How to use Viva Topics for administrators

  • 6 minutes

In Microsoft Viva Topics, the Topic center is a Modern SharePoint site, a center of knowledge for your organization: from monitoring work patterns to streamlining internal communications. Topic center is created during the Viva Topics setup in the Microsoft 365 admin center. It has a default home page where all licensed users can see topics.

Learn about the different capabilities of Viva Topics for various users:

Scenario Role
Discover and curate Topics All users
Manage Topics in Topics center Knowledge managers
Create a new Topic Topics contributors and Knowledge managers
Edit a Topic page Topics contributors and Knowledge managers

Discover and curate Topics

All Viva Topics users can discover and manually curate topics with Viva Topics to identify people and content connected to the topic, and if enough is discovered, it becomes a suggested topic.

Viva Topics uses Microsoft Graph and AI to identify topics in your organization. A topic is a phrase or term for a specific meaning to the organization, and has resources related to it to help people understand what it is and find more information about it. Different types of topics will be important to your organization.

Initially, the types of topics identified are:

  • Project
  • Event
  • Organization
  • Location
  • Product
  • Creative work
  • Field of study

Viva Topics looks to identify the following properties and display them on a Topic page:

  • Alternate names and/or acronyms.
  • A short description of the topic.
  • People who might be knowledgeable about the topic.
  • Files, pages, and sites related to the topic.

Manage topics in Topic center

Knowledge managers can manage topics permissions, view topics and manage topics pages. They can:

  • Confirm or remove topics discovered in your tenant.
  • Create new topics manually as needed if AI does not provide or discover enough information.
  • Edit existing topic pages.

Create a new topic

Topics contributors and Knowledge managers can create a new topic.

Users can create a new topic if AI doesn't discover through indexing or if the AI technology didn't find enough evidence to establish it as a topic. To create a new topic, they need to:

  • Have a Viva Topics license.
  • Have permissions to Who can create or edit topics. Knowledge managers can give users this permission in the Viva Topics topic permissions settings.

You can create a new topic from two locations:

  • Topic center home page:

    A screenshot shows a portion of the Manage topics page.

  • Manage topics page:

    A screenshot shows a portion of the Topic center home page

Any licensed user with the Who can create or edit topics permission (Topics contributors) can create a new topic from the Topic center by selecting the New menu and Topic page.

To create a new topic:

  1. Select the option to create a new Topic Page from the ribbon on the Manage Topics page. In the Name this topic section, type the name of the new topic. In the alternate names section, type any other names the topic might be referred to.

  2. In the description section, type a couple of sentences that describe the topic.

    • In the Pinned people section, you can "pin" a person to show them as a subject matter expert on the topic. Begin by typing their name or email address in the add a new user box, and then select the user you want to add from the search results.
    • You can also "unpin" them by selecting Remove from list on the user card. You can also drag the person up or down in the list to change where they appear.

  3. In the pinned files and pages section, add or "pin" a file or SharePoint site page associated to the topic.

    • To add a new file, select Add, select the SharePoint site from your Frequent or Followed sites, and then select the file from the site's document library.
    • You can also use the From a link option to add a file or page by providing the URL.

  4. The Related sites section shows sites with information about the topic. Add a related site by selectingAdd and then either searching for the site or selecting it from your list of Frequent or Recent sites.

  5. The Related topics section shows connections existing between topics. You can add a connection to a different topic by selecting Connect to a related topic, typing the related topic's name, and selecting it from the search results.

    You can then give a description of how the topics are related and select Update. The related topic you added will display as a connected topic.

    To remove a related topic, select the topic you want to remove, then select Remove topic.

  6. Add static items to the page. These items can be text, images, or links. Select the canvas icon, which you can find below the short description. This opens the SharePoint toolbox from which you can choose the item you want to add to the page.

  7. Select Publish to save your changes.

After you publish the page, the topic name, alternate name, description, and pinned people will display to all licensed users who view the topic. Specific files, pages, and sites will only appear on the topic page if the viewer has Office 365 permissions to the item.

Edit a topic page

Topics contributors, Knowledge managers can edit a topic. These users can edit an existing topic. They may need to do this to correct or add additional information to an existing topic page.