Viva Engage brings social media capabilities to Microsoft Teams

Exactly 10 years ago, Microsoft bought Yammer for around $1.2 billion, which focused on a social media platform for businesses. A decade later, Viva Engage transfers exactly these functions to the Microsoft Teams communication app. The interface is strongly reminiscent of Facebook and allows users to post articles and even stories.

Viva Engage in Microsoft Teams launches

Microsoft announced the launch of Viva Engage within Microsoft Teams which leverages the strengths of Microsoft 365 to offer a social media platform within the communications app.

Through the new portal, members can post articles, share videos and images, and even create stories that are automatically deleted after 24 hours. The entire interface of Viva Engage is strikingly reminiscent of Facebook and is intended to drive “social networking” within the Teams work environment.

The platform offers a Storyline section that is reminiscent of the Facebook News Feed and functions in exactly the same way. In it, you can find traditional posts, videos, pictures and much more. With the almost identical structure compared to Meta’s platform, Microsoft apparently wants to provide a similar feeling within the work environment. The Yammer integration into the Office environment went (or is going) a very similar way, but seemed forced and cluttered in places.

Viva Engage is now set to make the enterprise hub that Microsoft Teams now marks in many corporations around the world even more social and personal. Which should provide for a stronger togetherness especially with the increased home office share within companies since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Vacation photos, project images and more in Stories

Viva Engage’s Stories feature also clearly takes inspiration from Facebook and similar features on Instagram or Snapchat in terms of design. Here you can share, with your colleagues, pictures or videos that are automatically deleted again after 24 hours.

As an example of use, Microsoft shows a clip from a company presentation on the screenshot, which can be commented on by other members of the Microsoft Teams environment.

Of course, private stories including pictures from vacations or the current progress of a project can also be shared here. Provided that the Stories are used, this makes following and viewing colleagues’ impressions on other social networks unnecessary from now on if you want to stay up to date.

The new feature is also interesting for all those who don’t want to network with work colleagues on the usual social networks or who don’t even use platforms like Facebook and the like privately. Facebook, on the other hand, is currently also planning an extensive redesign, with which it wants to fundamentally redesign the app and challenge TikTok.

Viva Engage is part of the Microsoft Viva Suite and is expected to be offered to all Microsoft 365 commercial customers at no additional cost beginning in late August 2022. A Yammer license is a prerequisite for use. You can also find all the details again on the overview page from Microsoft.