In this month's newsletter I'm sharing a comprehensive overview of the upcoming integration between Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage Communities.
Microsoft Teams: Viva Engage Communities in Teams
Microsoft have announced a major integration between Microsoft Teams and Viva Engage Communities. Beginning in April 2026 users’ existing Viva Engage community memberships will sync into Teams.
Rich engagement features will bring a deeper integration between Teams and Viva Engage. We believe this will provide a great opportunity for improved adoption of Viva Engage across organisations.
Engage communities in Teams will make it simpler to connect, share, and learn across organisations, unifying conversation spaces, and making it easier for people to engage with their colleagues and communities - right alongside chats, channels, and meetings.
Before we look in detail at the new capabilities, here are some of the key benefits we are likely to see for users and the organisations they are part of:
Benefits for users
- Seamless access within the flow of work Users can participate in communities directly inside Teams without switching apps, making community engagement part of their everyday workflow.
- Enhanced communication & connection Viva Engage enables richer, more human conversations, including discussions, questions, praise, polls, and stories, helping employees feel more connected and heard.
- Improved discoverability & engagement Users can easily find and join communities, receive notifications in Teams (Activity feed), and engage asynchronously with leaders and peers.
- Access to leadership engagement Employees gain opportunities to interact with leaders through announcements, community events, and organisation‑wide dialogues, all surfaced in Teams.
- Knowledge sharing across silos Communities become a central place to ask questions, share expertise, and learn from colleagues across departments or locations.
Benefits for organisations
Some of the benefits we expect to see for leaders and community owners within organisations are:
- Stronger organisational culture & connection With communities available inside Teams, organisations can strengthen belonging, support diversity groups, and build social capital, especially valuable in hybrid or distributed workplaces.
- Better leadership communication at scale Leaders can engage the entire workforce more effectively, share strategic messages, and foster two‑way dialogue that helps align people with organisational goals.
- Increased employee engagement and participation Integrated communities encourage higher usage by reducing friction. Notifications appear in Teams, and favourite communities sync seamlessly, leading to more active participation.
New Engage Communities in Teams capabilities
Communities in Teams have been designed to feel native to the overall Teams experience, including:
- a larger conversation pane
- a docked right rail, and
- Teams-style unread indicators both in the feed and left navigation
Communities will appear in the default unified Chat app in Teams, alongside chats and channels.
Find and manage communities in Teams
Users will be able to organise Communities into custom sections, just as the can today in the unified Teams chat app.
Users can discover new communities through Teams global search or the new browse experience. The Your communities page makes it simple to review all memberships, adjust conversation list visibility, and join new communities.
The Your communities page will be available from the More menu in the Communities section.
Organise Communities in Teams
The Show or Hide feature for each community allow users to control which ones appear in their chat list.
The More… menu can be used to move, manage, and organise each custom section
Communities marked as favourites will appear at the top of the Teams Favourites section.
Communities in Teams will continue to support a rich mix of post types, including discussions, Q&As, storylines.
Activities and notifications
We expect improved notifications with the integration of Communities in Teams - directly in the Teams Activity feed:
- Engage notifications for new announcements, replies, and @mentions
- Unread items appear in bold
- React and reply directly from the notification
- Adjust notifications from the activity app. Select the More menu, choose notification settings, and go to the Communities and storyline app
- Select any item in the activity feed, including Engage announcements and posts in order to see them in detailed view.
Search for and Search in Communities
Another widely anticipated improvement will be searching for and searching in Engage Communities - by using the Teams search bar.
- Use the filter options to filter results to communities only
- Looking for something specific within a community? Select the community of interest, then use Ctrl+F (Windows) or Cmd+F (Mac) to search for keywords in posts, replies, or announcements - Find in Community
- The community search uses AI-driven Copilot support to power content searching throughout your Engage social network and associated resources.
For Admins and Community Owners
The Viva Engage experiences are enabled by default.
Storyline needs to be enabled in the Viva Engage admin centre in order to be available in Viva Engage experiences in Teams.
Community analytics:
When will Engage Communities be available in Microsoft Teams?
Engage Communities are rolling out to Microsoft Teams in Public preview now.
Roll out to General Availability will begin in April 2026, and is expected to complete globally to all eligible users during May 2026.
Microsoft’s interactive demo
Watch Microsoft’s interactive demo: Communities in Teams
And finally…
Watch this space for details on the recently announced retirement of Teams Live Events.
