only employees with verified corporate email addresses can join the home network and access its content and users. Users from one home network can't view the content or interact with users from another network unless they're affiliated with both organizations. Your organization owns all messages posted within your home network; they can't be shared externally without permission. Admins can invite external users as guests to the internal network, as described in External messaging FAQ (Viva Engage).
An external network is a separate extension of your home network. It includes invited users from outside your organization. It's a private and secure collaboration space for your organization to engage with outside partners, such as customers, suppliers, or investors. While external networks can accommodate users who have different email domains, access is by invitation only.
Explore the options for communities, and set up the communities you need:
Set up public or private communities. See Create a group in Viva Engage. Although anyone on Viva Engage can create communities, it's often helpful for the admin to set up communities for each department by using a consistent group naming strategy, such as Sales Team, Marketing Team, and so on.
Set up communities that support Microsoft 365 services (such as SharePoint, OneNote, and Planner). to start, ensure that all users have an assigned Viva Engage license. Such communities are called Microsoft 365 connected communities.
Decide if you want to use dynamic groups to keep membership current as people change roles in your company.
Consider how you want to integrate Viva Engage with other apps, including SharePoint and Teams.
Define how your organization trains and supports Viva Engage users. End-user support options include online help and training, and the online community. See Viva Engage help center. Consider creating a Viva Engage 101 group that can be your own local self-support community.
For more help, contact support for business products - Admin Help.
To check the real-time status of the Viva Engage service, see Microsoft 365 Service health dashboard.
Viva Engage continues to evolve. To stay current on what's happening, regularly review the Microsoft 365 Roadmap.
To learn about all the admin features of Viva Engage, see Overview of the Viva Engage admin center.
FAQs
Q: What are the browser and system requirements for Viva Engage?
A: Viva Engage's system requirements are consistent with Microsoft 365. See the list of supported browsers in the Microsoft 365 system requirements.
Mobile and desktop requirements
iOS support for the two most-recent versions
Android support for the four most-recent versions
macOS 10.10 or later
For the most up-to-date information, see Office mobile apps.
Q: Why am I seeing different features, colors, or layouts than my colleagues?
A: As part of Viva Engage development methodology, we "A/B test" all aspects of Viva Engage and use data to select the better design. Tests take place on subsets of users across all networks, so changes don't occur at the network level until they're tested and launched.
Q: What's the roadmap for Viva Engage?
A: Viva Engage rapid release and iterative development methodology drives constant change. The items currently being developed and their stage of development and testing are available in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap.