Everything new in Microsoft Viva Goals in 2023: Health Insights feature & more

Last year in May, Microsoft launched Viva Goals in private preview, a module designed to improve clarity, focus, and the ability to bring your goals into the flow of your everyday work. The company later announced its general availability featuring the new goal-setting and management solution.

The module has since received a ton of improvements as well as features all designed to enhance its user experience. And today, Microsoft is announcing the general availability of new features that will build on the objectives and key results (OKR).

Analytics

First up is the new Analytics feature that is now broadly available and designed to provide admins with more insight in regards to the trajectory that the organization is taking, that is, the successes and setbacks. This way it is easier to make elaborate measures that will help mitigate these issues and allow the organization to run at an optimum level.

Multiple Check-in Owners

Next up, is the transition of Viva Goals from single check-in owner to multiple check-in owners. This makes it easier to “build an effective and inclusive check-in rhythm.” Microsoft further added that, “To reach high level team objectives, there may be more than one owner who is responsible for an OKR’s success. The ability to designate more than one check-in owner helps address customer needs of differentiating ownership, particularly for large projects or during times of transition.”

More languages

The module supports 10 Tier 1 languages currently but with the new capabilities it has expanded its reach and now supports 37 languages in total.

Security and data privacy improvements

Microsoft is also laying more emphasis on security and data privacy with new updates as well as Azure Active Directory. This means that admins can control who has access to certain types of data using Conditional Access Policies. “Our identity updates also include AAD identity federation using 3rd party identity solutions OKTA, and Google. ”

EU Data Residency

EU Data Residency for Viva Goals is widely available meaning EU residents can make use of EU-based data centers to store their data. Viva Goals users gained access last year in December, while Ally.io customers transitioning to Viva Goals will access it later this month.

Microsoft Teams integration

Viva Goals OKRs are integrated with Teams more as a fully featured app. This means that, “Users can view OKRs directly assigned to them, pin OKRs for teams they work with, toggle across different departmental OKRs and see notifications in-app for OKR activities. The new dashboard feature in Teams also offers insights for business review or meeting updates, where users can present and author the dashboard content within Teams.”

Microsoft has promised to include OKRs as a tab in Teams that will allow users to check their notifications directly from their feeds as well as share the OKRs directly into Teams chats and channels.

Power BI integration

Microsoft has integrated Viva Goals with Power BI with the aim of leveraging powerful data driven graphics directly within Viva Goals. In turn, users will be able to identify the metric that resonates with them and then visualize the progress of the Key Results automatically.

Planner integration

Viva Goals now integrates with Microsoft Planner, thus making it easier for users to access their progress and helping them stay on track toward their goals. “Microsoft Planner so you can connect your Planner
tasks and plans to update your KRs and projects in Viva Goals automatically.”

Project integration coming

And finally, users should also look out for the Viva Goals and Project integration that should be available in the near future. It will assist the users to keep track of their milestones and “automatically update to show the
latest status of the connected OKRs and projects.”

Do you use Microsoft Viva Goals? Engage us in the comment section!