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We’re excited to announce a variety of new features for Viva Insights, which include new collaboration insights for analysts running organizational network analysis (ONA) queries, new tools to search for manager licensing status and their access to insights, a newly launched functionality to share analyst reports, and another option to upload organizational data aimed at improved accuracy of insights. Let’s dive in.  

New Organizational Network Analysis insights 

As part of the Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) Change Management query template for analysts, a new third insights category is now available. This category of insights is focused on highlighting employee groups deemed to be “brokers of information flow.” 

Groups identified as top information brokers often serve as central hubs dictating the flow of information throughout the employee network. But these groups could also give rise to collaboration overload, because a significant proportion of information is flowing through the group(s). 

With these insights, therefore, business leaders can now identify which groups within their companies might be acting as information bottlenecks, and take the appropriate steps to adjust the flow of information or collaboration. 

In the screenshot below, for instance, the Finance-Corporate group is ranked as the #3 top information broker, and the up arrow indicates that it moved into the top five information brokers. The down arrow for the Human Resources group, meanwhile, means it moved out of the top five information brokers. And IT-East is the #4 information broker with no arrow, which means it was in the top five information brokers in both the “before” and “after” periods of the analysis timeframe. 

With the addition of this new insights category, ONA now encompasses three main types of insights: 

1. Cross-group collaboration: How are groups/departments/teams collaborating before and after a change event at the company?


2. Insular collaboration: Which groups/departments/teams are showing an increased tendency towards “within-group” collaboration who could become siloed?  


3. Brokers of information flow: Which groups are acting as central hubs dictating or controlling the flow of information in the collaboration network? 

Learn more about ONA in the analyst workbench, and the new insights category. 

Search for managers/new manager hierarchy search feature 

To help customers troubleshoot issues related to managers’ access to insights, and to get a quick look at their licensing status, team size, and direct and indirect reports, the Viva Insights Admin portal now includes a manager hierarchy search function. 

This new feature allows customers to use the Viva Insights app to search for specific managers and see their related licensing and team information. Customers can then use this information to cross-reference against their own records, and troubleshoot any licensing issues that might arise.

Learn how to use the search tool.

Publish reports public preview launch  

To help streamline the communication process between Viva Insights analysts and leadership, we’re excited to announce the public preview launch of Publish reports. This new feature lets analysts share insights and reports directly with leaders, decision-makers, or even an entire organization in the recipient’s Viva Insights app. 

A “report” can refer to:  

• Any Power BI report within Viva Insights 

• A custom report stored outside of Viva Insights that includes Viva Insights metrics or other types of metrics like surveys or Microsoft 365 Copilot metrics 

When recipients receive a shared report, it will appear as a prominently displayed card on the recipient’s Viva Insights home page.  

Learn more about how to set up and publish a report. 

Use Entra plus .csv files for “parallel” data uploads  

For added flexibility, Viva Insights Administrators can now set up an organizational data upload using both Microsoft Entra ID and manual .csv files simultaneously, in parallel. Typically, Viva Insights ingests data from either Entra or manual .csv file uploads.

Using this new parallel data ingestion method helps ensure that critical data such as the ManagerId and Organization attributes can be retrieved from Entra, while additional fields can be fetched from .csv files or automated connectors. This method, therefore, can help improve reporting accuracy by combining other attributes from Entra and .csv uploads.

Moreover, this data ingestion method can improve the accuracy of insights in the Copilot Dashboard, leader reports, and the analyst workbench. 

This feature can be used by tenants whose current data source is uploaded data, either in the form of manual .csv files or through connectors.

Learn how to set up this new parallel data ingestion method.