Setting up Viva Connections for Microsoft Teams Mobile App

Microsoft have been pushing their 'Viva' suite over the last few years. This suite comes with many apps and capabilities, but one core functionality we encourage clients to consider is now called 'Connections' (previously known as Viva Connections). You can read more about what Connections does and how to set it up in this article.

• What does setting this up do?
• Pre-Requisites
• Official Microsoft Resources & Articles
• Adding the Connections app in the Teams Admin Centre
• Customization of Connections
• Pin the ATLAS site for all Users by Default
• Setting up Connections for Teams Mobile App
• Further Assistance

What does setting up Connection do?

By following this guide it will allow your organisation to display their version of ATLAS from within Microsoft Teams for every user! An example of what this can look like is shown below, where "ClearPeople" is the ATLAS home page site.

Below you can see in our demo tenant that the home page landing experience is shown in Teams, meaning users have a single point of access for Teams collaboration, internal chat, and accessing their Atlas platform. 

This is especially useful for Mobile, as we find the Teams app is a good recommendation for users to set-up as it provides more capabilities for their work than just accessing via browser or the SharePoint app.

Official Microsoft Resources & Articles

This article was created using knowledge obtained from Microsoft's own articles on this process, however these are subject to change, and your internal IT architecture, and IT policies around 365 may bring additional considerations. Atlas does not bring any additional functionality, so please refer to the below articles for the official Microsoft documentation if a deeper insight is needed. Unfortauntely we cannot support this process, only provide guidance against the Microsoft articles.

Microsoft resources

• Overview of Viva Connections
• Viva Connections on mobile devices
• Plan Viva Connections
• Set-up Viva Connections in M365 Admin Centre
• Default landing experience for Viva Connections

Pre-Requisites

Below are the pre-requisites required to complete this set-up. It is important to highlight that to complete these step-by-step instructions, you must have the permissions (or privileges) to the SharePoint and Microsoft Teams admin centre for your Organisation

1. Your Organisation must be on ATLAS
2. Your SharePoint site must have a "Home Site" set-up. Set-up SharePoint Home-Site Guide
3. Have 192x192 and 32x32 images to represent your Organisation. These will be used on the sidebar shown above and the application catalogue within Teams.

Adding the Connections app in the Teams Admin Centre

1. Log in to the Microsoft Teams admin centre
2. Select Teams Apps and then Manage Apps
3. Search for “Connections”

1. select the Connections app, as shown above, by clicking on the title

2. Select Actions in the top-right area and then select Customize

Customization of Connections

From the Customize option which is next to the app logo, you can update the attributes of Connections to create what will become your ATLAS "link" within Teams for your Organisation.

The information you will need to supply is explained below:

• The Short name will be the display name of the Connections app in your tenant
• A Short description for the app (<80 char)
• Website URL is the URL of your Home-Site
• Privacy Policy and Terms can be left default to the Microsoft one, or you can specify your own Organisations if you wish
• A Long description for the app (<4000 char) 
• The 192x192 & 32x32 images you have prepared to represent your Organisations ATLAS site

Hit "Apply" to save your changes.

Now, follow the steps below so the application will be available for users inside your organisation.

1. Return to the Teams admin centre and select Teams apps then Manage apps and search for the Connections app using the name you selected as the Short name when you first customized the Connections app.

2. Change the app from the default Blocked by Publisher state to the Allowed state

Pin the ATLAS site for all Users by Default

Finally, this section will make your application show by default for all users inside your organisation by pinning it on their Teams sidebar for easy accessibility.

1. Inside the Teams admin centre select Teams apps then Setup Policies
2. Select Global policy within the list 
3. Under Pinned Apps, select Add App
4. Search for the short name you gave your application in the previous step and select Add
5. Now, under the Pinned Apps section select your Application and use the arrows to re-organise the order in which they appear on the Teams sidebar for all users

We recommend re-ordering your application to the top of the list for easy visibility among your organisation. 

Ensuring the correct page URL shows as the default link

Connections may default to the out-of-the-box Connection landing page, which will be different to your Atlas site and home page you want to ensure displays for all users. Please follow the guidance here in the Microsoft article to view the necessary scripts you will need to run to ensure the Atlas site is the default landing page shown in your Connections App within Teams.

Setting up Connections for Teams Mobile App

There is some configuration required to get the mobile experience of Connections working as you would expect. Please refer to our Knowledge Article here to complete this.

Further Assistance 

If you encounter any issues when using Connections, it is advisable to raise a ticket directly with Microsoft. Connections is a Microsoft product, meaning they are the only ones that can implement fixes and provide support for its functionality. We have a Knowledge Article here that details the best way to raise this.