Viva Insights is a Teams-based application (originally based on Workspace Analytics and MyAnalytics) that provides employees with information to help improve work habits and work-life balance and managers with information about workgroup efficiency, trends, and engagement, commonly referred to as workplace analytics. This category also includes two supporting survey components: Pulse and Glint.
Viva Insights Roadmap
Most of the new development for Insights brings new analytic reports to show the impact of organizational change and the ability to evaluate data from other Viva components and Microsoft 365 Copilot activities. These features are mostly available through the Insights Workbench, the main UI for analysts, and they include the following:
- Aggregate and analyze Viva Pulse survey trends
- View Copilot usage and Viva Learning metrics
- See Viva Skills data and look for trends and overall metrics
- Create new employee metrics and benchmark against industry standards
- Analyze and summarize Microsoft 365 Copilot adoption, usage, and outliers
- Evaluate metrics for custom Copilot agents created in Copilot Studio for Microsoft 365 applications.
Interestingly, Insights reporting is now mostly reliant on Power BI report templates. The templates, accessed through Power BI Desktop, come prebuilt with queries and visuals. This approach removes the need to create visuals within Insights but does place a Power BI licensing burden on analysts who need to share the results with others.
Other updates will bring delegated access to analysis and reports without giving users admin privileges, allowing users to request access rights and data-sharing options with Microsoft Fabric for analysts who want to use other tools or combine the data with other sources. However, data sharing through Fabric has been delayed for over a year and may no longer arrive.
Licensing changes are expected in Mar. 2025, when some premium Viva Insights features will be added to Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions, allowing users to review analytics and work with the Viva Insights Workbench, a feature currently limited to users with a Viva suite, Viva Workplace Analytics and Employee Feedback, or stand-alone Viva Insights subscription.
Viva Pulse and Viva Glint Roadmaps
The two supporting components provide survey capabilities but are used for different purposes:
- Viva Pulse is for managers to get quick, ad-hoc feedback about team engagement and attitudes
- Viva Glint is for organization-wide surveys that require advanced trend analytics.
Pulse continues to receive investments that suggest the application is secure for the next year. Although the technology is new, it is well integrated with Microsoft 365 and represents a low risk for adoption because it can be easily replaced. Pulse surveys are expected to receive new templates and question types with logic to control responses based on previous responses, new Copilot-generated summaries, and options to export results; include them in the Glint dashboard as feedback to larger surveys; or analyze trends in the Insights Workbench. Licensing changes are expected in Mar. 2025, when Pulse survey response rights will be added to Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions.
Glint received notable updates throughout 2024 with fewer plans for the future. However, this is not a cause for alarm, as the service is based on mature SharePoint News technology, so much of the initial push was simply creating a Teams-based UI for users to build surveys. Going forward, Glint is expected to receive more integration with Teams for delivering surveys and sending out reminders (nudges) and notifications. It is also expected to receive more analytic and administrative features. For example, custom questions will receive some of the same benchmark comparisons as standard questions, and the Glint dashboard will be able to leverage Pulse surveys to further see trends and sentiments in departments after an organization-wide survey has been released. Other updates will allow creators to apply a close date to surveys (as compared to manually stopping a survey) and eventually import HR employee data to help segment surveys.