Updated December 19, 2022: We have updated the content below to provide more information. Thank you for your feedback.
As previously announced, we will be releasing our new experiences for Viva Engage and Answers in Microsoft Viva in early 2023. We are now assigning the new service plans to the corresponding SKUs to get ready for the release.
When this will happen
Beginning in mid-December 2022 and expect to complete by late December 2022.
How this affects your organization
As part of this step, you may notice the following service plans visible and available:
- Viva Engage Core: If you are an existing customer of any of the following SKUs, you may see this service plan available. This service plan is intended to support the currently available basic features* in Viva Engage currently available (Storylines, Communities etc.). Microsoft 365 Business Basic
- Microsoft 365 Basic Standard
- Microsoft Business Premium
- Office 365 (E1)
- Microsoft 365 E3 / Office 365 E3
- Microsoft 365 E5 / Office 365 E5
- Microsoft 365 F3 / Office 365 F3
- Microsoft 365 F1
- Viva Engage Communities and Communication: If you are an existing Microsoft Viva Suite customer, you may see this service plan available. This service plan will be used to provision the new Viva Engage features (Leadership Corner, Campaigns, AMA etc.) in early 2023.
- Viva Engage Knowledge: If you are an existing Microsoft Viva Suite or Viva Topics customer, you may see this service plan available. This service plan will be used to provision the new Answers in Microsoft Viva experiences in early 2023.
* For more details, please refer to this blog post
What this means for you
At this time there is no impact to your organization and no action is required from your end.
Please note that these new service plans are in placeholding capacity as of now; they will be used to provision the new features and experiences in Viva Engage and Answers in Microsoft Viva in 2023. You may see these service plans ‘enabled’ for the users in your organization, however that will not enable any new features / experiences for them. We will be sharing additional information with you to control the feature roll out to your users when we make the features available.
When we begin rolling out the availability of new experiences in early 2023, we will publish another Message Center post in January 2023 that will provide you with the list of action items so that you can control the feature enablement for your organizations as per your needs and requirements.
Please find below some key questions and our response to them.
Q: Why do I see the new service plans in SKU?
A: Service plans are the mechanism to provide experiences to our customers. We have begun with preparatory steps to get ready to provide our new experiences in early 2023 and assigning placeholder service plans to the SKUs is the first step. Placeholding means the service plans are empty as of now and will be used to provision the new experiences early 2023 onwards.
Q: What features do these service plans enable?
A: These service plans will provision the new experiences starting in 2023, they don’t provision any experience today. When the new experiences are made available, feature enablement will still be controlled for you for your organization. Following are the sets of features to be enabled and supported by these service plans:
- Viva Engage Core – basic features* that are currently available in Viva Engage
- Viva Engage Communities and Communication – new upcoming experiences** in Viva Engage
- Viva Engage Knowledge – new upcoming experiences with Answers in Microsoft Viva
* For more details, please refer to this blog post
** For more details, please refer to this blog post
Q: Why are these service plans already assigned to all the users?
A: The service plans have been enabled to the users to provide a smoother and easily controlled feature roll out process. You will still be able to control the roll out of the features to the users as per your requirements. We will shortly reach out with another post with details on feature roll out plan and how you can control the roll out for your organization.
Q: Does this enable any app (such as Yammer) that I had previously disabled?
A: These service plans have no impact on any app that you may have disabled for your users.
Q: What if I disable Viva Engage Core service plan?
A: This will not have any impact as of now.
Q: What if I disable Viva Engage Communities & Communication service plan for my users?
A: This will not have any impact as of now. However, if you disable them now, you may have to perform some extra steps in early 2023 to control the roll out of new features in Viva Engage (such a Leadership Corner, AMA, Campaigns etc.), when they are made available. Hence, we would suggest to not disable this service plan.
Q: What if I disable Viva Engage Knowledge service plan for my users?
A: This will not have any impact as of now. However, you may have to perform some extra steps in early 2023 to control the roll out of new features in Answers in Microsoft Viva, when they are made available. Hence, we would suggest to not disable this service plan.
Q: Does this affect any other product in the SKU?
A: This does not impact any other product or features that are currently in the SKU that you have purchased.
Q: My organization was already using Viva Engage features (like Storylines, Communities) before Viva Engage Core; Why do we have this new service plan now and what will change?
A: Currently, existing Yammer service plan provisions these features on Yammer as well as Viva Engage app in Teams for experience continuity. However, in the future, we plan to migrate to Viva Engage Core service plan to provision new features in Viva Engage app, while Yammer service plan will continue to provide access to Yammer.
Q: How will I control the roll out of the new features to the users?
A: These service plans do not provision any new features. As we make the new experiences and features available, we will share more detailed steps for you to prepare and control the roll out. No action is required from you at the moment.
What you need to do to prepare
At this time, there is no impact to your organization, and no action is required from your end. These service plans will not yet enable any new experiences to your organization and users.
We will begin rolling out the availability of new experiences in early 2023 in a phased manner. We will reach out with another post closer to the release timelines – to communicate roll-out timelines, what to expect, and any action items for you.
Learn more
Message ID: MC482179
Published: 2022-12-09
Updated: 2022-12-19
