Viva Admin Center

Creating UX coherence across 10 Viva apps to drive suite-wide adoption

Context

Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform comprising 10 integrated apps. Initially, each Viva app operated as a standalone product with its own admin experience. In early 2021, leadership introduced a strategic shift to unify them into a cohesive suite.

The business goal was to streamline employee-focused solutions, enhance consistency and integration, unlock cross-app high-value scenarios, and drive broader adoption of the Viva suite.

The problem

Deployment and adoption delays keep customers from realizing Viva’s full value.

Since the start of FY23, the Viva Suite has grown from 30% to 53% of licenses sold, a trend that is expected to continue. However, of those who purchased the suite, 57% purchased for less than 30% of their total addressable seats (estate), and of those, 68% are using 2 or fewer apps.

Why?

Before the unification of Microsoft Viva into a suite, each Viva app operated independently with separate admin experiences. This fragmentation created several challenges for IT admins and organizations trying to deploy and manage Viva effectively.

Key challenges:

No centralized admin hub for managing Viva apps, forcing admins to switch between multiple interfaces.
Inconsistent deployment workflows across apps increased onboarding time and deployment complexity.
Varying control patterns across apps made permission management inefficient.
Difficult to scale Viva adoption due to fragmented deployment workflows.

My Role & impact

My Role & Responsibility

In February 2023, I joined the Viva Horizontal Admin team to lead the design of the Viva Admin Center, driving suite-wide UX coherence and customer adoption through:

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Expanding the Pattern Library & Defining UX Guidelines

Enhanced design consistency and scalability by expanding the existing pattern library and creating Viva Admin UX guidance to align cross-app experiences.

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Identified opportunities through research & cross-team collaboration

Led research initiatives to identify adoption barriers and worked with cross-Viva deployment SMEs to optimize time-to-value and deployment flows.

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Improved cross-team collaboration process

Created a centralized channels for admin UX stakeholders across 8 apps, improving alignment between horizontal and vertical teams.

Established process toolkit through cross-functional workshops and continuous feedback from partner teams, streamlining collaboration between the horizontal and vertical teams to enhance efficiency and impact.