Microsoft Viva Learning: how to bring enterprise training to Teams

Viva Learning is part of the Microsoft Viva universe.

Its goal is to revolutionize corporate training, making it more accessible, organized and social. How?

Let's find out together!

What is Microsoft's Viva Learning

Designed to be the digital training hub for companies, Viva Learning represents one of the core modules of the Microsoft Viva suite.

This tool was created to collect and disseminate corporate and non-corporate e-learning content, simplifying employees' professional development within a single platform for work and collaboration.

You have probably already guessed: it is a personal app for Microsoft Teams.

Viva Learning fits within the Teams universe to expand it with its own functionality and leverage the concept of "Teams as a platform".

This string of words refers to the idea, or rather, the philosophy that conceives Microsoft Teams not only as an application for real-time communication - with its famous video calls, chat, and workgroups - but also, and more importantly, as a vessel ready to perform a myriad of additional tasks through integration with Microsoft and third-party tools.

Think of Planner, for example, and the way its relationship with Teams makes it possible to design and manage multiple work plans where corporate teams interact on a daily basis.

Or take the case of SharePoint Online.

Its union with Teams means that users can organize files and documents into repositories specific to their groups and work channels, as well as access content on the corporate intranet without ever going directly into SharePoint.

To explore this topic further, check out our article on the benefits of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Online integration.

Viva Learning is part of this movement, initiated by the parent company, to revolutionize the digital work environment of companies, in an era where the latter plays an increasingly crucial role in their growth and expansion strategies. But that's not all.

At the heart of this new approach to online work is to improve the user experience, helping them work more productively, and establish a quality relationship with their organization.

So let's see what features make Viva Learning a unique and essential tool for your digital workplace.

What are the main features of Viva Learning

Let us start by saying that your company can incorporate Viva Learning into its digital workplace by purchasing any Microsoft 365 license.

However, we must emphasize that you will only have access to basic functionality with Business or Enterprise licenses.

Therefore, to unlock the full potential of Viva Learning, one of the following types of licenses must be purchased:

• Microsoft Viva Learning, currently at 3.40 euros per user/month.
• Microsoft Viva product family, currently at 7.60 euros per user/month.

Now that we have clarified how your company can make use of Viva Learning, let's explore the basic and advanced features of the application for Microsoft Teams.

The advanced features of Viva Learning

As we mentioned, Viva Learning consists of some features that are not available in the generic Microsoft 365 licenses, but are found in the two licenses "Viva Learning" (product-specific) and "Microsoft Viva Product Family" (complete package with the suite's tools).

You may not know, however, what the differences are between the default and advanced versions of Viva Learning.

Starting with content providers, the first advanced feature that is made available to you is the ability to include third-party EMS (E-learning Management System) platforms.

The admin user can then enable the integration of courses from Coursera, Udemy, edX and Pluralsight, to name just a few.

In addition, the full version of Viva Learning can turn into a really useful tool in the hands of project managers.

This is because they can take advantage of two specific commands:

• "Recommend".

The feature that allows content deemed most useful or important to be highlighted for the entire network of users.

• "Manage".

The tab within Viva Learning that allows not only all recommended content to be displayed, but also the status regarding its consumption by the target users.

In this way, the company or individual managers can ensure that their teams have the resources they need to continue to evolve their skills and knowledge by monitoring their progress.

Once again, sending stacks of emails is replaced by an integrated interface with Microsoft 365 and Viva tools to ultimately lead to the digitization of the entire company and its foundational processes.

Social Learning: the new corporate training

We have seen what Viva Learning is and what features it can offer your organization. However, we still haven't said what the goal of this app is.

The integration with Microsoft Teams might lead us to think that its purpose is to make corporate training more dynamic, and more organized within employees' busy agendas.

And that is true, but that would not be the real reason it was designed.

The ultimate goal of Viva Learning is, in fact, to bring companies a new way of doing training.

There is a precise definition to express this concept: social learning.

Social learning, or social learning, is a methodology that is based on three main actions that users must be able to perform in their digital training space:

1. Access training independently, personalizing their own path.
2. Share and evaluate the material offered in the platform.
3. Create and disseminate their own content in the community.

If you take a moment to reflect on the features described so far, you will understand how Microsoft has provided a comprehensive and intuitive app to meet all three criteria of social learning.

Professional learning is no longer a one-size-fits-all path from management to all people in the company.

Viva Learning changes the traditional paradigm and enables all users to motivate each other and take responsibility for their own growth.