At Viva Engage (Yammer), we are committed to improving conversations to help make your employees feel even more connected. Organizations and employees use conversations as a way to keep everyone connected, informed, and engaged, both in communities and through storylines. We share below the improvements we have made to conversations, as we continue to make it easier and more intuitive to start and continue having conversations in Viva Engage.
@mention first or last names directly in a conversation
Now you will be able to @mention colleagues by using just their first or last name, making it feel more natural and conversational. When employees @mention someone in the conversation, the conversation is ~3x more likely to get engagement. Viva Engage tenant admins will be able to enable this for your organization.
@mention first names to make conversations less formal
Admins can find reported conversations and replies easier
When an employee reports a conversation, including replies, we now have a way to help admins find the exact part of the reported conversation. To help find the exact reported conversation, the notification includes a link to the exact message that was reported by an employee. Admins can quickly identify and take the necessary next action, providing a more efficient moderation process. Learn more about Report Conversations in Viva Engage.
More control for authors for conversation starters
Any conversation started, the author now has the ability to close their own conversations, giving more control to the content creator. Community Admins can still close conversations and can re-open conversations as necessary. When employees control the ability to moderate the conversations they start, it allows for greater confidence and sense of ownership in starting conversations within communities or their storyline.
Close the conversations you start, giving you more control
More improvements to conversations
As we continue to respond to customer feedback, we have also made other changes within the last year to make it easier to create conversations in Viva Engage. These changes include:
Discover announcements: Announcements serve as one way for admins to guarantee that their posts effectively reach their target audience, regardless of if the message is a discussion, poll, question or praise. First, we introduced an educational moment for community admins who have never used the announcement feature, explaining how and when they should use an announcement within their community. Secondly, we refined the icon's design to improve its discoverability. Announcements in Viva Engage get ~5x more viewers than a regular post. Learn more about announcements and how they deliver messages to employees to Outlook, Microsoft Teams or directly in Viva Engage.
Easily add images: To ensure employees are aware of the ability to incorporate images into their posts, we have introduced a simple icon to the publisher, making it easier for users to add images to their posts. On average, posts with an image attachment get 1.5x more engagement than those without.
‘Collapse’ the creation publisher: To enhance this interaction and clarify the button’s purpose, the 'X' button is now the 'collapse' button. Clicking on this button does not erase the content that you have already written within the publisher.
Announce any type of message. Add images to conversations. Collapse your messages.
Share thoughts with a discussion post type: To provide greater clarity on the purpose of a discussion post, the initial prompt has been updated to provide a more helpful nudge, "Share thoughts, ideas, or updates."
We continue to listen to your feedback and make it easier to create and contribute in Viva Engage. While these may seem like incremental changes, they have a big impact in helping employees start and continue to have conversations in Viva Engage.
Stay tuned on the blog and keep an eye on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap for ongoing updates and continuous improvements to Viva Engage.