Publish reports (preview)
Important
This feature is for public preview customers only. Features in preview might not be complete and could undergo changes before becoming available in the broader release.
The Publish reports feature lets you share insights and reports directly with leaders, decision-makers, or even an entire organization in the recipient’s Viva Insights app. This helps to streamline the communication process between analysts and leadership, ensuring that organizational insights and data are delivered effectively alongside other Viva Insights content.
A "report" refers to any analyst-created dashboard that includes Viva Insights metrics, though it might also feature other types of metrics like surveys or Copilot metrics. Typically, this dashboard is a Power BI, but other formats are possible. You might have already shared this report via email, but with this feature you can publish it seamlessly within Viva Insights.
Here's a few more details about how it works:
With this feature, you publish your report as a prominently displayed card on the recipient’s Viva Insights home page.
We'll help you create the card, which includes a title, description, and a link to your report.
You select the card's recipients, and specify how long you want it to be published.
After publishing, cards always appear at the top of recipient's home page, and you can track the impact using their unique card IDs.
Prerequisite
This feature is off by default. To enable this feature in your tenant, Insights admins must first agree to the Microsoft Viva Preview Agreement terms. To do so, use this page to agree to these terms and enable this feature in your tenant.
Roles and permissions
You can access this feature within the advanced insights app.
Analysts can create new publishes, view publishes, and remove any existing publishes.
Insights admins can view publishes and set which analysts can publish using Viva Feature Access Management (VFAM).
Publish reports landing page
This page displays all the publishes within the past year from the partition, regardless of their state. From this page, you can manage your previous publishes, and publish a new report.
When viewing existing publishes, you can see details on the author, publish name, publish date, end date, status, and actions.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Author | The email address of the person who published the report. |
| Publish name | A friendly name for the publish that’s only visible in the advanced insights app, and not to any recipients. |
| Publish date | The date the publish was made. |
| End date | The date recipients will no longer be able to see this publish. The end date is selected by the publisher at the time of publish. |
| Status | The current state of the publish. It can be one of five values: |
| Actions | For any publish in the list, there is a set of available actions: |
How to publish a new report
Under the Analysis tab in the advanced insights app, select Publish reports. Then, at the top right, select Publish new.
Create your card
The card you create is what recipients see on their Viva Insights app homepage. Fill out the details for this card and ensure it looks accurate via the card preview before publishing. You’re responsible for the content that appears on your published cards.
Report Link: Provide the URL where the report can be accessed.
Important
This feature does not provide recipients permissions to the URL you’re publishing. Ensure that you have already made this URL available to your recipient audience so there aren’t permissions issues when recipients access this link from the card.
If you're publishing a Power BI report, ensure that you have already shared it with your desired audience so they can access the content once you publish. Learn more about sharing Power BI reports.
Important
This feature does not filter or edit the data based on viewer, so whatever you publish is published as-is to all recipients.
If you're publishing a Power BI report, consider adding row-level security to it if you want viewers to only see a subset of the data that is applicable to them.
Card Title: Choose a concise and descriptive title for your report. This can’t be empty and must be fewer than 100 characters.
Publisher Name: Keep your name or update it to reflect the entity publishing the report. This can’t be empty and must be fewer than 100 characters.
Description: Write a summary of the report's content and its relevance to the target audience. This can’t be empty and must be fewer than 500 characters.
Ensure this content looks accurate by reviewing the preview on the right side of the page.
Here's an example:
Let's say you want to publish your Hybrid workplace dashboard. This dashboard is saved to your Power BI workspace and has already been shared with your desired audience. It doesn't have row-level security implemented, so recipients see all the data in the report. You can create your card like the one below and publish it under your team name, HR Analytics, rather than using your own name as publisher. You can see how this card looks when it’s published to your recipients with the Preview.
Select target audience
Important
Recipients need to have the Insights app enabled but don’t need a Viva Insights license. The recipient does not need to be within your partition and can be anyone in your organization who fits the above criteria.
You can use the feature's targeting options to publish to specific users or to an audience based on organizational attributes.
Publish to specific people: Select people to publish to directly. These people can be inside or outside your partition.
Publish to an audience based on organizational attributes: Define a population based on Required and Reserved attributes to receive your published content. You must add at least one condition to publish. These people can only be from within your partition.
Choose how long this card should be active
Set a date when the published report card will no longer be available for recipients to view. You can select a date up to 90 days out.
Choose a name for this publish
Assign a unique name to your report's publication instance. This name will help you and other analysts identify the report within the Advanced Insights app. This is only visible within the Advanced Insights app and is not visible to recipients.
Continuing our example:
Let’s say you want to publish your Hybrid workplace dashboard to your Engineering function. You can publish to that audience based on your available organizational attributes. You can then select this card to be published for 90 days and provide a publish name you can use to find this publish later on the Publish reports landing page.
Publish
Once these details have been filled out, select Publish to publish your report.
Upon publishing, the card is available immediately on recipients’ Viva Insights app homepage. A Teams notification is sent to recipients during their working hours displaying the card, if the recipient hasn’t seen the card already. Recipients can only receive up to one Teams notification a day, so if you publish multiple reports, notifications might be suppressed. If recipients haven’t accessed the card after some time, they’ll receive a reminder notification.
Finishing our example:
The published card appears for recipients to view. When the recipient selects Open, they'll be taken to the URL you provided.
Manage your published report
Once you publish a report, it’s available for all recipients to view. If you decide the details of a published report are incorrect, you can remove the publish via the Publish reports page and create a new publish. You can’t edit a published report.
Track engagement
You can learn how recipients are engaging with your published report card by using the Custom Recommendations query. This is like Person and Meeting queries, but it only provides engagement data on the reports you’ve published.
Navigate to Create analysis and select the Custom query filter on the top. From there, find the Custom Recommendations card and select Set up analysis.
In the metrics section, add relevant metrics from the Custom recommendation activity metrics dropdown. Then, run the query.
When the query completes, download the results from Query results. You can then map the Card ID from the View publish page within Publish Reports to the Card identity column in the report output to find the engagement of your published report card.
Administrative capabilities
VFAM
Insights admins can manage which analysts are enabled to publish reports by creating Viva Feature Access Management policies. By default, there are no policies set, so all analysts can publish reports and manage them.
To change this default, Insights admins can create new policies to allow them to manage this feature. Use these steps to manage access policies. The FeatureId is AnalystReportPublish and the corresponding ModuleID is VivaInsights in VFAM.
Examples of policies might look like:
Enable publishing for all analysts (default)
Enable publishing for all analysts, except for specific ones
Disable publishing for all analysts, except for specific ones
Disable publishing for all analysts
Learn more about VFAM policies.
Unified audit log
Publishing related actions are captured in the Unified Audit Log.
| Friendly name | Operation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Publish Report | PublishReport | Analyst published a report |
| Remove Published Report | RemovedPublishedReport | Analyst removed an actively published report |