Microsoft 365 Community Community Demos, 28 Sep 2021

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From YouTube: Introduction to Microsoft Viva Connections extensibility

Description

In this 20-minute developer-focused demo, Ed Averett gives viewers a tour of Microsoft Viva - an Employee Experience Platform (EXP). Latest Viva Connection basics (more than you have seen previously), learn about integrated experiences, view the dashboard, default support for Teams Personal Apps & Bots, custom card capabilities and supports (extensibility). Opportunities for Information worker and front-line worker organizations. Step through Dashboard page configuration (no code) and card creation in Card Designer. This PnP Community demo is taken from the weekly Microsoft 365 Platform Community call recorded on September 28, 2021.

Demo Presenter: Ed Averett (Microsoft) | @Ed_Averett

Supporting materials:
• Documentation - Overview: Viva Connections (Preview) | http://aka.ms/viva/connections/gettingstarted
• Blog - Announcing public preview of SharePoint Framework 1.13 – with Viva Connections Extensibility | https://aka.ms/viva/connections/developer/preview
• Documentation - Overview of the SharePoint Framework | http://aka.ms/spfx
• Documentation - Overview of Viva Connections Extensibility | http://aka.ms/viva/connections/extensibility
• Documentation - Authenticate users in Microsoft Teams | https://aka.ms/viva/connections/teams/SSO
• Documentation - Create deep links | https://aka.ms/viva/connections/teams/deeplinks

Learn more:
• Learn more about the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community at: http://aka.ms/m365pnp
• Visit the Microsoft 365 Patterns and Practices community YouTube channel: https://aka.ms/m365pnp/videos

A

What I wanted to talk about first before we get into the specifics of viva connections, is actually talk a little bit about microsoft, viva itself. um This is a brand new thing that we really started talking about over the summer. I find that there tends to be a significant amount of confusion about what we're doing and how viva kind of fits in the broader world. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how viva fits in the broader world, what is viva connections and how it relates to m365.

A

Hopefully that will be helpful. I know this community is just huge in helping amplify our message, so hopefully this will help you we got to do. What is viva in viva connections simply put viva is our jump into employee experience and you've probably seen this bouncing around the various intranets for the last few years of employee experience platforms.

A

Now this is really all about the ability for an employer to connect to an employee. This is communications. This is insights. This is knowledge. This is training. This is what do I need to know as someone who works at microsoft. What do you need to know as someone who works at your given company, I would say covet- has really pushed exp into hyperdrive when I kind of look at it. There's really two news articles I guarantee are in my news, feed every single morning for the last 18 months.

A

The first is something about covet: it's getting better, it's getting worse! Here's the latest deal, here's actually how microsoft is treating it like. That's always going to exist. It's probably going to be there for the next year. um The next, which I think is interesting and you guys will identify with, is hey it's the great resignation.

A

Hybrid work is the best actually full remote. Is the future actually forget that everyone is going back to the office and the truth is for probably in the next five years.

A

All of those are going to be true, and we really look at viva as one of the technologies that actually helps smooth the rough edges, but really for the next chapter of work, whether you're hybrid, whether you're, full remote or whether you're all just sitting in an office and maybe uh hermetically sealed one way or another, which a few of us are right now. Viva, is that ability to connect and kind of unite your workforce where it used to be the water cooler?

A

Now it's actually one central place and when we look at microsoft's opportunity here, if you look at the history of this company, where we do great things for both our customers, our partners and microsoft, is where we really start with an ecosystem. First idea, where we're basically building the place for others to be successful and you're, going to see that all through viva connections, because employee experience has really existed far before microsoft, jumping into it.

A

We're really looking at building the place where all of this comes together in one common place and we're really going to use it to jump on where our strengths are. Of bringing next to information workers, because really our strength is an m365, so you should really think of viva as kind of a new peer to m365, where m365 is all about doing your best work.

A

Creating intellectual property viva is actually about how employers and employees relate and work together, so they're related, but they are different when we first start looking at um and I'd say, this is kind of the marketing slide, but when we start getting into what's real, what you will see and maybe have seen viva is going to start with four modules connections, which is all about culture, communication and doing tasks, insights, which is all about productivity and well-being.

A

A great example is insights. Tells me how often um I am late to my one-on-one with visa and also how often bases late to our one-on-one.

A

That's actually a great thing to look at over the course of a year or two topics is really our foray into using ml and ai, to extract information out of the just lake of knowledge you have in your enterprise and extract it for that next generation of employees and then learning, I think, we've all seen this.

A

This is all about upskilling and growth, and how do you as an employee, continue to gain skills.

A

Sure, basically, you've never been late to a one-on-one. I I agree, but for the focus of this talk is going to be all about viva connections and the reason we're starting here is viva connections. We look is really the gateway really between m365 and that viva experience you see it it'll show up in sharepoint, it'll show up in teams and I'd say for the community, because everything's so new and there's a little bit of confusion.

A

I'd say: there's two incredibly important things to know about microsoft, viva and I think you'll like them. Both the first is viva connections is licensed along with m365. So if you are an m365 customer, you will get viva connections by default with your licensing. Those other three modules that I mentioned: insights, learning and topics. Those are typically going to be exposed with more licensing and packages on top of m365.

A

But we view a world where viva connections is such connective tissue. Everyone should get it and a matter of fact. You could actually run just with viva connections and all third-party pieces. Now. The other thing which I'd say is a little bit counter to kind of how m365 has gone is within viva connections is what we call an ingredient brand you're, never actually going to see it as a worker at your company.

A

It gets completely rebranded. I joked earlier that relic cloud bought out contoso.

A

If you look at all of our demos in this slide, where what you'll see at ignite, if you're in something like airlift we've gone full relic cloud, we just like to change it up every now and then, but we look at viva connections, we kind of name it the company app it takes on your full branding. It is meant to have your company's logo, your company's topography and really microsoft is the connective tissue that actually pulls it all together.

A

We think this is really the right place, because it is truly the company app, and this is fundamentally a different thing and it's something that's been asked for for years. It's really jumping off. I see standing on the shoulders of giants. Ideas like sharepoint started with a lot of this idea, and it's grown even further.

A

Now again, to get a little deeper into hey. What does all this mean? I still see pretty marketing pictures when we talk about what's coming and the preview that vasa just talked about.

A

There's two major things: there's a desktop app in teams, and this is really a combination of what is sharepoint, what is yammer and what is teams kind of push together in one employee experience piece it's distributed through the team's admin console and has some super powers which I'll talk about later and then the next, which is really for the next generation of work that that's coming out and is also in public beta, is the mobile app in teams and I'd say these are just the beginning of exposing viva connections.

A

Of course it starts in sharepoint and in teams, because that's where so many information workers are spending time. What you will see is over time. It goes into more and more m365 experiences and I'd say we look at the desktop where its roots are kind of in the core of sharepoint, where there's I'd say more flexibility to mobile, where we're very railed around kind of three pivots around a dashboard for task completion, a feed for communication and resources, which is about core way finding.

A

Now, when we get into the desktop app specifically, when we look at the opportunity, it's a company branded entry point, it has all your global navigation and if you see right in the middle here, one of the things that I think is so important if you are building sharepoint web parts today, you are part of the viva connection story. That means your usage is going to go up your mouse going to go up.

A

It means you may actually get to charge for I'd, say additional capabilities and usage for your solutions, as viva connections desktop rolls out now, that's just the start.

A

When we look at mobile again there's three kind of core parts which we'll go through there's this dashboard, which is this new cards based task completion idea, and this is really where the extensibility opportunity is starting to exist for all aviva, there's a feed which is a combination of sharepoint news and yammer, which is really driven by heuristics over time, that that will be more and more of an extensibility opportunity and then resources, which again, is this global, nav curated.

A

Experience of me as an employee all the places I need to be now talking about the dashboard dashboard. Is this new opportunity?

A

And if you see in the pictures, it shows in both mobile as like the default hero experience, but it can also be pinned as a web part in any sharepoint page in your home site and is a core part of the desktop app. And one of the reasons that we look at this dashboard and it's really driven by adaptive cards is this. Is our actually attempt to be a bridge between all the app models that exist out there, whether you've built on sharepoint, whether you're built on teams?

A

The power platform, or you have something totally different for web or mobile. The dashboard allows you, regardless of where your tech stack, sits to be able to jump in and participate with extremely low cost.

A

Now, when we look at how we're doing that, um some of you, if you have been part of this before you've, seen a slide like this, where we talk about everything that the sharepoint framework delivers about two years ago, we started really investing and enabling microsoft teams, so you could build four teams using the sharepoint framework, as well as all the core parts of sharepoint.

A

Now we have this new part, which is cars where viva connections firmly sits in the middle and again is another bridge between these experiences, as well as out to the world wide web or anything mobile. That has nothing to do with microsoft.

A

Now, when we look at what the dashboard is, this is a card based idea and what we typically see is isvs, sis and line of business developers decompose an app into multiple tasks and then an admin actually pins. These tasks on this dashboard so like every day, there's a set of things you can do. You can check your stock price. You can do global attestation to get into a building.

A

You can read a specific news, article, that's important to you. You can see your task, but these are all top of mind things where you're able to actually get a glimpse of information, and then you can get a full scale, adaptive card to either act or learn more now, when we talk about how we're bringing the ecosystem along, this was an incredibly important part of us, because employee experience already exists. We wanted to make it dead easy for any investment.

A

You have made to play in viva connections, so the first part of that is, if today you have built a personal, app or bot, um it can directly integrate in here you see. I've got an example of just a bot pinned right here and it will actually launch d and it can deep link into that bot, and this is requires no config on your own.

A

This is just automatically works now, if you want to write a little bit more code and we hope a lot of people in this community do there's a little bit more power, you can do so here you see, I have a covet attestation app right here and what I can do here is. I can build. This thing called a quick view, and this quick view is the full adaptive card stack. So you can do types of input in here. You can use types of information display.

A

You can do a full workflow and from here you can actually chain off to any type of application. This can be the web. This can be a teams app. If you have built for ios or android, you can use universal link technology and actually drive straight into that experience all with just a bare minimum of code.

A

Now, when we look at a little bit of the opportunity here yay, I I see I'm making people happy of hey. What can I do with this platform to give you a couple of ideas just to start with, and I'd say this was one of our first drawings of hey. What would our real dashboard look like? Hey, you can see here.

A

It actually starts to have a dynamic title and icon things that are relative to date, relative to status, dynamic description. I work in building 34 vasa will kill me if he ever works in building 34. He likes working out of finland, but because these can connect to the graph they can pull. I work in 34 and visa works out of finland, and these can be personal to each of us.

A

I can do multiple buttons, so I can actually do click throughs and I see vases happy about that dynamic buttons. I can also do multiple adaptive carts, so if you have something like a wizard and you need to chain through a few simple steps, you can do that and do all types of input.

A

We generally recommend if you've gone through more than three to five adaptive cards. In your experience, that's probably the wrong experience and you just need to shell out to your full mobile app now I'd say when we look at this. This is really an open canvas for you all to build. We see a huge opportunity for information workers both in mobile and desktop and frontline workers, and what we'll see is kind of the layout and the configuration and options are really going to change as you focus on information worker or frontline worker.

A

Now that was kind of like a lightning tour. um I also want to leave you with a ton of interesting links here. um You can actually get started with this today. um If you want to start using the preview ks ms connections getting started. If you want to start building a solution, read if you are a specific teams developer, two things that are a big call to action, enable sso for your app, so it works great with viva and also enabled deep, linking so sis and other corporations can deep link into your app directly visa.

A

How am I doing on time.

B

No russia, as such a got uot bill, will continue with 20 minutes. So that should be fine. If you go five minutes more still. Okay,.

A

B

If we want to cover some of the questions, because we don't have a three topics today, so this is good.

A

Yeah, um your call vasa. Do you want me to do a quick demo, or do you want me to um questions.

B

Okay, quick demo is so wicked, live stuff, not just slides.

A

Okay, let me see all right, so I'm going to do a quick demo and actually show you some of the real power here for the community, how we've really embraced adaptive card designer and other pieces of the stack.

A

So let me share my desktop so, first and foremost, what you're actually seeing here is a fully built out dashboard just by me, just by a little me actually no code written, and these are all examples of companies integrating in and but I want to show something really powerful here, I'm going to go here, like we've you've seen at inspire, we announced that workday was a major partner and I want to talk about how we worked with workday, because this is a really critical part for envisioning what you can do.

A

We have this new thing called card designer, so I'm just a pm. It's a bad idea if I ever start really writing code and checking it in to our our vso. It just is, but I really love to mock up concepts and show how things can work and what I have here and built into viva connections and what you're seeing is the kind of admin setup mode for viva connections?

A

I have this thing called card designer and card designer gives me all the power of adaptive card markup and by the way. Yes, this is in the public beta that you can use right now. I can go ahead and edit and I have all these capabilities it, but the most important one is.

A

I can drop adaptive card json directly in it, and I want to talk about why that is important so with workday and if you're familiar with them, because they're they're an announced partner, one of the big things they do is registering time off and you can see here. I have an adaptive card. Quickview works on the web works on mobile. This is great. I can set vacation. I can set a sick day.

A

I can even do bereavement, but if we go in here the way we did this was about 30 minutes across. I think four geos of I said work day hey. I went and scraped your website. If you look here, I can actually find your where your icon is on your website and then what we did is and I'm going to blow this up just copy this and I actually just started mocking up the adaptive card. So if I go here into adaptive card designer.

A

And I'm doing this a little bit in the reverse way, but bear with me.

A

And there you go, we actually went and just mocked it up in adaptive, car designer and now it's straight in viva connections, this the and can deploy to mobile, so we actually were able to set around with product and design and say hey. This is the experience we want and we didn't have to write a single line of code yet, and we really think this is going to unblock you guys for really envisioning with customers and yourselves how to build all right. That was the lightning fast demo.

A

I can do in like a minute basa back to you.

B

Thank you thanks. uh It's really really good shop and and good good good stuff on the on the extensibility and there's a lot of other opportunities, we'll modify or we'll provide additional guidance, videos and all of this stuff throughout the autumn. As we move along on this journey,.