You’ve put thought and care into your Engage post. Now you want confidence that it will reach the right people and appear as intended.
Will the attachment open for everyone who needs it?
Will formatting hold when I paste from another source?
Will the post look the way I expected?
Will this important announcement reach employees quickly?
We’ve released several new updates that help communicators, leaders, and anyone publishing in Engage feel assured of success before and after they post. These improvements are part of our broader focus on making communications in Engage easier to plan, publish, and measure.
What is new
Preview discussion posts before you publish
Authors can preview how a discussion post will appear on the desktop—including in the
Engage web app, New Outlook, and Microsoft Teams—and on a mobile device before publishing. This helps you catch formatting issues, see how media will appear, and review the final reader experience with more confidence.
Catch file access issues before your readers do
Engage now alerts authors to potential file permission issues while they are drafting. If an attached file might not be accessible to the intended audience, the author can fix the issue before publishing and prevent readers from encountering a blocked link. Authors can also see any data classification labels applied to the file.
Track notification delivery
The notification delivery tracker, now available for announcements in storylines and communities, gives communicators and leaders visibility into announcement notification delivery times. After publishing, you can track when notifications begin sending, see progress by channel, understand estimated delivery timing, and confirm when notifications have been sent. Notifications also reach their audience faster than before. On average, total notification delivery time has decreased by about 25% for community announcements and about 60% for storyline announcements.
Capture attention with more meaningful Outlook subject lines
Employees can now get a sense of the announcements in their inboxes at first glance. We’ve removed the “Announcement” prefix from Outlook notification subject lines, leaving more room for the post’s actual content. Our data indicates that this change increased announcement email opens by 8.6%, clicks by 4.7%, and replies by 3.7%. When you consider this is based on millions of interactions, that’s quite a significant lift!
Create posts faster and with more confidence
Reduce the time and uncertainty involved in creating posts with a clearer destination picker, streamlined formatting and post types, and a focused action bar that keeps key publishing options easy to find.
Seamlessly copy and paste (coming soon)
Communicators tell us they often draft communications in other apps, such as Word or Loop, before moving the final content into Engage.
Now it’s easier to bring that content into Engage with less cleanup. We’ve updated the publishing experience to better preserve formatting when you move content from a draft into a post.
Coming next: more precise ways to reach your audience
We’re inviting customers to preview two targeting experiences. Get early access to these features and provide feedback that helps shape the experience. Sign up at https://aka.ms/targetingpreview.
- Storyline targeting helps leaders and communicators reach the right employees using attributes such as reporting structure, role, department, job title, or location.
- My Team audiences give every identified leader a dynamically maintained audience that includes everyone in their reporting chain. My Team provides the foundation for Leadership Corner, audience analytics, storyline announcements, and boosted distribution of a leader’s activity.
For storyline announcements, leaders and their delegates can notify their My Team audience or create a more specific audience using organizational attributes, existing groups, or individual users. The announcement remains broadly visible on the leader’s Storyline while notifications are directed to the people who need them. Communicators, delegates, and Engage admins can also create custom audiences for any leader, either alongside or instead of My Team.
To sign up for the preview, visit aka.ms/targetingpreview.
Note: Storyline targeting and My Team audiences are available with a Premium Viva Engage license, such as Viva Employee Communications and Communities or Viva Suite.
More confidence in every communication
These updates help your Engage posts land as intended, from drafting and previewing through delivery and follow-through. Try the new publishing improvements today, and sign up for the targeting preview to help shape what comes next.