As I work on both technologies with customers (disclosure) I wanted to share how I am going about supporting Microsoft 365 Copilot customers with Microsoft Viva technologies, especially with adoption activities.

It’s no secret in the technology world that you cannot just make technologies available to users without making an effort to onboard them and support their use to ensure they get value from it. It’s why the type of role I am in (Customer Success) was created. With AI technologies, there is a tendency to believe this is not needed and that may come to pass (I wrote about that here: The Future of Customer Success is Not Human). But we are not there yet with this specific type of AI software focused on productivity software. So we have to still intervene as humans, to support technology adoption.

It especially makes sense for technology focused on enhancing the employee experience (Microsoft Viva) to support adoption of other technologies like Copilot.

Below you will see where I have started, with the use of Viva Amplify which is a communications module in the Viva Suite that was recently launched.

Communications is one of the key levers in supporting adoption and so it makes sense to start here. You will see in the example communication below what could be just one part of an ongoing campaign around supporting CoPilot adoption but also driving a companywide AI strategy more broadly.

It also brings in other components of Microsoft Viva and 365 which I then elaborate on after the screenshots.

Drive engagement with users in the right way

With Viva Amplify, you can achieve target outcomes that support adoption goals in multiple ways:

• Maximize audience reach with different channels and target users with different kinds of messaging: education; support/training and strategic messaging, e.g. Preparing our company for the AI revolution.
• Tailor and target communications to specific distribution channels and destinations, e.g. A Microsoft Team or Viva Engage Community where you can collaborate and progress together with others.
• Publish once to multiple apps and assess engagement through reports.

Click on the gallery above to view each screenshot in more detail. They show what an example message would look like if sent from Viva Amplify in Outlook, Teams and SharePoint. Viva Engage will be added as a channel soon.

More on the tools

What I mean is the tools related to each of the logos which represent a Viva module or toolset in the M365 suite.

They are pretty self explanatory but I’ll just elaborate briefly and then link to the relevant doscumentation so you can get a better idea. I’ve also added one that is more a tool for those managing adoption, Viva Insights.

• Microsoft Teams. This is an obvious one but I want to specifically point out that at Microsoft, we have created a template Team (called Centre of Excellence) that can be deployed by customers with pre-populated support and training content and a relevant support structure in terms of Channels and Tabs. All geared around Copilot support and super useful but the key is a Team for close collaboration focused on getting each other supported and onboarded. Microsoft is doing a great job with the whole Centre of Excellence approach (going beyond Teams) that was well documentated here: The AI Revolution: How Microsoft Digital (IT) is Responding with an AI Center of Excellence.
• Viva Engage. This is the broader environment for the whole company to rally around a subject like AI, how its going to transform everything and how to prepare for that. Viva Engage if you were not aware, is the old Yammer, now rebranded to fit under the Viva Suite of brands like the others below. More here.
• Viva Goals. Part of an acquisition (formerly Ally), Viva Goals started out as OKR (Objectives Key Results) software and now has been extended to be broader. Ultimately it is intended to capture strategic priorities and support their execution. More here.
• Viva Learning. This is essentially an LXP (Learning Experience Platform) as opposed to an LMS (Learning Management System) where the intention is to aggregate content from multiple different sources and deliver and manage the experience in Teams where people spend a lot of their time (so in the Flow of Work). You can create Learning Paths around many topics and now even Academies and one of them could be focused on Copilot or AI in general. More here.
• Microsoft Lists. A super simple way to track and organise information, imagine starting with a template list like the issue tracker template that is easily customisable. Instead of calling it issue tracker, call it success or impact tracker and get users to capture their uses of the new technology and share it with others just starting out. Also a great way to capture and prove value.
• Viva Pulse. This is a super simple survey tool embedded in Teams or accessed via the web and you can quickly spin up surveys to get user feedback and track their input and sentiment over time to be understand changes. More here.
• Viva Insights. This is a more advanced, data-driven platform that allows for actionable insights into increases or decreases in productivity and performance and the leading causes of that. It captures behavioural data from all of the activities users typically conduct in a work day using productivity tools like Outlook and Teams (for collaboration and meetings). You can bring in transactional data such as that from a CRM platform to map productivity inputs to outcomes like sales performance. More here.