Viva

Viva Engage is the social and community engagement app of the Microsoft Viva platform, built into Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365. It is the evolution of Yammer: the same enterprise social network, modernized and integrated so employees can join communities, share stories, ask leaders questions, and stay connected to the wider organization without leaving the tools they already use every day.

Where email and chat handle direct, transactional communication, Viva Engage handles the connective tissue of a company, the conversations, communities, and leadership presence that build culture. It gives every employee a voice, gives leaders an authentic channel to reach the whole organization, and gives communities a home for knowledge sharing across departments and locations. For distributed and hybrid workforces in particular, a well-run Viva Engage program is how an organization stays one company rather than a collection of disconnected teams.

Viva Engage brings enterprise social networking together with the structure organizations need to keep it valuable:

• Communities. Create open or private communities around teams, topics, regions, or interests, giving knowledge and conversation a durable home instead of scattering it across chats.
• Leadership corner and storyline. Executives and managers reach employees directly through stories, posts, and a dedicated leadership experience, making communication two-way rather than top-down.
• Questions and answers / AMAs. Structured Q&A and Ask-Me-Anything events let leaders address the whole organization transparently and let employees surface what matters.
• Campaigns. Coordinate company-wide initiatives, values, recognition, and culture programs with hashtags and campaign tracking.
• Engagement analytics. Measure active users, reach, sentiment, and community health so engagement is managed with data, not guesswork.
• Microsoft 365 integration. Native in Teams and Outlook, connected to SharePoint and the Microsoft Graph, so participation fits naturally into daily work.

Common use cases include leadership and all-hands communication, employee communities and resource groups, knowledge sharing across silos, onboarding and culture-building, recognition programs, and gathering frontline feedback at scale.

ARC delivers Viva Engage as a strategic engagement program, not a switch you flip. Our approach moves through clear stages:

Discovery and engagement strategy. We assess how your organization communicates today, where silos and low participation hurt you, and what culture and communication goals you want Viva Engage to serve. We define the community architecture and governance model before anything launches.

Setup and configuration. We configure Viva Engage across your Microsoft 365 tenant: the Teams app experience, communities, leadership corner, permissions, and content moderation settings, aligned to your structure and brand.

Yammer to Viva Engage migration. For organizations still on Yammer, we plan and execute a clean transition to Viva Engage, preserving valuable communities and content while modernizing the experience.

Governance and compliance. We establish moderation policies, data retention, and security configuration so engagement scales without compliance risk, which matters for regulated and enterprise environments.

Leadership enablement. We coach executives and managers on authentic, consistent communication through storyline, AMAs, and campaigns, because leadership presence is what makes an engagement platform succeed.

Rollout and adoption. We launch in phases, train community champions, and support the first campaigns so participation builds and sustains rather than fading after go-live.

Enterprise social tools only deliver value when people genuinely use them. ARC builds these practices into every Viva Engage program:

• Lead from the top. Visible, regular leadership participation is the single biggest driver of adoption. We make leadership presence a launch requirement, not an afterthought.
• Start with a few strong communities. Seed a small number of active, well-moderated communities rather than launching dozens of empty ones.
• Govern lightly but clearly. Set clear guidelines for content, moderation, and data so people feel safe participating without over-restricting conversation.
• Build a champions network. Equip champions across departments to model behavior, welcome newcomers, and keep communities healthy.
• Run campaigns with purpose. Tie campaigns to real initiatives, values, recognition, change programs, so engagement connects to business outcomes.
• Measure and adapt. Use engagement analytics to see what resonates and adjust communities, cadence, and content over time.

ARC is a 3x Microsoft Solutions Partner with deep Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Viva expertise. With 13+ years of experience, 300+ engagements, and 100% client retention, we combine technical configuration with the change-management and communications discipline that adoption demands, including hands-on Yammer to Viva Engage migrations. Recognized on the Inc. 5000 (#749) and Inc. Regionals (#57) with 557% growth, ARC delivers AI-powered Microsoft solutions from our Chicago (Bolingbrook, IL) and Karachi offices, with responsive, accountable support across time zones.