Last updated: 13th November 2025
Key Takeaways
- Viva Engage is Microsoft’s enterprise social network that creates spaces for employees to connect with leaders, share knowledge, and build community — accessible in Teams, mobile apps, browsers, and SharePoint to reach office, hybrid, and frontline workers alike.
- Core features come free with Microsoft 365 Enterprise, but premium capabilities like Leadership Corner, Campaigns, and advanced analytics require the Communications & Communities bundle or full Viva Suite.
- Key features include Communities for collaboration, Leadership Corner for executive visibility, Copilot for AI-powered content creation, and the Communications Dashboard for tracking engagement — all designed to break down silos, surface expertise, and make internal communications more impactful.
- Successful adoption depends on clear governance, phased rollouts, and active participation from leaders and community admins — making it more than just another channel, but a genuine driver of connection and culture across your organisation.
At Silicon Reef, we’ve worked with organisations across industries to roll out Viva Engage—and we’ve seen first-hand how it transforms internal communications when implemented thoughtfully. We’ll dive into what Viva Engage is, how to access it, key features, and how much it costs—as well as some of our favourite bits, and best practice advice drawn from real client projects.
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What is Viva Engage?
Viva Engage is Microsoft Viva’s enterprise social network—like social media for your employees, but with an extra focus on collaboration and productivity.
Microsoft describes it as a hub where employees can connect with leaders, co-workers, and communities. It enables knowledge sharing, open dialogue, and two-way communication, keeping everyone in the loop with company updates.
Blending work and play, Viva Engage lets employees discuss strategy with leadership whilst bonding over shared interests with colleagues—whether it’s cats, baking, or cheesy rom-coms.
For internal communicators, it’s the most familiar app in the Viva platform, replacing Yammer in 2023. While retaining Yammer’s core features, it introduces enhanced functionality for a better employee experience.
In our opinion, Viva Engage is far more than just a social tool. Some of its most powerful features are around knowledge sharing and leadership engagement, not just pet pictures and book clubs.
Where to Find Viva Engage
Viva Engage is designed to meet employees wherever they work. It’s available directly in Microsoft Teams, through a dedicated mobile app for iOS and Android, in the browser via Microsoft 365, and even embedded in directly into SharePoint.
This flexibility is especially valuable for frontline and hybrid workers, ensuring everyone—from office staff to field teams—can engage in two-way communication on the channel that suits them best.
Viva Engage Key Features
Viva Engage is packed with tools that help build connection, enable open communication, and support a more inclusive company culture. Below, we’ve broken down the key features that make it easier for employees to share, engage, and feel part of something bigger — whether they’re in the office, remote, or frontline.
Communities
Communities are at the heart of Viva Engage, giving employees spaces to connect around work, wellbeing, and social interests. They can be set up as public or private, supporting everything from professional groups (like AI or employee experience) to wellbeing initiatives and social clubs.
Because each community comes with built-in tools like a SharePoint site and document library, it’s worth defining clear ownership and governance from the start. When done well, communities go beyond information-sharing to create a stronger sense of belonging, encourage cross-department collaboration, and keep people engaged in the wider culture of the organisation.
We think communities work best with a mix of professional and social topics.
Storylines & Stories
Storylines and Stories bring familiar social media features to Viva Engage, similar to Instagram and Facebook.
- Stories: Quick, off-the-cuff videos and pictures, perfect for day-in-the-life moments and real-time updates.
- Storylines: A personal newsfeed where posts outside of communities appear on your profile. You can follow colleagues’ storylines to stay updated.
Anyone can create Stories and Storylines, making it easier to connect beyond immediate teams.
For internal comms, these features help boost leadership visibility and engagement. Leaders can even assign delegates to post on their behalf, allowing comms teams to share content seamlessly.
Leadership Corner
One of the biggest challenges for internal communications is improving leadership visibility and trust. Leadership Corner, available as part of the Communications & Communities bundle or a full Viva license, is designed to solve exactly that. One of our favourite things about Leadership Corner is how it makes top-level updates feel approachable — leadership suddenly feels human and accessible, not distant.
With Leadership Corner, employees can:
- Browse leader profiles — helping new starters and existing staff better understand the leadership team.
- Follow leaders — stay updated with posts and announcements from key figures.
- Join Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions — interactive Q&As that can be open or moderated, with controls for anonymity and participation.
For communicators, this feature makes leaders more approachable, strengthens engagement across the business, and provides a strong case for upgrading to Viva’s premium features.
Answers in Viva
Answers in Viva
Answers in Viva makes knowledge sharing easy by connecting employees with experts and past discussions.
- Ask & Answer: Employees can ask questions, get answers, and tap into company-wide expertise.
- AI-Powered Search: Uses natural language processing to find similar past questions and pull relevant answers from across Microsoft 365.
- Topic Grouping: Organises related questions, making it easier to find information. Employees can also follow topics of interest.
- Gamification: Employees earn badges for sharing knowledge and answering questions.
Campaigns
Campaigns
Campaigns give employees a voice in company initiatives, making it easy to participate, share ideas, and drive engagement. They can be tailored to reach everyone or targeted to specific groups.
- Official Campaigns — created by admins and open to all employees.
- Community Campaigns — exclusive to specific communities.
- Verified hashtags — highlight campaigns approved by the organisation.
By centralising participation and highlighting employee contributions, campaigns help internal communications teams make initiatives more interactive, inclusive, and engaging.
Analytics
Viva Engage offers powerful analytics to help internal communicators track how key messages are received.
- Engagement Analytics: Get insights on reach, reactions, and top conversations to measure employee interaction.
- Advanced Analytics: Dive deeper with sentiment analysis and trending themes, helping you understand workplace sentiment and emerging topics.
These insights make it easier to refine communication strategies, ensuring messages resonate and drive engagement.
Copilot in Viva Engage
Copilot in Viva Engage is an AI-powered assistant that helps internal communicators create more engaging posts and articles, while providing insights to shape content that truly resonates. Key benefits include:
- Context-aware suggestions — Copilot offers ideas and phrasing based on the content you’re working on, helping messages land more effectively.
- Content creation support — From drafting posts to summarising complex information, it streamlines writing and ensures clarity.
- Engagement insights — Provides feedback on how content is performing, including sentiment and interaction trends.
- Personalised recommendations — Suggests topics, communities, or campaigns to engage with, making your communications timely and relevant.
By combining writing support with insights and guidance, Copilot helps communicators save time, reach the right audiences, and make internal communications more impactful.
Note: Copilot in Viva Engage is evolving rapidly, and not all features are available to everyone yet. Some functionality requires your organisation to have a full Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
Communications Dashboard
One of the newer features in Viva Engage — and one of our favourites — is the Communications Dashboard. It gives internal communicators a clear view of how campaigns, posts, and leadership messages are performing across the organisation. By bringing together engagement metrics, sentiment insights, and moderation tools in one central place, it makes planning, tracking, and optimising communications much easier. Teams can see what’s working, respond quickly, and ultimately help employees feel more connected, informed, and engaged.
For a deeper look at the Communications Dashboard and how it fits into the wider Viva Engage ecosystem, check out our dedicated blog.
Viva Engage Use Cases
Viva Engage isn’t just another communication tool — it’s designed to support real-world needs across different roles, teams, and industries. Here are some practical ways we’re seeing organisations use Viva Engage to boost connection, collaboration, and culture at scale.
Knowledge Sharing & Expertise Discovery
Viva Engage makes it easier to surface knowledge and expertise across the organisation. Employees can quickly find answers to questions, share insights, and access valuable experience from colleagues they might not normally interact with:
- Ask once, answer many — employees post questions and get responses from across the business, creating a searchable knowledge base.
- Celebrate expertise — spotlight helpful answers and recognise contributions.
- Connect across silos — communities organised around topics help people discover colleagues with shared experience.
Community Building & Engagement
Communities create inclusive spaces that reflect your organisation’s values and interests. They encourage participation and collaboration across teams, helping employees feel part of something bigger:
- Inclusive spaces — wellbeing, DEI, sustainability, or social interests and hobbies.
- Cross-platform reach — posts appear in Teams, Outlook, Viva Connections and SharePoint, making participation effortless.
- Campaign-ready — run polls, videos, and Q&A sessions to gather feedback and boost engagement.
Leadership Visibility & Culture Building
Viva Engage gives leaders tools to communicate authentically and build trust. It allows leaders to share priorities and initiatives in a more approachable way, helping to align employees with company culture and strategy:
- Leadership Corner — a dedicated space for updates, AMAs, and employee dialogue.
- Copilot-powered posts — craft messages, analyse sentiment, and personalise tone.
- Two-way dialogue — interactive formats invite feedback and strengthen culture.
Onboarding & Cross-functional Collaboration
Hybrid working can make onboarding tricky, but Viva Engage helps new hires feel connected from day one. It also supports employees across teams to learn from each other and share insights beyond their immediate department:
- Welcome communities — spaces for questions, introductions, and exploring company culture.
- Timed messaging — drip-feed onboarding content automatically.
- Cross-functional learning — join communities outside your department to build networks and learn from others.
How Much Does Viva Engage Cost?
If your organisation already uses Microsoft 365 Enterprise (including Teams and SharePoint), you get Viva Engage’s Communities and Conversations features at no extra cost.
For access to premium features like Leadership Corner, Answers, and Campaigns, you’ll need a Viva Employee Communications & Communities licence (£1.64 per user/month). This also includes Viva Connections and Viva Amplify—ideal for internal comms teams wanting advanced tools without the full suite.
For organisations looking for the complete Viva experience, the Microsoft Viva Suite licence (£9.90 per user/month) includes everything Viva Engage has to offer.
Some Copilot features in Viva Engage require a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, which provides AI-powered assistance for creating posts, analysing sentiment, and personalising messaging.
How We Can Help
Rolling out Viva Engage works best when it’s guided by clear goals, careful planning, and a solid understanding of how your organisation communicates. At Silicon Reef, we help teams adopt Viva Engage in a practical, structured way, focusing on the steps that make adoption smoother and more effective.
We work with teams to shape governance that fits your culture and ways of working—clarifying roles, responsibilities, and moderation without adding unnecessary complexity. Our approach is built on real experience, so we know what helps communities gain traction and what pitfalls to avoid.
Some of the best practices we focus on include:
- Clear governance & moderation — define guidelines, reporting processes, and escalation paths so employees feel safe and supported.
- Phased rollout — start with critical features and manageable scope, then expand gradually based on feedback and adoption.
- Structured milestones — set clear checkpoints for leaders, champions, and communities to ensure a smooth implementation.
- Engaged admins & leaders — train community admins and leadership to actively post, moderate, and model participation, keeping conversations active and relevant.
Whether you’re just exploring Viva Engage or ready to take the next step, we provide the structure, guidance, and insight to make it work well in your organisation.
We’ve shared more of the lessons we’ve learned from previous Viva Engage projects, if you’d like to read further.
An Internal Communicator’s Guide to Microsoft Viva
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Silicon Reef are people-first Microsoft 365 experts. We help organisations make the most of M365 to elevate the employee experience. Get in touch to learn how we can help with Viva Suite, including Engage, or other Microsoft tools like SharePoint or Power Platform.
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More on Viva Engage
- 4 Lessons We’ve Learned From Real Viva Engage Rollouts
- Turning Conversation Into Knowledge with Viva Engage
- Viva Engage: How Shell Silenced Email Chaos
- Increase Leadership Engagement with Viva Engage: 4 Practical Tips
- Why the Communications Dashboard Deserves a Place in Every Internal Communicator’s Toolkit
Additional FAQs
What is Microsoft Viva Engage, and how is it different from Yammer?
Viva Engage is Microsoft’s modern evolution of Yammer—still rooted in enterprise social networking, but now with a broader purpose. It builds on Yammer’s core tools like communities and conversations, and adds new layers focused on leadership engagement, knowledge sharing, and storytelling. It’s not just about social interaction—it’s about creating a more connected, informed workplace.
At Silicon Reef, we help clients go beyond the familiar social features to make the most of these deeper capabilities—whether it’s activating leadership storylines, using Viva Engage to surface knowledge across teams, or aligning campaigns with wider internal comms strategies. We focus on helping organisations unlock that next layer of value in a way that feels practical and aligned with how their people actually work.
How does Viva Engage improve employee engagement?
Viva Engage creates space for people to connect in ways that go beyond their day-to-day roles. Whether it’s sharing social interests, spotlighting team wins, or exchanging best practices, it helps break down silos and encourages conversations between colleagues who may otherwise never meet. For many of our clients, it’s become a key part of building a stronger sense of belonging—particularly in hybrid and distributed workplaces.
At Silicon Reef, we support organisations in designing these interactions to feel natural and inclusive, from setting up interest-based communities to promoting knowledge-sharing across departments. It’s about giving people simple, human ways to feel more connected at work.
Can Viva Engage support internal comms and leadership visibility?
Yes—Viva Engage is a powerful tool for helping leaders communicate more openly and consistently. Through storylines, announcements, and dedicated leadership spaces, it gives employees a clearer window into leadership priorities and personality.
We help clients make sure Viva Engage is set up to support this properly—like surfacing leaders in a way that makes them easy to find and follow, or using profile features to give employees better visibility of who’s who. It’s often these small tweaks that help build trust and make leadership feel more accessible day to day.
Do I need additional licences to use Viva Engage?
If you’re already using Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, you already have access to Viva Engage and can use the core features at no extra cost. That includes communities, conversations, storylines and more—plenty to get started with improving connection and communication across your business.
For organisations looking to go further, the Microsoft Viva Communications & Communities bundle offers a simple way to access more advanced tools—like Viva Engage Premium, Viva Amplify for campaign management, and Viva Connections Premium for richer homepage experiences—without needing to commit to the full Viva suite. We help clients understand what’s included, and what’s worth exploring based on their goals.
How does Viva Engage fit with Teams, SharePoint and other Microsoft tools?
Viva Engage is fully integrated with Microsoft Teams, which makes it easy for people to use without switching apps—whether they’re at their desk or out in the field. It’s particularly useful for frontline or deskless workers, thanks to its mobile-friendly experience via the Teams app.
When we help clients roll out Viva Engage, we often look at the full Microsoft 365 ecosystem to create a joined-up experience across Teams, Viva, and SharePoint. That way, it becomes a seamless part of your existing flow of work—not just another tool to manage.
Is Viva Engage secure, and how does it handle data privacy?
Yes—Viva Engage is built on the same enterprise-grade security and compliance standards as the rest of Microsoft 365. That means it benefits from Microsoft’s robust approach to identity, data protection, and governance. All content shared within Viva Engage is stored in your Microsoft 365 tenant and managed under your organisation’s existing compliance policies, including retention, eDiscovery and DLP (Data Loss Prevention).
Clients often ask us how Viva Engage fits into their broader data governance and compliance picture. At Silicon Reef, we help teams feel confident in how their data is handled—whether that’s understanding admin controls, aligning content with policies, or making sure sensitive conversations stay secure. It’s all about enabling connection and communication, without compromising on control.
