Part One: The Viva ‘Trail System’
Viva Makes It Easier to Find and Benefit From Places that Already Exist
March 2021 | Insights From the CEO – I live in a place with beautiful mountains and rivers that are inhabited by people who love to hike, climb, bike, fish and camp. There are fantastic trails, trailheads, maps, signage and related amenities that have been developed over time to help people get to those mountains and rivers. These have been connected in a coherent network called the ‘Main Street to the Mountains’ trail system. One can (literally) start walking from the center of town and within minutes get to a trail that will lead to another trail, that will take you to almost any river or mountain in the surrounding valley. This trail system didn’t, of course, create the mountains or the rivers – it just made it possible for many people to get to and spend time in them.
As we’ve been learning about Viva, we’ve increasingly referred to it by using this trail system metaphor. Viva isn’t a new system or app, rather it’s a set of (digital) ‘trails’ that connect existing parts of the M365 ecosystem, making those existing places both easier to find and easier to get back and forth from.
- Connections is a trail (and some new amenities) to existing homes and related sites and to existing highly refreshed Communities and Teams.
- Learning is a trail (and some new amenities) to existing internal and external learning repositories.
- Topics is a trail (plus signage, guidebook and AI-assisted advice) to the emerging Cortex knowledge topics.
- Insights is like the smartwatch many of us now have that measures what we’re doing, where we’re going and how that all affects our well-being. (In fact, my Samsung watch right now is suggesting I get away from this keyboard and take a walk! But before I do let me finish the thought.)
- Teams is then of course the ‘main street’ where we spend most of our time and to which we return.
The value of Viva is like the value of the trail system. The trail system didn’t create new mountains or rivers – it just made it much easier for more people to find and benefit from what was already there. Viva isn’t a new set of places – it just makes it much easier for more people to find and benefit from places that already exist in the ecosystem.
You can read and watch more about it at the Microsoft Viva Blog.
Ok, so now I’m going to accept the insight from my watch and get up and take a walk …
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About the Author
Chris Shaida is an Enterprise Managing Consultant and Founder of RealFoundations. Mr. Shaida founded RealFoundations to provide a place where like-minded professionals can focus their deep industry and solution knowledge and passion to help improve the operations of our real estate industry and corporate real estate clients.
About RealFoundations
RealFoundations (RF) is the world’s foremost professional services firm focused solely on the real estate industry. Through our delivery of Management Consulting and Managed Services, we help companies that develop, own, operate, service or invest in real estate make better, more profitable decisions. We are proud partners to over 500 real estate companies around the globe, providing accelerated solutions that solve some of real estate’s most complex challenges. We Make Real Estate Run Better.
