Viva Engage Advanced Analytics v SWOOP Analytics
When Microsoft recently announced the official name change from Yammer to Viva Engage, there was also mention of new analytics available in the Microsoft Viva Suite called Advanced Analytics. Needless to say, we wanted to know more and to compare the Advanced Analytics in Viva Engage with what we offer at SWOOP Analytics.
The standard analytics in Viva Engage cover some basic activity reporting, but have gaps when it comes to insights that support internal comms teams, leaders, and community managers. We've known for a long time that understanding behaviour and engagement at both an organisational and audience level allows leaders to maximise the impact and value of their enterprise social network. The option of Advanced Analytics is a step forward in this regard. Please note, these Advanced Analytics are available only to those using the Microsoft Viva Suite, which also includes Viva Learning, Viva Goals, Viva Topics and Viva Insights, at an extra cost of $USD12 per person per month.
Leader Engagement in Focus
The main focus of the new Advanced Analytics relates to the use of Viva Engage as a communications channel for executives and leaders. Reports such as reach, themes (keywords) and sentiment start to equip communications teams with insights relating to corporate initiatives and campaigns.
The Advanced Analytics have two areas that can help internal communicators and senior leaders gain understanding around the success of engagement efforts: audience analytics and campaign analytics. Engagement is very much in terms of senior leaders engaging with staff rather than broader engagement of people feeling a sense of belonging, or connection to a community.
Audience Analytics
To understand the impact of leaders in Advanced Analytics, the administrator of Viva Engage can create a “leader”, and then manually define the leader's audience from either Microsoft Active Directory Groups or select individual people. Reports are then scoped to those people. The reports available currently cover some key areas for a set time period:
Overall sentiment of the audience - useful to see how people might be feeling within the audience based on what they are posting.
Key themes that are being discussed - this can show the type of topics that are front of mind for people in the audience and how they are feeling about them. It also highlights the key conversations about the topics.
Key activity statistics - highlighting how many people have viewed announcements from the leader of the audience, how many people in the audience have been active in general and on the leader's storyline.
Active communities - which communities are popular for the people in the audience.
Gallery of Viva Engage Advanced Analytics Audience reports and SWOOP Analytics Segment reports.
Similar insights can be found in SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage with the added advantage that any audience can be defined by any attribute data in Active Directory, or by uploading custom attributes via a .CSV file. The reports are also not tied to a specific leader, allowing comparisons between segments or investigation at an enterprise level. SWOOP offers deeper insights AND shows how you can improve by providing nudges for improvement. For instance, our years of research into what drives online engagement shows that, for example, asking questions has a very substantial impact on engagement. This means you can show the impact that asking questions has on engagement through our Curiosity Index.
Campaign Analytics
One of the new premium features for Viva Engage is the ability to set up a campaign by people with a communication role. The campaign is identified by assigning a hashtag and it creates a page (similar to a community page), that displays any posts and threads that use the campaign hashtag.
Once a campaign is set up you can access a set of reports in Advanced Analytics to monitor the success of the campaign. They consist of the number of people that have posted, replied or reacted to the campaign hashtag, as well as how many have viewed content or are following the campaign. These reports are restricted to set timeframes and only to hashtags that are set up as campaigns.
SWOOP for Viva Engage gives these insights with the exception of views, to ANY hashtag, topic or keyword, within the network and across different reporting periods. SWOOP considers social listening more broadly and we include deeper, and more, insights about any hashtag, any topic and any key phrase used, and not limited to the hashtags created by corporate communications. This is crucial as it is just as important to get insights about topics people are talking about beyond those initiated by corporate communications.
Gallery of campaign analytics in Viva Engage and SWOOP Analytics
Personal Performance
As someone contributing to a Viva Engage network, it's always useful to understand how you are performing. The Advanced Analytics, like SWOOP Analytics, gives everyone a view on the impact they make. The personal insights within Advance Analytics focus on some key statistics:
Reach - the number of people that have seen your posts or replies.
Followers - important as these get your storyline posts.
Any audience you have if you are a leader where one has been defined.
The top posts you have made by views, reactions or comments.
The types of reactions you have received.
The top comments on your posts.
Where you are most active - which communities you are most active in and how this compares with your storyline.
Gallery of Advanced Analytics and selected SWOOP Analytics personal reports
Some of these are displayed over time so you can see if there is a trend or pattern, and showing some of the posts is useful so you can understand what resonates with others. But like the Campaign Analytics, they are more for monitoring than giving deeper insights when compared with the depth in the SWOOP for Viva Engage Personal dashboard. Our approach is to help people see the strength of their collaborative relationships, the persona they exhibit to other users and nudges to help make improvements. One of our most popular features is the SWOOP Personas which will help you understand your communication and engagement style. For instance, Engagers have a balance between how much they post and how much interaction they receive back. In contrast, Broadcasters tend to be more one-way communicators. The ability for communications teams to compare the interaction levels and styles of individual leaders, and then coach leaders on how they can improve, has been particularly impactful.
Powering Communities, Governance and Collaboration
The Advanced Analytics are presented clearly and cover some of the essential reporting people might need to make the best of their Viva Engage network. There are gaps that remain relating to the wider use of enterprise social beyond communications and into the realm of community and connection at a peer-to-peer level. Our research and benchmarking links our insights to the overall maturity of an organisation's enterprise social network and informs comms teams, community managers and individuals on how they might improve performance.
If you see your Viva Engage network as a way to get digital signals about your organisation, then you'll need something more to understand them. SWOOP for Viva Engage has multiple reports to help understand how work works, such as cross-collaboration, curiosity index, and persona distribution reports. Our benchmarking studies and maturity model mean we can suggest goals for key metrics and give suggestions on how individuals, communities and organisations can make progress. One of the most challenging questions for an analytics solution to answer is; “What does good look like, and how do I get there?”, something SWOOP can answer, based on real-life data. If you run a community on Viva Engage you can see how your community performs compared with our external benchmark.
At a senior leader, or internal communications level of reporting, SWOOP provides strong enterprise-wide insights that can help identify strong or weak communities. It can surface those people that demonstrate leadership without necessarily being a formal leader or manager. The breadth of reporting in SWOOP allows organisations to truly understand the capability and maturity of their enterprise social network. SWOOP also includes a range of reports and export features that help govern Viva Engage. For example, unless managed well you will see constant growth in the number of communities. It is natural for some communities to wither but you also need to ensure that you delete or archive them when they are no longer useful.
SWOOP also provides the ability to compare communities. This is important as it serves as inspiration so communities can learn from each other.
SWOOP Analytics versus Viva Engage Advanced Analytics
Taking Advanced Analytics as a base, the table below gives a comparison on the key reporting areas compared with SWOOP for Viva Engage. SWOOP allows custom date ranges and comparison reports (based on date, segments, types of post etc) as standard.
| Feature / Report / Analytic | Viva Engaged Advanced Analytics | SWOOP for Viva Engage |
|---|---|---|
| Personal Analytics | • Reach
• Reach Breakdown (viewers, followers, audience) • Top conversations • Reactions split • Top comments • Community / Storyline Split • Top communities |
• Key Statistics (Number of posts, replies, reactions, @mentions from and to you)
• Community Activity • Activity by Time • Personal network map • SWOOP Persona • Nudge (suggested actions to take) • Collaboration Profile • Two-way relationships • Multi-group participation • Most Engaging Posts • Keywords • Impact of Attachments • Sentiment by Time / sentiment breakdown • Curiosity Index • Mention Index • Response Rate • Personal Benchmarking (if enabled) Core differentiator is that SWOOP provides communication and engagement styles via the SWOOP Personas. We also show deeper insights into behaviours we know from years of research have substantial impact on engagement when done well, for instance asking questions, @ mentioning people and using photos/video appropriately. |
| Audience Analytics |
Audience defined to a defined Leader and manually defined audience:
• Sentiment in Audience • Top discussion themes • Theme breakdown (top posts and sentiment) • Leader announcement viewers • Active Community members • Active Leader storyline users • Audience Activity • Audience Engagement • Most Active Communities across audience |
Segments from AD or customer attributes:
• Key Statistics (Number of posts, replies, reactions, @mentions by segment • Community Activity • Activity by Time • Interactive Users • User Activity • Collaboration Profile • Cross-enterprise collaboration • Multi-group participation • Two-way Relationships • Most Engaging Posts • Hot Topics • Keywords • Impact of Attachments • Sentiment by Time / sentiment breakdown • Sentiment Analysis • Influential People • Curiosity Index • Mention Index • Response Rate • Persona Distribution • Segment and Individual Benchmarking (if enabled) Core differentiator is that SWOOP offers deeper insights, AND also shows how you can improve. For instance, our years of research into what drives online engagement shows that asking questions has a very substantial impact this. Therefore, we show the impact this has, and if more attention should be considered. |
| Campaign Analytics |
Official Campaign hashtags and pages:
• People who reacted • People who replied • People who posted • People reached over time • People following over time |
Any hashtag, topic or keyword
• Activity By Time • Community Activity • Key Statistics (Number of posts, replies, reactions, @mentions) • Segment Activity • User Activity • Curiosity Index • Influential People • Mention Index • Persona Distribution • Response Rate • Cross-Enterprise Collaboration • Two-way Relationships • Impact of Attachments • Keyword Cloud • Most Engaging Posts • Sentiment Analysis • Sentiment By Time • Topic or Individual Benchmarking (if enabled) Core differentiator is that SWOOP considers social listening more broadly and includes deeper and more insight about any hashtag, any topic and any key phrase used. This means that you can quickly react quickly and with confidence. |
| Collaboration Analytics |
N/A |
Personal Level:
• Collaboration Profile • Multi-Group Participation • Personal Network Map • Two-way Relationships Segment Level:
Community Level:
Topic and Thread Level:
Communities are the lifeblood of Viva Engage, and one of the top questions asked is “How do we know if Viva Engage is actually connecting us as a company?”. SWOOP’s insights are very strong here, and can help you answer that question. You can very quickly show interaction patterns across the company and compare that with previous periods. |
| Content Analytics |
Question and Answers for premium Answer function (content outside of Viva Engage network) |
• Hot Topics
• Impact of Attachments • Keyword Cloud • Most Engaging Posts • Public/Private Messages • Sentiment Analysis • Sentiment By Time |
| Enterprise Analytics | Audience reporting if all company set up as an audience |
Reports across the whole of the Viva Engage network
• Activity By Time • Community Activity • Community Growth • Community Health Index • Interactive Users • Key Statistics • Segment Activity • User Activity • Curiosity Index • Influential People • Mention Index • Persona Distribution • Response Rate • Cross-Enterprise Collaboration • Multi-Group Participation • Two-way Relationships • Hot Topics • Impact of Attachments • Keyword Cloud • Most Engaging Posts • Public/Private Messages • Sentiment Analysis • Sentiment By Time |
| Governance |
N/A |
Ability to Viva Engage admins to perform exports that assists with maintaining Viva Engage:
• Export list of all communities and activity levels • Export all content of a thread • Export all members of a community • Export all activities across all of Viva Engage |
Additionally, SWOOP Analytics provides reports at the thread level. When discussions are triggered, for example by the announcement of an important update by a senior executive, corporate communications is often asked: “What did people think of this?”. SWOOP allows you to find all the insights about the particular post, including sentiment analysis. SWOOP even allows you to download the entire content of the thread, which is highly valuable when dealing with very long threads that need to be read and responded to.
For each discussion thread SWOOP provides the following insights:
Comparison of User Activity of two threads in SWOOP Analytics
Activity By Time
Key Statistics
Segment Activity
User Activity
Influential People
Persona Distribution
Cross-Enterprise Collaboration
Two-way Relationships
Impact of Attachments
Keyword Cloud
Most Engaging Posts
Sentiment Analysis
Sentiment By Time
Viva Engage Advanced Analytics represents a new set of reporting capabilities targeted at understanding how a defined audience is reacting to a leader’s communication efforts. SWOOP does this, and much more, and also helps manage the entire Viva Engage network.
Finally, we also have to realise that insights about Viva Engage must be complemented by insights about the intranet. Viva Engage can broadly be positioned as “about conversations”, whereas the SharePoint intranet is about “sanctioned content”. As anyone in corporate communications would know, these two go hand in hand, and SWOOP Analytics provides the most extensive and actionable insights for both of these.
We’d love you to try SWOOP Analytics for Viva Engage for free today and make your own comparison. Why not also try SWOOP Analytics for SharePoint at the same time?
