In the middle of the pandemic, Microsoft launched a new business-oriented service called Viva. It was meant to help companies get information and feedback from their employees online. Today, Microsoft announced that a new feature for the service called Viva Pulse is now available in a public preview version.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated:
With Viva Pulse, managers and project leads can request ad-hoc feedback on topics to better understand their team’s needs and address them in the moment. Pre-populated, research-validated survey templates help zero in on important topics such as change management or work situations. Managers and leads can also customize templates to meet their unique team needs.
Once the surveys are sent to the company's employees, project managers can then see the results in an anonymous aggregated form. Viva Pulse will then use those results to show managers some links to suggested resources and possible ideas of what they could do next with this information. Microsoft added:
These actionable recommendations enable managers and project leads to make sure employees’ perspectives are being heard.
Company admins must have access to the Microsoft 365 Global Admin role in order to enable the public preview of Viva Pulse. More information on how to run the new feature can be checked out on Microsoft's support site. There's no word on when Viva Pulse will be generally available.
Since the launch of Viva in 2021, Microsoft has been steadily expanding its features. That includes adding Viva Engage which can serve as a private social network for a business. It was essentially the replacement for Yammer, which Microsoft bought quite some time ago.
More recently, Microsoft announced that Viva would add generative AI features via Copilot. It will also add those same features to Viva Engadge. Microsoft is currently scheduled to make Copilot for Viva available sometime later in 2023.
