Viva Connections Dashboard and Feed web parts have landed (public preview)

Context

I was waiting for this release since the announcement back in March 2021. Finally, the Dashboard and Feed web parts have landed in my tenant (Public Preview), oh yes! Part of the Viva Connections Public Preview currently rolling out, these two key components are directly connected to the Viva Connections mobile experience that will be deployed soon inside the Teams mobile app as a dedicated tab. This article is just an overview of what are these web parts and how to use them in your tenant. My next article will focus on how to get started with Viva Connections extensibility, Adaptive Cards Extensions (ACEs) and SharePoint Framework so stay tuned!

Limitations

• The Dashboard web part is only available on your SharePoint Online home site.
• You need to setup a Viva Connections Dashboard first before using the web part.
• The Feed web part is available on every SharePoint Online site.
• The Feed web part and it’s content cannot be customized at the moment.

Dashboard and Feed web parts

The Dashboard web part is a quick access for useful resources inside your company like websites, tasks, line of business applications, third party apps, etc. You can use out of the box cards of develop your own cards with Adaptive Cards Extensions (ACEs) and SharePoint Framework (Viva Connections extensibility).

The Feed web part aggregates relevant news and discussions from Microsoft 365 services like SharePoint Online, Yammer and Stream. It provides a unified channel in the context of the user to keep it informed and engaged across the company. You can also add video news link (from SharePoint and OneDrive only) in the Feed like any other news post which is a really nice add.

Note: the Feed feature has no extensibility point like the Dashboard at the moment.

You can start using these web parts from now, they are available like any other out of the box web part when editing a SharePoint Online page:

So it was just a quick overview of what’s actually rolling out about Viva Connections, the next step is the mobile experience in Teams mobile app which is actually not deployed so let’s wait and see…

Happy coding everyone!

Resources

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-viva/connections

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-viva-blog/viva-connections-public-preview/ba-p/2730869

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/viva-connections-overview