Introducing Microsoft Viva Sales

Source: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-viva/sales

This month Microsoft introduced Viva Sales, the first role-based offering on the Microsoft Viva employee experience suite. Viva was announced in February 2021 and included many new tools and features as well as extensive integrations with third party providers of training, collaboration, analytics and productivity tools. For instance, Microsoft announced these integrations in November 2021:

Viva Learning: SAP SuccessFactors, Cornerstone OnDemand, Saba, Coursera, Skillsoft, Pluralsight, edX, Udemy, Go1, Infosec, Josh Bersin Academy, Udacity*, Harvard Business Review*, OpenSesame*, and EdCast*
Viva Connections: Qualtrics, ServiceNow, UKG, Talentsoft, StandOut by ADP, Adobe Sign, Moveworks, Lifeworks, Limeade, Tribute, Blue Yonder, Zebra-Reflexis, Workday*, DocuSign*, EdCast*, and Espressive*
Viva Insights: Qualtrics, Glint and Headspace

Viva exists in the security context of Microsoft 365 and is integrated with Microsoft Teams, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 apps. For instance, you can access learning resources from inside Teams.

You may have noticed the daily briefing emails you receive from Microsoft Viva, showing metrics on your activities and telling you that you have too many meetings and encouraging you to schedule focus time (at least that's what mine say).

Viva Sales is designed to simplify business processes for seller working alongside Dynamics 365 and other CRM systems.

Imagine if you could combine Dynamics 365 Sales with Outlook and Teams. Viva Sales does this and much more. You can access contact data in CRM from a Teams chat, and even edit the contact record from the Teams user interface.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCUVc08kmbA

Viva Sales let's you analyze Teams calls with customers to determine their sentiment, the ratio of talking to listening, and other key insights.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCUVc08kmbA

New tasks such as followup items that you enter in Teams during the conversation will be stored in CRM.

Viva Sales is not only a useful product on its own but also shows the potential for the Viva platform to deliver functionality for specific user roles, and is likely the first of many such apps to be released by Microsoft in coming months.

Check out the current Viva plans and pricing.

Key Concepts for Microsoft Dynamics 365: Tenant, Instance, App and Solution

Updated 8/15/2022 To understand Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) and Power Apps, you need to learn some new terms and concepts that may be a bit different from what you know from databases and solutions that are hosted on premises. These concepts also apply to Power Apps. The main difference is that with Power Apps you are not starting with a Microsoft app but more of a blank canvas for your custom apps. This post introduces some key terms and how these concepts are important for planning your implementation. While Dynamics 365 is still available on premises, it is most commonly deployed on the Microsoft cloud. This blog post discusses only cloud implementations. Microsoft has multiple clouds such as commercial and government community clouds in several countries. We start with a Microsoft tenant . A tenant is the account you create in the Microsoft Online Services environment (such as Office 365) when you sign up for a subscription. A tenant contains uni

Understanding Dynamics 365 and Office 365 Admin Roles

Managing Dynamics 365 instances If you run Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) in the Microsoft cloud, you need to understand how your Dynamics instances relate to Office 365 and choose which of your administrators receives which roles and permissions to manage Dynamics 365. In on premises deployments, your network administrator would create and delete user accounts. The Dynamics 365 admin would then assign permissions to users in Dynamics 365. This post explains three administrator roles: Office 365 Global Administrator Dynamics 365 System Administrator Dynamics 365 Service Administrator You may think that the Dynamics 365 system administrator would have power to do all the actions needed to manage Dynamics 365, but this is not the case. What's different in Microsoft cloud deployments is that licenses and user accounts are managed in Office 365 by an Office 365 Global Administrator. This role is analogous to a network administrator for an on premises

My Favorite Microsoft Power Apps Bloggers and their Blogs

by James Townsend Updated 7/5/2022 Microsoft Power Apps is one of my favorite subjects, and I enjoy reading blog posts from members of this thriving technical community. Here are some of my favorite bloggers and their blogs: The Official Microsoft Power Apps Blog I have to start with the official Microsoft Power Apps blog. It has many contributors, largely Microsoft program manager, including frequent posters Denise Moran , Greg Lindhorst , Kartik Kanakasabesan , and Adrian Orth . This is the place to go for product announcements, updates and technical how-to for a broad range of Power Apps topics. April Dunnam April Dunnam was formerly focused on SharePoint and now devoting herself to Power Platform. April offers highly understandable explanations of Power Platform, Dataverse and other top Power Apps topics. She joined Microsoft in late 2019 and has a thriving YouTube channel . Carl De Souza Power Apps Blog and eBook This is one of the most extensive and best organized blo

The Townsend Report

Search This Blog