Consolidating the Conversation into Viva Engage

Starting in early 2024, you will be able to  archive channels in Microsoft Teams.  This opens up an opportunity to clean-up our teams without deleting content we may want back later.

In this article, I'll explore how you can use this feature to reduce noise in Teams by moving channel conversations into Viva Engage.

Why Archive Microsoft Team Channels?

Archiving team channels is something that's been on my wish list for several years.  The details are pretty spare at the moment, but the general idea is:

1. Archived channels retain all conversations and content (aka, nothing is deleted).
2. Archived channels can be re-opened if necessary.

Channels for projects are a great use case for this new feature.  Once a project is completed (or maybe on-hold), you can archive it without fear of permanently losing access to any conversations or files. 

The lifecycle of a team channel will soon look like this:

What other ways can we leverage channel archiving?  Well, I'm glad you asked.

Consolidating the Conversation into Viva Engage

Do you have team channels that are used for non-work discussions?  For example, channels where people share pictures of vacations, pets, or fun animal videos from the internet?

• Are these channels noisy and/or distracting?
• Would deleting these channels create a void for these types of discussions?  

If you answered 'Yes' to any of those questions, it's time to look at creating your first Viva Engage community!

Why Use Viva Engage Instead of Team Channels?

Viva Engage allows you to create a clear separation between work and non-work activities which can be distracting, such as:

• staff club discussions,
• staff committees, and
• random conversations about food, music and vacations.

By moving the non-work conversations into Viva Engage, you give users more control to decide WHAT they get notified about, and HOW.  For example, you can follow a community and get notified:

• In the Viva Engage app, and/or...
• via email subscription (Outlook), and/or...
• via the Viva Engage app in Teams.

So if staff prefer to get all of their notifications in Microsoft Teams, they can opt-in for that.  If others prefer to get it all through email, they can choose that too.

Let's look at a simple example of how Viva Engage communities can be used to consolidate multiple team channels.

Channels vs Communities & Topics

Let's say you have multiple team channels that are used for sharing things like:

• Recent vacation photos and stories.
• Photos and videos of animals and pets.
• Food we're eating.
• Music we're really into.

None of these topics may be popular enough on their own to warrant their own community in Viva Engage.  However, we can create a single community for all of them and label them with topics to organize them into buckets.

For the sake of this example, we'll call it the 'Random Stuff' community.

This community becomes the go-to place for staff to share stories, links and other content that isn't related to work.  Staff can choose to join and follow the entire community or just the topics they're interested in.

Viva Engage topics have their own page that you can follow to get notified anytime someone uses that topic.  This allows the single community to host a wide-range of conversations.

Staff can also choose how to stay connected to the community.  In addition to the Viva Engage web app, you can access communities from the Outlook web app and Microsoft Teams.

For users who do most of their work and collaboration through email, you can access communities from Outlook.  In addition to the built-in Viva Engage app for Outlook, you can get email notifications that are fully interactive.

For those who prefer to continue getting their notifications in Microsoft Teams, it also has a Viva Engage app that can be added to the side bar, and to channels as a tab.  Community notifications are clearly labelled in the Teams Activity feed, and can be customized from settings:

Users can control what community notifications they get in Teams from settings too:

Switching from Channels to Communities

The goal here is to reduce non-work-related discussions and noise from Teams by moving it into Viva Engage. 

When getting started, your teams may be a mix of work and non-work conversations:

Before you jump into action, remember your change management principles and don't surprise people by moving things around without communicating the intention and plan first.

1. Build the pilot community; invite a few champions to help you test things out and get lots of feedback early.
2. Prepare a timeline and communication plan; let everyone know WHY you're switching to Viva Engage, WHAT to expect, and WHEN to expect it.
3. Support Users; ensure users know how to share feedback and provide learning materials to help them adopt the new tools.  Do this before and after launching the community.

After the switch, both Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage should have clearly defined functions for your end users:

Learn More

If you're interested in learning more about Viva Engage, our guide to Viva Engage!.