Meet Viva Topics: Your new knowledge management solution

Do you spend a lot of time searching for a term you know nothing about, who to contact, or where to find more information in your organisation? Do you often experience recreating content only to find out later that it already existed in a place you didn’t know or consider looking at? Have you ever struggled to find an internal subject matter expert in a reasonable timeframe?

We all have experienced these situations in one way or another, wasting hours every week just trying to get our hands on the right information and experts. That’s why Microsoft developed an innovative way to resolve this common problem experienced by organisations through Viva Topics.

What is Viva Topics?

Viva Topics is part of the Microsoft Viva product family for employee experience and is the module built for knowledge management. It uses artificial intelligence (AI), Microsoft 365, Microsoft Graph, and Search to connect organisational knowledge to your users. Every time your users search for a keyword, Viva Topics highlights it and displays a description of the topic, sites, files, pages, and the people working on it through a Topic card. Your users don’t need to learn a different app to take advantage of Viva Topics, as it displays results in everyday Microsoft 365 apps they already use.  

Why Viva Topics?

1. Get quick access to information. Spend less time searching for content and focus more on putting it into action by having access to information and subject matter experts (SMEs) when you need it.
2. Make knowledge easy to discover. Viva Topics automatically organises your content and surfaces relevant information wherever your users are in Microsoft 365, so you can save time recreating or searching for content.
3. Connect with your SMEs quickly. Make it easy for your users to discover and find SMEs with Viva Topics automatically displaying the relevant people working on a project or file.
4. Stay in the flow of work. Unlike traditional knowledge management systems, where you need to visit them to find the information that you need, Viva Topics brings you knowledge more conveniently by not having to leave your most frequently used apps in Microsoft 365.

Where will you see Topics?

1. SharePoint pages. Relevant keywords get highlighted in SharePoint and activated when users hover over that keyword.
2. Search results. Topics are displayed from the SharePoint start page; search in Office.com or from a SharePoint site when you change the search scope to include your entire organisation.
3. Office applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook, or PowerPoint. Topics are displayed either through the search box or by selecting Search in the context menu.
4. Topic centre homepage. It’s a SharePoint site where users can view, manage, and create topics.

How are topics created?

Microsoft’s AI initially creates the first draft of Topics which employees with “knowledge manager” role can choose to add or remove where necessary. They can then assign roles in your organisation to:

1. Manage Topics: These are typically knowledge managers who can confirm and reject topics.
2. Create and edit Topics: Topics contributors, knowledge managers, and knowledge admins who can create and edit new topics.
3. Discover and curate Topics: Typically, all your users can see information on topic pages and search results.

How to get started with Viva Topics?

Viva Topics discovers files and pages stored in Modern SharePoint (or Modern SharePoint pages on classic SharePoint), so be sure you are using it to benefit from its features. Viva Topics is available as an add-on to existing Microsoft 365 E3, E5, F1, and F3 subscriptions, or you can purchase it as a stand-alone solution for AUD6.60/user/month* or as part of the Viva Suite for AUD19.80/user/month*.

Read our previous blogs below to learn more about Viva Topics:  

1. Introduction to Viva Topics, licensing, configuration, and setup.
2. Implementation queries such as who we need, how much planning is needed, and more.

Take advantage of the benefits of using AI in your daily flow of work with Microsoft Viva Topics. Easily connect your employees to organisational knowledge and experts so your business can further drive innovation and improve productivity.

Looking to find out more about Viva Topics? Contact us anytime, and we’ll discuss more information with you.

*Price is subject to change without prior notice. Please get in touch with us for the latest pricing information.