Make the most of Viva learning by Upskilling, Collaborating, Learning and Development

This article will briefly guide you on the following capabilities of Viva learning,

• Learn from the courses
• Share a learning course to a user, group, channel in teams
• Recommend a learning course to users
• Bookmark a learning course
• Add the learning course to your calendar
• Group and share content with your peers using Collections

First things first, make sure you have access to Viva Learning. To validate whether you can access Viva Learning, navigate to https://teams.microsoft.com. In the app store, search for Viva Learning and click the Viva Learning app. You will be redirected to the Viva Learning home page as shown in Fig 1.1. If you don't have access, contact your admin to enable this for your organization or get yourself a trial license.

Fig 1.1 - Viva learning app in Teams app store

Learn from the courses

Let's get started with how you can access the learning material and start your learning journey using Viva Learning,

On the home page of Viva Learning, pick your interests from the variety of categories listed, then save your interest. Once saved, you will start seeing the courses based on your interests in the side carousel, as shown in Fig 1.2

Fig 1.2 - Viva learning courses based on user's interest

You can also search for a course in the Viva learning search box, as shown in Fig 1.3. In the below fig when searched for Azure, you will see courses from multiple learning providers

Fig 1.3 - Search learning course using the search box in Viva learning

You can filter the learning content by providers and duration, as shown in Fig 1.4 and Fig 1.5, so that you can learn from the provider of your choice and spend learning time exactly how much time you want to spend on your learning.

Fig 1.4 - Filter the learning content based on learning providers

Fig 1.5 - Filtered learning content by providers and duration

Select any one of the courses to start your learning journey. For this article, I have selected a course from LinkedIn Learning - 'Azure Resource Manager'.

As you click on the course, you will find the following course details, Provider of the course, Author, Duration, Details, and Course updated on time stamp. You can click on the play button to start your course or click on Open in LinkedIn Learning to start your course.

Once you finish your course, you can also give a rating to the instructor to understand if the content was helpful and beneficial or needs any improvisation.

Find all the details as shown in Fig 1.6

Fig 1.6 - Get started with learning and find all the details of the course

You will also start seeing related courses just below the opened course. Once you finish the course, you can view all your completed courses under the My learning tab -> Completed section, as shown in Fig 1.7

Fig 1.7 - My learning Tab with the Completed section

Bookmark the courses

If you think a course is important for you and you wish to bookmark the course, you can click on the bookmark. This will bookmark your course, and you can unbookmark the bookmarked course as well as shown in Fig 1.8

Fig 1.8 - Bookmark a learning course

You can also find all your bookmarked courses in Bookmarked section under the My learning tab, as shown in Fig 1.9

Fig 1.9 - Bookmarked coursed under My Learning tab

Add a learning course to your calendar

At times it gets difficult to dedicate some time to learning/upskilling. If you want to dedicate time to learning, you can add the courses to your calendar so that it will remind you to take up the course and finish it within the course duration.

Navigate to the course of your choice, click Add to Calendar from the top command bar, fill in the date, time, and description, and click Save, as shown in Fig 1.10.

This will add a course to your calendar, and the slot will be blocked for you to spend time upskilling and learning. Refer to Fig 1.11 to see how learning is added to the calendar.

Fig 1.10 - Add learning to your calendar

Fig 1.11 - Learning added to your calendar

Share a learning course to a user, group, channel in teams

You can also share learning content with your peers; let's share a learning course to a team's channel and see how it can be done

Click on the Share button from the top command bar; you will see two options, 1. Copy link 2. Teams, as shown in Fig 1.12,

If you copy the link, you can paste it in any message box or teams channel post box.

Fig 1.12 - Share a learning course using the copy link or teams

Select teams, and a panel will open; I want to share this course to Remote living Team > general channel; hence I have selected that in Shared to, I have written a small note, and the course link was, by default, added in the details box as shown in Fig 1.13

Once you click on share, this course will be shared as a post to the mentioned channel, as shown in Fig 1.14

Fig 1.13 - Share the learning course to a channel

Fig 1.14 - Course shared as a post in the Teams channel

Recommend a course

Recommending a course is different from sharing as this also gives you the flexibility to choose a deadline for finishing the recommended course. Managers widely use this feature where they can recommend the coursed to a team of people and ask them to finish by the given timeline.

The one who recommends can also keep track of the progress made by everyone on the recommended course.

Navigate to a course you wish to recommend; click on Recommend from the top command bar. In recommend to, add the individuals whom you want to finish this course, set a due date for them, and click on Recommend as shown in Fig 1.15

Fig 1.15 - Recommend a course

Once you recommend the course, you can keep track of the progress made by the individual by Navigating to the Manage tab > Recommended by You section. You will see a list of courses recommended by you, as shown in Fig 1.16. You can keep track of your recommended course as shown in Fig 1.17

Fig 1.16 - Recommended by You section under Manage Tab

Fig 1.17 - Keep track of recommended course by clicking on the track icon

Group and share content with your peers using Collections:

You can also create a collection of likely related courses. Navigate to My learning tab > Collections to start creating a collection, as shown in Fig 1.18

Fig 1.18 - Create a collection in the My learning tab

Fig 1.18 - Give a title, description, and thumbnail image for your collection

Once the collection is created, Start adding content to your collection, as shown in Fig 1.19. This will add courses in sections as shown in Fig 1.20 & 1.21

Fig 1.19 - Collection with name Azure DevOps created; add content to this collection

Fig 1.20 - Added content to the Collection

Fig 1.21 - Collection named Azure DevOps with sections and courses is created   

Now you can start sharing, recommending, bookmarking, add this to the calendar, just like the other courses from the providers.

You can find a list of all your collections under Manage > collections

I hope you make the most of Viva learning by sharing, learning, and upskilling yourself.  

Keep learning, and Keep Sharing!