Microsoft Viva Insights: Home-tab

I had a pleasant surprise today when I checked my Insights-app. It has just gotten the new Home-tab and thus more functionalities are now available with it!

Looking at the app, after those couple of welcome screens, we can see four key areas there

Motivational hello
How are you feeling for a quick reflection
Easy way & reminder to praise your colleagues
Taking a break

On top of these there are familiar Stay connected and Protect time ( Virtual Commute) tabs.

Let’s explore each of these briefly

The first one “Good afternoon – make today count!” is quite easy: it looks like it is a motivational slogan there.

Reflecting your own feeling

How are you feeling is about quick poll and feedback:

Of course what is important is privacy:

To me it looks like the results will be used with workplace analytics (by managers) but individual responses are not available for them to see: it will be used for overall statistics and a pulse meter how the people are feeling.

Once you reply you will be able to access Reflection history for self-analysis

This allows you to analyze by yourself if there are events or habits that affect your feeling. It is important to be honest with responses, naturally. You can also put in a reminder for yourself to make sure you answer every (work)day.

After getting back to the home screen you can answer to the feeling/reflection multiple times a day.

Sharing the good will

You can also Send praise to your colleagues using the praise-part

This of course means that sharing happiness / good feeling should be happening more often than not. That is very important when we are working in different locations for feeling together.

Sending a praise via this app is of course really easy. But what I find really cool is that you can also schedule a reminder to do this daily – or weekly if you prefer it better.

When sending a Praise you can use custom praises and choose to send the praise to a team or privately to the person you are praising.

Taking a break

The last part is Taking a break.

When clicking start you get a breathing video that you can use to sync your breath with to have a short break.

It has also video controls so you can maximize to your Teams easily.

Virtual Commute

Virtual Commute activates after you have scheduled it (see Settings in the next chapter). Viva Insights reminds you about it

In here you can add tasks for the next day easily. Cool!

And also you will get a overview what is coming up

And also you can / should reflect your feelings

And finally you take a break in the Virtual Commute

Settings

Settings are found in the top-right corner of the app. Behind … menu.

In here you can manage your reminders.

Virtual Commute is behind Protect time

It is not said in this title, but Wrap up and mindfully disconnect is nudging you to have a focus time at the end of each day – and also makes it easy to book new ones (like before).

Staying Connect

Is the same as before with Insights app: reminding you and your manager & colleagues to stay in touch with each other and wrapping un unfinished tasks (based on email analysis).

Microsoft Viva Insights on Teams mobile

The mobile experience covers everything on home tab that is in the desktop app.

The settings menu (…) is not very large on mobile version but it is there.

Conclusion

While the Home tab at Microsoft Viva Insights is simple I like it at first glance. The pushing out to reflect my feelings (& seeing the history) and a good reminder to send Praise to my colleagues are real winners. And ability to set reminders to those is a big win. I have been using Focus hours already so it is nothing new to me on personal level. I also own a smart watch which reminds me to move and also to take a break occasionally so it is not a big addition personally to me – but I can see that micro break need is a big thing for lots of people. Especially when you are under a lots of stress it is something you should do: the moment of calmness can help to move forward – speaking from the experience.