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Microsoft Releases Viva Connections Desktop App

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.

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