6.2 Microsoft Viva Employee Experience Apps

Quick Answer: Microsoft Viva is Microsoft’s employee experience platform inside Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams. Use it when the scenario is about connection, communications, wellbeing, feedback, or learning. Do not pick Viva for antivirus, Conditional Access, or data loss prevention — those are Defender, Entra, and Purview.

The April 30, 2025 outline asks you to describe the employee experience capabilities of the Microsoft Viva apps. Microsoft’s current Viva overview groups the family into employee communications and communities, workplace analytics and feedback, and learning. That grouping is the exam map. Product names have moved over the life of MS-900 (Yammer became the Viva Engage experience; Viva Topics and Viva Goals left the catalog). Study the apps Microsoft still documents.

Viva is software as a service that rides the existing Microsoft 365 tenant. Administrators start guided setups from the Microsoft 365 admin center. Users typically open the apps inside Teams, which is why Viva sits next to Teams in the collaboration skill group. Partners can extend several Viva apps, but MS-900 does not ask you to call a partner API.

Employee communications and communities

Viva Connections is the customizable employee dashboard in Teams and on the web. It surfaces news, tools, and resources and can tailor the dashboard by role, region, or interest. Think of it as the modern intranet home that frontline and information workers already live inside Teams to reach. A stem that says “one place in Teams for company news, links, and role-specific tools” is Connections, not a new SharePoint site the user must hunt for, and not Viva Learning.

Viva Engage brings people together across the organization to connect with leaders, coworkers, and communities. Official Learn language emphasizes knowledge sharing, collaboration, and workplace belonging, including storylines and stories that stay consistent on web, desktop, and mobile. Engage is the answer when the scenario is a community of practice, a leadership AMA, or org-wide social conversation. It is not a replacement for a private project channel in Teams, and it is not an engagement-survey platform — that is Glint or Pulse.

Viva Amplify is campaign management for corporate communicators. Communicators create and manage organization-wide campaigns and publish across channels such as Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint from one place, then report on reach. Amplify is the answer when internal communications needs a campaign, multi-channel publishing, and reporting — not a single Teams announcement and not a Glint census survey.

Workplace analytics and feedback

Viva Insights improves productivity and wellbeing with data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations. It meets people in the apps they already use, especially Teams. Typical value is personal and manager guidance — focus time, meeting habits, after-hours work — not a public leaderboard of who answered the most chat messages. Insights is the wellbeing and working-pattern app. It is not Secure Score, and it is not a survey tool.

Viva Pulse lets leaders and managers send short, timely surveys from research-backed templates so a team can share what is working after a change. Pulse is lightweight and frequent. Use it when a manager wants feedback after a reorganization, a sprint, or a new manager assignment. Do not pick Pulse for the annual engagement census.

Viva Glint is the voice-of-the-employee platform for organization-wide engagement. Official Learn language: people-science measurement, org-wide surveys, benchmarks, and recommended actions so leaders and managers can see wins and gaps and turn results into action plans and learning suggestions. Glint is the enterprise engagement program. Pulse is the quick check-in. Insights is telemetry and recommendations, not a questionnaire.

Keep the listening trio straight:

• Insights = privacy-protected productivity and wellbeing recommendations from work patterns.
• Pulse = short manager or leader survey when something just happened.
• Glint = organization-wide engagement listening and action.

Learning in the flow of work

Viva Learning brings enterprise learning into Teams by connecting content from the organization, Learning Management Systems (LMS), third-party providers, and Microsoft. Employees discover, complete, and discuss learning without leaving the hub they already have open. Microsoft’s overview lists partner catalogs such as SAP SuccessFactors, Cornerstone OnDemand, Skillsoft, Udemy, and others; you do not need that partner list on the exam. You need the job: learning in the flow of work, not a replacement for SharePoint file storage and not a meeting platform.

Viva Learning is the answer when HR wants assigned or recommended training visible in Teams. It is the wrong answer when the company wants a brainstorming canvas (Whiteboard), a task board (Planner), or an org-wide engagement census (Glint).

What is no longer a current Viva app

Viva Goals, the objectives-and-key-results (OKR) alignment app, retired on December 31, 2025. Microsoft maintained the service through that date and then shut it down. Older decks and some partner pages still list Goals next to Insights and Learning. For current recommendations, do not tell a company to deploy Viva Goals. If a historical MS-900-style stem still says “align teams to strategic OKRs with a Viva app,” recognize that Goals was the app that used to do that job, and that it is no longer a current Microsoft Viva offering.

Viva Topics, the earlier AI knowledge-topic experience, is also not a current Viva app to study. Stay with the apps on Microsoft’s current Viva overview: Amplify, Engage, Connections, Insights, Pulse, Glint, and Learning.

Microsoft 365 Copilot can appear inside individual Viva apps with app-specific skills. Copilot is taught in Chapter 4. Here, remember only that Copilot is an assistant in Viva, not a replacement for choosing the right Viva app.

Viva is employee experience, not security

This is the domain trap. Viva lives under Describe collaboration solutions. It answers “how do we connect, inform, listen to, and grow people?” It does not answer “how do we stop phishing, encrypt a file, or require multifactor authentication?”

Realistic exam-style scenarios

Frontline home. A retail chain wants store associates to open Teams and immediately see shift links, corporate news, and a role-specific dashboard. That is Viva Connections, often pinned for frontline workers. It is not Viva Learning unless the only requirement is a course catalog, and it is not Engage unless the requirement is a community.

Communities of practice. Engineers across business units need a place to follow leadership and share knowledge beyond any one project team. That is Viva Engage. A private channel is too small and too project-scoped.

Campaign. Internal communications must launch a benefits-enrollment campaign to Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint and then report who was reached. That is Viva Amplify, not a one-off channel post and not Glint.

Wellbeing. People complain about back-to-back meetings and after-hours chat. The company wants privacy-protected recommendations, not a public productivity ranking. That is Viva Insights.

Two kinds of survey. A manager wants a five-question check-in two weeks after a reorg — Viva Pulse. People operations wants a yearly engagement census with benchmarks and manager action plans — Viva Glint. Those are not interchangeable.

Learning. HR already pays for an LMS and Microsoft content and wants employees to find both inside Teams. That is Viva Learning. Stream can host a video; it is not the learning hub the outline names.

Wrong family. A stem that mentions phishing, ransomware, or device compliance is Defender or Intune, even if the user happens to open Teams all day. Viva does not become a security product because it is installed next to chat.

Exam traps

• Viva is not Microsoft Defender, Purview, or Entra ID. Employee experience versus protect, comply, and sign in.
• Connections is the dashboard; Engage is the community; Amplify is the campaign. Do not use “intranet” as a synonym for all three.
• Insights is not a survey. Recommendations from work patterns are not Glint or Pulse.
• Pulse is not Glint. Short and local versus org-wide and people-science.
• Learning is not Stream and not Whiteboard. Training catalog versus video platform versus canvas.
• Viva Goals is retired. Do not recommend it as a current deployment.

Official sources

• Microsoft Viva overview — current apps and experience groups
• Viva Connections overview
• Viva Engage overview
• Viva Amplify overview
• Viva Insights
• Introduction to Viva Pulse
• Introduction to Viva Glint
• Overview of Viva Learning
• Viva Goals retirement — retired December 31, 2025
• Study guide for Exam MS-900 — Viva employee-experience skill