From Death Star to Star Performer: Elevating Objectives with Viva Goals & Copilot

So, just the other day I was tasked with coming up with some OKRs for our new AI & Automation practice. If you don’t know what an OKR is then check this article out.

Anyway, I’ve set OKRs before and done quite a lot of work with Viva Goals before both internally at Nasstar but also with clients when implementing Viva Goals, I’ve also read quite a few books on effectively using OKRs. So I’m relatively well placed for this task but as I’m also a sucker for any new tech I thought I’d use the fairly new Copilot functionality in Viva Goals to see what its all about.

And to say I’m impressed is an understatement, it’s really REALLY good. As with anything Copilot related its not going to fully automate this process for you and you still need to work with the tool to get the right results but as with M365 Copilot it really helps with that staring at a blank page issue and I was very impressed with the starting point it gives you.

I thought this deserved a little blog post to show you how it works and for a bit of fun I thought I’d use a star wars theme for creating these OKRs 🙂

Unlocking the Magic of Microsoft Viva: A Licensing Adventure

OK, I have been reading the Harry Potter books with my son recently so excuse the random magical references but I thought it might be a fun way of looking at the new(ish) Microsoft Viva licensing model, if there is such a thing as having fun and licensing in the same blog. Anyway, it’s been a while since I wrote a blog explaining the licensing model in Microsoft Viva and there have been some changes. It’s also been a little while since I wrote a blog article in general as I’ve been doing a few more video format updates the last few weeks.

So stick on your witch/wizard hats and grab your wands:-

Viva Learning

I thought I’d write a quick blog to follow up on the briefing I did for Empowering Cloud a few weeks ago. The video briefing was all about Viva Learning and how it can supercharge your LMS and build a culture of learning throughout your organisation.

Enable Viva Learning

This is the 2nd in a short series of blogs on how to enable the different modules of Viva. So, todays blog will be how to enable Viva Learning in your Microsoft Tenant.

Enable Viva Topics

This is the first in a series of blogs on how to enable the different modules of Microsoft Viva. So, this article I want to do a bit more of a deep dive into Viva Topics and how you can actually enable or switch on Viva Topics. Let’s look into the background of what Viva Topics is, how to enable it from a tech perspective, the people you need to make the most out of it, the governance and security required around it and then a brief summary.

Use PowerPoint Live

Just a short blog post today with a quick tip on how to use PowerPoint Live and importantly the Teams Presenter View. In the last couple of months I’d need another pair of hands to count how many times a presenter has not managed to share the correct view of their PowerPoint presentation. Either they are sharing their desktop and have not gone into the slide show or they don’t know where that pesky button to switch to presenter view is, There is a tip at the bottom of this blog as to why you may not be able to find this elusive button. The audience gets the below view instead of the nice shiny presentation you’ve worked hours on, and they can even see the really important notes you’ve put into the presentation but don’t actually want the audience to see.

Viva Explorers Community Day

OK, it’s Tuesday and time for me to unpack Friday and Saturday’s activities. This time I wasn’t running around taking my son to a tennis lesson or a football match, although I did get to do that on Sunday and yes, they played brilliantly and came away with a 3 – 0 victory – Go Norwich Eagles Academy! I also wasn’t dancing to some pounding Techno beats or in a pub drinking far too many beers, although I was in the bar Friday night but didn’t have too many.

No, I was in Manchester for the first ever Viva Explorers Community Day on the Saturday and what a day it was. I had the absolute privilege of being asked to speak about Viva Learning at the event.

Viva Insights Effective Meetings

Ever join, or even schedule your own meeting and find the following?

• There is no agenda?
• There are 10 or more people in the meeting with only about 2 or 3 of them actually saying anything or contributing at all?
• The discussion just has no focus, goes off on tangents and half the meeting is wasted discussing something entirely irrelevant?
• You all leave the meeting wondering why it happened and what the next steps are?

If you answered no to the above, then stop reading all your meetings are perfect, have a gold star. If you answered yes to any or all of them then read on as Viva Insights has 2 new features that can help combat this.

Microsoft Viva is Expanding

Hopefully you managed to watch the “Empowering Your Workforce in Economic Uncertainty”. There is certainly a lot to unpack from it.

I found some of the stats very interesting and what Microsoft are coining as “Productivity Paranoia” was a key take away it shows that “87 percent of employees report they are productive, yet only 12 percent of leaders say they’re confident their employees are productive in hybrid work.”

But what does this mean and how can Microsoft Viva help? Leaders need to create clarity around what work is most important and listen to what their employees need to make the biggest impact.

With that Microsoft has unveiled a few new Viva modules and features that are coming out and I’ve given a very quick overview of some of them and a short thought on what I like about each one.

Inclusion and Diversity within the Employee Experience

I had a really interesting chat with a colleague the other day and he mentioned a really interesting feature of Microsoft Viva Topics and how it can help inclusion in the workplace. This got me thinking about Microsoft Viva and the various methods each of the different modules can help from a diversity & inclusion perspective.

Any and every employee experience platform should really have inclusion at the very heart of what it does as its such a fundamental element of a really standout experience for your employees.