These guidelines have been developed to help you understand how to make Viva Engage work for you.
Viva Engage is an engagement platform designed for cross-organization collaboration, knowledge sharing, news, calls to action, plans and recognition.
If you need to get a message out to all staff or large groups of staff (campuses, professional, academic and research), Viva Engage is the best way to do that.
You can use Viva Engage to communicate news, share updates, advertise events and initiatives, and celebrate achievements. It’s also the best place to find out about what is going on at the university, get involved and volunteer, discover media stories and connect with and recognize your peers.
At ACU, all staff emails are reserved for critical communications and can only be sent from the VCAC and other approved users.
While the functionality of the platform is similar, our approach to Viva Engage is different.
Viva Engage is not intended to be social media for work. It is a tool designed to share ACU-related information with large audiences.
Where Workplace groups were based on specific topics, niche areas etc., we are adopting a broader approach for Viva Engage. Communities will be audience-based rather than topic-based.
Viva Engage is also easier to access than Workplace and integrates with your MS Teams interface.
ACU-related news and information. Viva Engage is a secondary communications platform to email and is designed for nice-to-know information, rather than need-to-know information. You should post on Viva Engage when you:
Critical information should not be posted on Viva Engage. Critical information should be sent by the appropriate delegate via email. Before posting, you should ensure your information is ACU-related and ask yourself who might be interested in this information. You should not post:
If you are unsure if your information is suitable for Viva Engage, you can contact us for advice.
All staff members at ACU have access to Viva Engage as part of their Microsoft Office 365 license. Students do not have access to Viva Engage and should not be added to the platform.
Launch Viva Engage right from inside your Microsoft Teams app, via the left-hand rail.
Follow these steps to set your notifications.
Where Workplace had groups, Viva Engage has communities. There will be a total of 10 official communities on Viva Engage that will be monitored and moderated by Internal Communications. These fall under four categories:
| All Staff | Academic | Professional | Campus-specific | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Purpose |
ACU-related messages relevant to all staff on all campuses. |
ACU-related messages for the academic community |
ACU-related messages for the professional staff community |
ACU-related messages for staff on specific campuses |
|
Examples of posts |
Posts may include but are not limited to:
|
Post may include but are not limited to:
|
Post may include but are not limited to:
|
Post may include but are not limited to:
|
|
Audience |
All Staff |
Academic staff |
Professional staff |
Campus staff |
|
Type |
Dynamic (membership is automatic) |
Membership is manually managed so that professional staff can opt in. |
Membership is manually managed so that academic staff can opt in. |
Dynamic (membership is automatic by campus). People from other campuses cannot opt-in. |
The first thing you should consider is your audience. While anyone can create a new community, you will get better traction if you post in an established community.
Posting in official communities means you already have an audience and will not need to build up a following in a new community. You are also more likely to get interest from people who otherwise might not come across your community or actively seek out a special interest community on Viva Engage.
If your post could be of interest to all staff, consider whether the All-staff community is suitable, or if you just need to contact people on a certain campus, choose a campus-specific community. If your post is mostly for academics or researchers, choose the Academic community.
With the broad scope of membership for the official groups, you should only have to post in one community to get your message out.
Anyone can create a non-official community on Viva Engage and manage it. While we encourage you to share your posts in one of the official communities (as appropriate), sometimes you need a more targeted or dedicated community. If this is the case, you should first do a search to see if a similar community already exists. Follow these steps to create a community.
You should also consider that Viva Engage is designed for building connections, collaboration and ongoing engagement. If you are creating a community for a one-off event, the community will likely become defunct once the event has occurred. Consider whether Teams may be a better option for pre-planning and sharing resources.
Planning a project that will run for a set time and only needs to be shared with a project team and limited stakeholders? Teams is a better option here too.
If you create a community, you will automatically become the admin of that community. You can add other admins if you want. There needs to be at least one admin for every community. So, if you are the only admin of a community and try to revoke your admin status, you will have to nominate another admin first.
Public communities are visible to everyone and any can join. Private communities are discoverable, but their content is only visible to the community members. You must request to join private groups, and a community admin needs to add you.
All communities are viewable by Engage Admins regardless of their privacy status.
If you create a new community, make sure you add a clear description, so people know what the community’s purpose is.
Staff will be automatically added to the official communities using dynamic lists. If you create a community, this will be opt-in, and people will need to request to join. If you think you need a dynamic community with members automatically added, please contact us.
If your community has had no activity for 90 days, it will be automatically archived.
Make sure that your use of Viva Engage is in line with the ACU Code of Conduct for All Staff.
All ACU policies apply. These include Privacy Policy, Internal Communications Policy, Acceptable use of IT Facilities Policy, Social Media Policy, Discrimination and Harassment Policy, and Workplace Bullying Policy.
Please be professional and respectful. If you have an issue with something someone has posted, have a conversation offline with them about it. If you don’t feel comfortable raising the issue directly you can contact the Internal Communications team via internal.communications@acu.edu.au for advice about how to address your concern.
Visit Service Central to access Corporate Services.
