Microsoft boosted Viva with its Microsoft acquisition of OKR vendor ally.io in 2021 to enable Viva Goals, which is one of five modules in the Viva employee experience suite. Viva runs on top of Teams, and also includes Viva Learn, Viva Topics, and Viva Connections. Microsoft in September announced it was adding new integration points in Viva Goals, including an enhanced Teams app that allows users to check in and collaborate on OKRs. The main new OKR-focused feature is the analytics dashboard, which lets admins see OKR adoption among staff, engagement, and other insights about the organization. Admins gain a view of the number of users and monthly active usage, and granular details like activity types, how many goals are being met by closing OKRs, and how teams are engaging with each other through comments. A graph in the dashboard appears to use Git-inspired terms, like check-ins, OKRs created, OKRs closed, and comments and reactions. Also: Now you can join a Microsoft Teams call from a HoloLens 2 headset Microsoft plans to add more OKR performance metrics to the analytics feature, as well give team-level administrators access to the dashboard. Microsoft has also expand Viva Goals from a single check-in owner to enable multiple check-in owners to be responsible for OKR success. This is designed for large projects or transition periods. It’s also expanding language support from 10 languages to 37 languages. Additionally, Viva Goals admins can set up Conditional Access policing using Azure Active Directory (AAD), as well as using AAD identity federation to enable OKTA and Google authentication. Microsoft in December rolled out its data sovereignty offering “EU Data Residency” for Viva Goals, allowing EU-based and multinational customers to store their data in EU data centers. Several Microsoft product integrations with Viva Goals are now generally available. These include the Dynamics 365 Viva Goals integration, which lets, for example, sales teams auto-update their OKR progress from any Dynamics 365 app. Also included is the Power BI integration, offering data-driven graphics to view KR metrics within Viva Goals, and the Microsoft Planner integration for task-tracking and updating KRs in Viva Goals automatically. There’s also the enhanced integrations between Viva Goals and Microsoft Teams. Teams is now a fully featured app in Viva Goals. Soon, users will be able to add OKRs as a tab in teams and share OKRs into Teams chats and channels. Finally, Microsoft is working on a Microsoft Project integration for connecting Viva Goals OKRs, which will automatically update tasks and milestones as they are completed to show the states of there connected OKRs and projects.
