Microsoft has been working on making Teams not just a place for meetings and chat, but also a hub for connection and engagement. One of the latest updates really shows that as Viva Engage is now more tightly integrated into the Teams experience.
If you have used Viva Engage before, you’ll know that Storyline is like your professional feed. It’s where you share thoughts, updates, and experiences with your whole organization. Until recently, posting to your Storyline could only be done in the Viva Engage app or switching over to Viva Engage on the web. That extra step was always a small hurdle.
Now, Microsoft has added the Storyline posting experience directly into Teams – through the “Chat with yourself” feature. Yes, that’s the same space where I use to drop quick notes to myself, test emojis or other stuff. But now, there is a Storyline tab built in. No app switching, just post and go. It’s a small update, but it saves time and makes it much easier to engage with everyone.
Better Control Over Notifications
At the same time , Microsoft has also added new options for managing your Viva Engage notifications directly in Teams. You can now finetune what you want to be notified about, and how, without needing to jump into another app. For those of us trying to manage notification overload, this is a very welcome change. From the settings pane in Microsoft Teams you get access to a very granular panel of notifications from Viva Engage. You can, as an example, choose what kind of notifications you want for:
- Announcements
- @mentions
- Posts from people you follow
- Leadership announcements
- Storylines digest
- New answers to your followed questio
- Best answer selected on followed question
- New votes on your question
- New votes on your answer
- And many more…
Viva Engage Is Growing in Sweden
Over the past year, I’ve seen more and more Swedish organizations start embracing Viva Engage. They’re moving the casual chit-chat, the non-project stuff, from Teams into Viva Engage. It’s a smart move. Teams becomes more focused on business and projects, while Viva Engage creates space for the social, cultural, and cross-team conversations that build stronger workplaces.
People can post about success stories, welcome new colleagues, share learnings, or just connect across departments. Viva Engage becomes the new coffee machine, while Teams stays the meeting room. That balance really helps organizations keep their communication clean, focused, and human.
Microsoft’s integration of Viva Engage into Teams is a great example of reducing friction and bringing tools closer to where people already work. If you’re not using Storyline yet, now’s a great time to try. And if your organization hasn’t started exploring Viva Engage, you should really consider it.
What are your thoughts? Do you use Viva Engage? Do you use the Storyline feature? Let me know in the comments!
We are in the process of moving all social teams to Viva Engage for just the reasons you mention. We want to separate “work” from “play” and Viva Engage feels like the right way to do it. In our pilot of Engage everyone found it easy and natural to use. Adding more to teams is great! I dont like having to change application all the time!
Good luck! Viva Engage is truly an engaging platform! Try to get your leaders involved with posts on their storyline. That is normallt very much appreciated in organizations.