Meetings<\/h2>\nShared Meeting Plans<\/h3>\n
Given that I spend most of my time in meetings, according to my Microsoft Viva Insights<\/a>,\u00a0 better managing my meetings, so they are more efficient and effective, will greatly impact my daily life as well as the people with whom I am meeting. In another blog<\/a>, I highlight how Meetings Insights can help improve meeting habits. But I\u2019m also looking forward to using the Shared Meeting Plans via Microsoft Viva Insights to establish norms across our team, such as automatically shortening meetings and creating post-meeting feedback surveys.<\/p>\n The next update I\u2019ve wanted ever since Teams launched is an improved way to take meeting notes.<\/strong> I hate the current meeting note features using Wiki-based notes within the meeting itself. The new method will be a huge improvement. They\u2019ll (finally) use OneNote to take meeting notes. Users can search within their notes, which will be co-located with the main note-taking app used in other areas of Teams. In other words, I can simply go to my OneNote app to find my regular notes and the notes that I (and other meeting participants) take during a meeting.<\/p>\n Perhaps this feature change will encourage other Teams users to use OneNote within their Teams.<\/p>\n The next Teams enhancement I am excited about is Teams Premium features. This enhancements package will help users who spend a significant amount of time in meetings and those who host webinars and virtual appointments<\/a>. While these features will incur licensing costs, if you spend a lot of time in internal and external meetings, it will be worth it.<\/p>\n Note, however, that this increased cost won\u2019t make sense to everyone, so consider the ROI for your company before making the upgrade.<\/p>\n Here is my list of the top features Microsoft will include with this package:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I am also looking forward to integrating webinars into our Dynamics CRM<\/a> and marketing platforms to better manage registrations, attendees and follow-ups. If you host a lot of external webinars, these features will help you better use your time managing these sessions. If you are \u201cstraddling the fence\u201d between using Teams meetings or another type of meeting application, this is simply one more reason to go all in with Microsoft Teams.<\/strong><\/p>\n I can\u2019t wait for these significant meetings improvements to be available. All of these updates solidify Teams\u2019 use as a complete digital hub.<\/p>\n Over the past year, Microsoft has continued to grow its Microsoft Viva Suite, further improving the employee experience within Teams and across the larger Microsoft 365 platform<\/a>. The most beneficial updates I\u2019m looking forward to revolving around Viva Topics, Viva Connections and Viva Goals.<\/p>\n Within Viva Topics, Microsoft is adding a feature to mention the topics in team channel conversations allowing users to provide greater context to discussions. Let me share a personal example: when mentioning the \u201cModern Workplace\u201d topic within a new team member onboarding channel, our new employees can view the Modern Workplace topic card in the message. Then they can click on the card to access the full topic page to get the complete information about our practice, such as key leaders, documents, experts and relationships to other topics they may want to know more about.<\/p>\n Another Viva Topics feature that will benefit businesses is the ability to segment the topics based on SharePoint sites and your organization\u2019s information architecture.<\/strong> This will allow your business to better understand how you organize the organization. For example, each department may have its own segment of topics, thus allowing the HR department to manage its HR-specific topics and the Finance department to manage its finance-specific topics. And if the actual feature will allow for auto-segmentation based on your organization’s information architecture, this could greatly simplify the creation and management of these segments.<\/p>\n Viva Connections also has significant improvements coming up. The most significant one for me is the ability to define multiple SharePoint home sites (the underlying requirement for enabling Viva Connections). This update will enable different customized, segmented employee experiences based on departments or other organizational segments, allowing different home sites to target specific news, tasks, and applications for unique users. Microsoft will surface all this information within the employees\u2019 workflow (i.e., all within Microsoft Teams).<\/strong><\/p>\n Lastly, among the employee experience collection is Microsoft Viva Goals.<\/p>\n Over the years, we have focused heavily on defining annual imperatives, objectives and key performance indicators across the organization. Our methods for managing these have been quite different across the organization, with each operating group using different methods to define, track and report on these areas, which is quite inefficient, time-consuming and error prone.<\/p>\n By using Microsoft Viva Goals and its underlying objectives and key results (OKRs), we\u2019ll be able to accomplish what we\u2019ve been striving toward for many years now. We\u2019ll be able to intentionally create OKRs that \u201ccreate cross-functional cooperation to unify direction and improve collaboration. When each individual, team and department goal aligns to the company\u2019s broader strategy, teams have a lens through which their work, and the impact it\u2019s intended to have, is prioritized.\u201d Having Microsoft Viva Goals integrated within Teams and other applications is one more way companies can continue to view Teams as more than just a collaboration tool but as a digital platform<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\nOneNote Integration<\/h3>\n
Teams Premium Features<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nImproved Webinar Hosting<\/h3>\n
Improve the Employee Experience with Microsoft Viva<\/h2>\n
Viva Topics<\/h3>\n
Viva Connections<\/h3>\n
Viva Goals<\/h3>\n
![\"Microsoft](\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Viva-Goals-1024x541.png\")
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