We live in the information age. The problem is that with evermore information being continually produced, finding the specific content you need becomes ever more challenging. According to one recent survey, 19% of employees struggle to find the information they need in their enterprise content management systems. And 16% struggle to find an internal subject matter expert in a reasonable time frame.
Viva Topics is Microsoft’s innovative new approach to help organizations deal with this knowledge management headache. Introduced in early February and already available, Viva Topics uses artificial Intelligence and the Microsoft Graph to help improve how knowledge is found.
In our recent webinar on the Microsoft Viva user experience platform, Microsoft MVP Marc Anderson provided us with an essential introduction to Viva Topics.
Below we have summarized Marc’s thoughts on Microsoft Viva Topics, why we need it and his predictions for the technology’s future.
Viva overview: Watch VisualSP’s introduction to Microsoft Viva
Viva Topics applies next generation thinking to knowledge management. In this model, a company’s knowledge is organized into topic cards. Whenever an employee sees an acronym, a project or a specific term mentioned that they are not familiar, they can click on it and see a Topic Card which gives an overview of the subject. Viva Topic cards contain a description of the topic itself, as well as related documents and subject matter experts.
You might find it useful to think of Viva Topics as like an organizational Wikipedia. Whenever a user visits a page and sees a term they are not familiar with, they can hover over it to see a Topic Card which provides more information. If they want to learn more, they can open up the Topic and access additional resources.
Viva Topics uses a combination of your existing knowledge management structure and Artificial Intelligence to create the Topic Cards. Over time Viva Topics will begin to surface information based on what it believes your users need to know. This means that information will never be more than one click away.
Topics can be accessed throughout the Microsoft 365 interface. You will notice them in Microsoft Teams, Outlook, SharePoint and other apps you use.
More Viva: Read our introduction to Viva Connections
During the webinar Marc pointed to some of the reasons that Viva Topics is especially interesting for knowledge managers and SharePoint administrators:
Because users can click on terms that they don't understand and see a Topic Card, the knowledge will be delivered contextually, at the moment of need. Just like contextual microlearning, this way of delivering information means users will retain information more effectively. It also means they’re less likely to simply ‘guess’ what a term means. Instead they can verify their understanding of concepts immediately then get on with whatever they were doing before.
Traditional knowledge management systems require employees to visit an organizational knowledge page and seek out the terms or concepts they are interested in. This breaks up the flow of work, and means they might get distracted. They also spend more time looking for the information. Viva Topics brings that knowledge directly to the user, thereby saving time.
In a similar way, Topic Cards will make it much easier for people to find subject matter experts who can provide extra information on one specific field or another. Again, this should save users time and avoid the risk of ‘reinventing the wheel’.
While Viva Topics is certainly a significant step forwards in how organizations manage knowledge, Marc warned that it is not a silver bullet solution that will fix all problems on its own. The Artificial Intelligence in Viva Topics scans your content and begins to make recommendations. But you will still need to organize it in such a way that the AI can make sensible suggestions. For example, metadata still needs to be applied consistently to files if you want Topics to ‘find’ them.
He explained that for Topics to really begin to be useful, you are still going to need to think about information architecture and which subjects are important in your organization. Preparing to use Topics will require a deployment plan and mapping out of the kind of information architecture that will be useful for your employees.
More Viva: Read our introduction to Viva Learning
Viva Topics has been made available at the cost of $5 per user per month. It is currently available for testing and deployment. Microsoft report that they will be continually making improvements to Viva Topics over the coming months, including by bringing in information from third party apps such as ServiceNow, Salesforce and file shares. You will also be able to use APIs to connect to knowledge stored in other third-party systems.
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Like many enterprise systems that use Artificial Intelligence, Viva Topics is going to improve over time as it begins to learn more about organizations and how they use information. Here are some of Marc’s predictions about how Viva Topics may evolve in the coming months and years:
While Viva Topic is a very welcome innovation, the user interface is still evolving and occasionally the way that Topics are surfaced and suggestions made is not always consistent. Marc predicts that in the coming months this will improve significantly.
Marc noted that, at least to begin with, Viva Topics is going to have most value when deployed at large organizations with significant quantities of data for the AI to learn from. He noted that right now smaller operations just don’t have enough content for the AI to provide particularly beneficial insights. But, as Microsoft tracks how Viva Topics are being used, we can expect it to become more helpful at small and medium sized businesses too.
Finally, Marc suggested that Viva Topics’ features are likely to come to be seen as the norm for business systems. In the coming years it will seem completely normal that organizational knowledge is structured in this way, with Topic Cards showing relevant information to users whenever they need. We will probably wonder how we ever found information without this technology!
Viva Topics is taking a next generation approach to organizational knowledge management. With this innovation, Microsoft is showing just how far ahead they are when it comes to supporting customers with knowledge management. In the coming years, this form of contextual, intelligent responsive knowledge management will help users become more efficient, save time, and avoid confusion caused by a lack of information when they need it.
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