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Microsoft Teams vs Microsoft Viva
March 20, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
55★
Microsoft Teams is the chat-based workspace in Office 365 that integrates all the people, content, and tools your team needs to be more engaged and effective. Supports video meetings with up to 1,000 participants.
10★
Microsoft Viva is an employee experience platform that brings together communications, knowledge, learning, resources, and insights in the flow of work. Powered by Microsoft 365 and experienced through Microsoft Teams, Viva fosters a culture that empowers employees and teams to be their best from anywhere.
Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Viva are both products of Microsoft, which, much like an omnipresent but largely invisible force, has found a way to infiltrate every aspect of modern work life. They both claim to make work easier, smoother and more connected, though anyone who has spent more than five minutes in a Teams meeting with a lagging colleague might have reservations about the definition of "smoother." Both are part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, which means they seamlessly integrate with everything Microsoft—sometimes so seamlessly that users may not even realize what they’re clicking on. They both employ AI, which, depending on your perspective, is either a helpful digital assistant or an all-seeing overlord quietly judging your productivity. And, of course, they’re both designed for remote and hybrid work, which means they assume your home office setup is a highly efficient productivity hub rather than a dining table covered in coffee rings and misplaced enthusiasm.
Microsoft Teams, a sprightly young thing launched in 2017, is essentially Microsoft’s answer to the pressing question, "How can we make email even louder?" It allows users to chat, call and video conference in a way that ensures no one can ever truly escape work. It replaced Skype for Business, which in turn had replaced something else, following Microsoft’s time-honored tradition of continually reinventing the wheel but with slightly different icons. Teams is used by businesses, schools and governments, meaning that somewhere out there, at any given moment, at least a dozen people are struggling to find the mute button while their cat walks across their keyboard.
Microsoft Viva, on the other hand, entered the scene in 2021, promising to improve employee well-being, which is a polite way of saying, "We noticed you’ve been looking at spreadsheets for 14 hours straight—perhaps you should blink." It’s not so much a communication tool as a corporate mindfulness guru, offering learning resources, performance insights and other vaguely encouraging features designed to make employees feel both supported and, somehow, even more monitored. It’s particularly useful for HR departments and managers who want to say they care about employee happiness without actually needing to reduce workloads. Unlike Teams, which keeps you engaged by bombarding you with notifications, Viva keeps you engaged by subtly reminding you that your work-life balance is mostly theoretical.
See also: Top 10 Team Messaging platforms
Microsoft Teams, a sprightly young thing launched in 2017, is essentially Microsoft’s answer to the pressing question, "How can we make email even louder?" It allows users to chat, call and video conference in a way that ensures no one can ever truly escape work. It replaced Skype for Business, which in turn had replaced something else, following Microsoft’s time-honored tradition of continually reinventing the wheel but with slightly different icons. Teams is used by businesses, schools and governments, meaning that somewhere out there, at any given moment, at least a dozen people are struggling to find the mute button while their cat walks across their keyboard.
Microsoft Viva, on the other hand, entered the scene in 2021, promising to improve employee well-being, which is a polite way of saying, "We noticed you’ve been looking at spreadsheets for 14 hours straight—perhaps you should blink." It’s not so much a communication tool as a corporate mindfulness guru, offering learning resources, performance insights and other vaguely encouraging features designed to make employees feel both supported and, somehow, even more monitored. It’s particularly useful for HR departments and managers who want to say they care about employee happiness without actually needing to reduce workloads. Unlike Teams, which keeps you engaged by bombarding you with notifications, Viva keeps you engaged by subtly reminding you that your work-life balance is mostly theoretical.
See also: Top 10 Team Messaging platforms
