Key concepts for Viva Engage administrators

Welcome to your Viva Engage experience! Using Viva Engage will change the way your company gets work done, if it hasn't already. As an admin, you have a huge role to play in helping your coworkers get comfortable with Viva Engage.

Your best resource and the page you should add to your Favorites is Viva Engage admin center overview. This page has links for everything you need to set up and configure Viva Engage.

This article describes the key concepts you should know and key decisions you should make before you open Viva Engage for business.

Create a plan

1. Identify who will help administer Viva Engage for your organization. Viva Engage has several types of admin roles:

   • Engage admin - have the most permissions and are responsible for significant decisions about how to use Viva Engage in your company. They manage security-related tasks and configure and customize Viva Engage.

   • Answers admin - manage articles and configure Answers in Viva Engage.

   • Corporate communicator - a role catered towards content management. They create and manage campaigns and identify leaders within your company.

   • Group admin - configure and customize their groups and manage day-to-day operations for them.

   For details on how to assign an admin and the functions each admin role can do, see Manage Viva Engage admins.

2. 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 that have 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.

3. Decide whether you'll 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 who have 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. Messages posted within your home network are owned by your organization and can't be shared externally without permission. Note that 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 but 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. For more information, see Create and manage an external network.

4. Explore the options for groups, and set up the groups you need:

   • To set up public or private groups, see Create a group in Viva Engage. Although anyone on Viva Engage can create groups, it's often helpful for the admin to set up groups for each department by using a consistent group naming strategy, such as Sales Team, Marketing Team, and so on.

   • If you want to use groups that can use Microsoft 365 services, such as SharePoint Online, OneNote, and Planner, you need to ensure that users have a Viva Engage license assigned to them. Such groups are called Microsoft 365 connected groups.

   • Set up groups that include external users. These are called external groups.

   • Decide if you want to use dynamic groups to keep membership current as people change roles in your company.

5. People are the core of the enterprise social network, so invite your team to get started on Viva Engage via the Viva Engage admin center.

6. Consider how you want to integrate Viva Engage with other apps, including SharePoint and Teams.

7. Define how your organization will train and support 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–your own local self-support community.

   If you need more help than Viva Engage admin help provides, 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 is always changing. To stay current on what's happening, regularly review the Microsoft 365 Roadmap.

To learn about all the admin features of Viva Engage, see Viva Engage admin center overview.

FAQs

Q: What are the browser and system requirements for Viva Engage

A: Viva Engage's system requirements are consistent with those of 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

• Windows 7 SP1 or later

• 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. The tests are performed on a subset 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 means that change is constant. The items currently being developed and their stage of development and testing are available in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap.