Did you know that you can use Copilot in Viva Engage to create more engaging posts, and get personalized suggestions how to improve your post? Or that you just can have a sparring conversation with AI when you are thinking about posting a message to your community? Copilot in Viva Engage can help you out as it became generally available at the end of April 2024, so this is not something really new but as autumn advances it a good to remind what you can do with Copilot in Viva Engage. I don’t write about Viva Engage much, but as I had some recent work involving Viva Engage it sparked the idea for this one. Today Viva Engage integrates pretty well with Microsoft Teams, and it allows a great way to create and foster communities along with Teams teams for larger organizations.
Copilot in Viva Engage is your personal AI assistant that can help you with post creation and recommendations to improve your online presence and engagement in the Engage Teams app or on the web. Copilot in Viva Engage is powered by large language model (LLM), which are a type of technology that can generate natural language text based on your input and context. Microsoft 365 Copilot is running GPT-4o already, so if Copilot in Viva Engage isn’t running that yet it soon will. With Copilot, you can access the power and flexibility of LLMs, with Microsoft Responsible AI protections – right inside your Viva Engage.
How Copilot in Viva Engage handles your data?
Just like all Copilots in Microsoft 365, Copilot in Viva Engage does not store or retain any of the text that you generate or edit with it. Your text or data is not used to train the model.
It only processes the text that you explicitly provide to it, such as when you type in the Copilot box, click on a suggestion, or ask for feedback.
It respects your privacy and does not share any of your text or data with third parties. Copilot in Viva Engage also follows your organization’s data governance policies and settings, such as data residency, retention, and deletion.
Read more the Learn about Data, Privacy and Security for Copilot in Viva Engage.
It is available worldwide for Viva Engage users who have a premium license, which is available with Viva Suite and Communities and Communications licenses. Here are the licensing options for Copilot in Viva Engage:
Microsoft 365 Copilot + Viva Suite = You have Copilot in Viva Engage
Microsoft 365 Copilot + Viva Engage Communications & Communities = You have Copilot in Viva Engage
Viva Suite or Viva Engage Communications & Communities = You have Copilot in Viva Engage
If you have only the Microsoft 365 Copilot license (no Viva Suite or Viva Engage C&C) then you are missing out Copilot in Viva Engage. While it is good that Copilot is available in Viva Engage with Viva Suite and Viva Engage Communications & Communities, I find it a bit odd that Microsoft 365 Copilot license alone doesn’t add Copilot to Viva Engage.
Copilot in Viva Engage is on by default. If you meet the licensing requirements and you don’t see it, it is time to contact your IT Admins and ask why they have disabled it.
You can access Copilot in Viva Engage anywhere you create posts: on the home feed, in a community, a campaign, or on your storyline. When you start writing a new post (or question, poll or any other Viva Engage post type) you can open the Copilot. Viva Engage highlights to open Copilot quite prominently when you are writing the post. Where you don’t see the Copilot, is that if you open your profile and start writing a post to your Storyline from there – probably a bug, since you can click Storyline from the left navigation and start writing a post with Copilot from there.
After clicking Open Copilot, you get a familiar view where Copilot is on the side of your post.
You just tell Copilot what you need. From the “sparkle” button you can open the Prompt guide with predefined prompts – I treat these as shortcuts and ideas. You will end up using your own prompts for the most of the time, especially when creating something unique. I can use Copilot also in Finnish, as it is one of languages Microsoft 365 Copilot 365 supports.
And as with Copilot typically, I can continue the conversation to tune the response.
And when you are happy with Copilots output, just click + Add to post and Copilot will add the text to your draft. If you already have text there, it stays as text is added and it doesn’t replace anything when used this way.
After adding the text, Copilot will notify and remind you about to Keep it authentic with some tips.
Show me how is a useful action, as you can just try it out to see what Copilot suggests.
I took the advantage of Copilot and let it invent my personal story to be added. This is just one example, how you can provide just a minimal information and use AI to create the text for you quickly in all Copilots – not just in Copilot in Viva Engage.
After each response from the Copilot, you can also see shortcuts to “Can you provide a different response?” and “Try again, but this time..”.
Let’s add that to our text. Notice, when clicking Add to post you get a reminder about keeping the text authentic.
Now, I could utilize Copilot more to get some feedback. Note: these are just ideas for you – feel free to use your own words when asking questions from Copilot!
It wasn’t the worst list of questions it predicted. Skipping those, you have of course the full freedom to edit your draft as you like. Copilot is only providing you drafts and suggestions.
Don’t drop reading, there is more! If you select a text in your post, you can tell Copilot to focus on that selected text only.
And you can also return the focus to all text with a click of a button or by pressing the shortcut CTRL+\ (in US keyboards at least, I didn’t yet find the shortcut for Finnish keyboard layout).
Now, let’s get a more click-bait starter line.
Notice that you have the option to add the new text to the post, or directly replace your selection with the generated text.
With a bit of edits, we have a post ready for publishing.
The latest addition to Copilot in Viva Engage is the Copilot adoption community, which became available July 2024. The Copilot adoption community is a community that can be set up to help people to learn more about Copilot in Viva Engage, share their experiences, ask questions, and get tips and best practices from other users and experts. It can also contain learning resources, such as videos, articles, and courses, to help employees get the most out of Copilot in Viva Engage.
Setting the community up is easy. Just create a new community with the wizard when you see it at Viva Engage.
You get default selections, which you can change as per to your needs.
And that’s it. You have a base community for driving Copilot Adoption.
In short, Copilot Adoption Community is just like any other community in Viva Engage. The added part was a wizard that setups up the community and there is also a banner “Welcome to your new community” visible, that reminds to Pin resources, Add members, Review suggested and Write your first post.
What is cool, a standard feature in Viva Engage communities, is the Intelligent importer. You can easily bring in questions and answers from Word, PDF or .txt file. The Intelligent importer is part of Viva Answers, and is there if you have a Viva Suite or Communities & Communications license. So, if you have Copilot in Viva Engage, you also have the Intelligent importer.
Note: Copilot Adoption Community doesn’t do the adoption job for you, it is just a community that you can set up easily and start using it!
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I work, blog and speak about Future Work : AI, Microsoft 365, Copilot, Microsoft Mesh, Metaverse, and other services & platforms in the cloud connecting digital and physical and people together.
I have about 30 years of experience in IT business on multiple industries, domains, and roles.
View all posts by Vesa Nopanen
