News
        
        Microsoft Releases Viva Connections Desktop App 
        
        
        
			- By Kurt Mackie
 - April 01, 2021
 
		
         
The Microsoft Viva Connections desktop app for PCs is now generally available, Microsoft announced this week. 
 Microsoft Viva, unveiled  in February, is a collection of four employee, human resources and company  communications applications that surface in the  Teams collaboration  service. 
Viva  Connections for Teams was previously known as the Home Site app for Teams,  according to Mark Kashman, a Microsoft senior product manager on the SharePoint  team, in the announcement.
Right now, Viva Topics is the only  Viva app that's fully at  the general availability state. The Viva Insights and Viva Learning apps are still at the  private and public preview stages, respectively, according to Kashman in the  recorded part of Microsoft's announcement.
The steps for installing the Viva Connections desktop app  involve running PowerShell scripts, as described in this  Microsoft announcement. The process definitely is not a simple software  installation effort. However, Microsoft is promising to improve the desktop  installation experience for IT pros sometime this summer, which is also when it  plans to release the mobile (or Web-based) version of Viva Connections. 
"This summer update will combine both the mobile and  desktop configuration and deployment into the Teams admin console," explained  Michael Holste, a Microsoft senior  product marketing manager, in the announcement.
Also at that  time, Microsoft is planning to introduce new "dashboard" and "feed"  Web Parts for use with the desktop version of Viva Connections.
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
            
        
        
                
                    About the Author
                    
                
                    
                    Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.