An Introduction To Microsoft Viva Insights

Over the past few years, the world has seen an increase in burnout as people feel more disconnected from colleagues as a result of hybrid working.

People who work at home may also struggle to disconnect from work, continuing outside of business hours and not getting enough rest and recuperation after the day has ended.  

It is important to protect not only your time at work, but your wellbeing too, in order to avoid burnout, succeed in your personal and professional goals.

Microsoft Viva Insights has been developed specifically to help you achieve this whilst allowing Managers to keep on top of their teams productivity and implement changes to improve this if necessary.  

It helps you identify opportunities to build better habits thanks to personal insights that offer actionable recommendations, such as focus time, taking regular breaks and practicing mindfulness. 

Overall, Viva Insights can help you: 

1. Stay connected and on top of collaboration with colleagues 
2. Protect time to eliminate distractions and prioritise important projects 
3. Send praise to colleagues privately or via a Teams channel as and when it is deserved 
4. Undertake reflection time and check in on yourself 
5. Have some guided meditation time with Headspace  
6. Set breaks throughout the day to ensure maximum productivity and wellbeing 
7. Set up a virtual commute to start or end the day more smoothly  

Personal Insights can be found in the Viva Insights app in Teams, in the Outlook Insights add-in, through the MyAnalytics dashboard, briefing emails/digests/inline suggestions in Outlook.

To read more about these, click here

 

Viva Insights Home 

When you open the app, you will see the ‘Home’ tab, which will greet you each day and allow you to register how you are feeling based on a system of 5 emojis – from very happy to very frustrated.

This is private to you but allows you to keep track of your moods and work to improve them if you don’t feel great at any given time.  

You can choose to send praise to colleagues who go above and beyond, set reminders for personal reflection, and decompress with meditation powered by Headspace – either click on the play button to do a quick exercise or browse other meditation exercises.  

The homepage also offers you your top actions for the day in your ‘Stay connected’ and ‘Protect time’ sections, as well as any outstanding tasks on your To Do lists.  

 

Stay Connected with Viva insights

With the Stay Connected tab you will receive a selection of insights thanks to an AI-based software: 

1. Identify and pin important collaborators 
2. Set up 1:1 meeting reminders 
3. 1:1 meeting suggestions 
4. Reschedule a 1:1 if you have a conflict 
5. Stay on top of outstanding task suggestions 
6. Catch up on unread documents shared with you 
7. @Mentions for pinned important contacts 
8. Upcoming meetings that you need to RSVP to 

If you work with certain colleagues regularly, you can pin them as important to allow them to be shown as a high priority at the top of the page.

Schedule in a 1:1 meeting with these key contacts to help stay up to date with ongoing work and address any issues that may have arisen – Insights can even help you set up a meeting frequency, pick a time you both can do and remind you when it’s happening, and suggest meetings with people you may be falling out of touch with.  

If there’s a conflict, you have the option to reschedule to a better time. 

And as it can be quite easy to lose track of certain commitments and tasks, Insights keeps on top of everything you have agreed to do and reminds you of them (either your commitments, requests from other colleagues or follow-ups you need to chase on).

It also flags any documents you have not read yet, especially as they can be easily lost in a busy Teams channel.

If someone from your pinned contacts @Mentions you, this will also appear in your Stay Connected section, to allow you to head to the relevant comments and follow up. Plus, if there are any meetings you are invited to, but have not responded to, you will be reminded to RSVP.  

All of these quick and easy tasks will be at your fingertips to streamline your responses and organisation, as well as save you time for other important tasks. 

 

Protect Time with Viva insights

If you feel like your calendar constantly gets booked up and you never have any time to focus on the work you want to get done, the Protect Time tab in Viva Insights can help you set aside time for yourself: 

1. Schedule focus time for future workdays 
2. Start a virtual commute to end your day  

According to research, it takes around 23 minutes to refocus on a task if you have been distracted. Having constant distractions can cause higher stress and lower productivity. Besides, if you don’t have much time between meetings or if people keep calling or messaging you, it’s hard to focus on challenging work.  

Insights lets you block out a few hours every day to focus without interruptions – it puts you on Do Not Disturb to minimise notifications – to help you progress on important work.  

The Protect Time section shows you where there are gaps in your calendar to book in this focus time, just click the ‘Book Time’ button. You can also rename the focus time block by clicking the pen icon on the left-hand side of the page or in your calendar directly. 

And if you want to set up a virtual commute, you can either click the ‘Up next’ card (which appears if you have edited your settings to remind you 30 minutes before your ideal commute time), or you can do it within Protect Time itself, where you will get a ‘ready to wrap up?’ notification that allows you to start your commute immediately.  

Note: the first time you open Protect Time you will be prompted to set up a virtual commute.  Learn more about your personal insights here

 

Manager insights 

Managers in the organisation get an additional tab in Viva Insights, ‘My Team’, showing insights and suggested actions based on personal habits. Managers can learn how their habits impact their teams and receive suggestions to help improve their team’s culture. It is similar to the  

You will also see group insights to help you schedule 1:1 time with team members, act on tasks you promised to get done, review important emails and documents from your team that you haven’t read, and keep on top of quiet hours impact and team meeting habits to make changes if you need to. 

For instance, if there are too many meetings or your team are working a lot outside of working hours, you can keep an eye on how often this happens and whether you need to adapt and reduce numbers of meetings to ensure more focus time, or book in a 1:1 to establish the need for changes with individual team members.  

Learn more about team insights here 

 

Leader insights  

Leaders in the organisation can view an additional tab, ‘My organisation’, which provide a snapshot of how the company is doing, with company-wide outcomes and indicators for each outcome.  

The outcomes include: 

1. Organisational resiliency  
2. Boost engagement 
3. Improve agility 
4. Foster innovation 
5. Effective managers 
6. Operational effectiveness 
7. Accelerate change  
8. Transform meeting culture 
9. Increase customer focus 

These metrics are created through out of hours collaboration, how many 1:1 hours team members have with managers, conflicting meeting hours, meeting attendees, influence, strong or diverse ties, number of focus hours, multi-tasking in meetings and more.  

By collating these insights, leaders can come together and help people feel better in the workplace, foster connections and cohesion within the teams, help employees have a better work-life balance, ensure managers and team members feel supported – ultimately making everyone in the organisation feel more empowered and confident.  

Learn more about leader insights here

 

NEW: Inspiration Library 

Viva Insights has recently released an inspiration library to help you learn more about the things that matter the most to you. It brings thought leadership from experts in your industry to help inspire you in both life and at work.  

This library can help transform your personal, manager and leadership insights into actions. You will see themes like Wellbeing, Culture etc from a variety of sources. Simply click on the article you are interested in and it will open up in Teams.  

 

How much does Viva Insights cost? 

If you already have Microsoft 365, Viva Insights will be included and can be found through Teams, and can be added to the left-hand rail. This free version gives you personal insights, the Viva Insights add-in and suggestions in Outlook, a briefing email and monthly digest email/personal insights dashboard.  

Viva Insights separately costs £3 per month and includes all of the above, as well as manager and leader insights, and custom analysis tools/accelerators.  

The entire Viva Suite costs £6.80 per month and includes Viva Insights, Connections, Learning and Topics.  

Soon, Viva Insights will offer premium personal insights to help build effective meetings and initiate shared effective meeting plans.  

 

Does Viva Insights sound like something that would benefit your company? Drop us an email at [email protected] or fill out the form below and we will be in touch for a free consultation to explore the best ways we can help you achieve great things.