This morning, at its Viva Summit, Microsoft announced the integration of Copilot into Microsoft Viva and also the formal addition of Glint to the Viva family in July 2023. Microsoft also announced a new “Performance Equation,” via its Work Trend Index Special Report (from the People Science team at Glint), which shows some compelling correlations between engagement and financial performance. (If you need the backstory on all of this, see our previous RedThread articles on Microsoft and Glint here, here, here, and here.)

As I’ve mentioned on social media, I had a chance to participate in today’s keynote panel, so got to peek under the hood before today’s announcement.

Here’s the TL;DR of it all:

• Copilot in Microsoft Viva = LLMs + Microsoft Graph + Viva Apps. Put another way, Copilot in Microsoft Viva applies the power of large language models (LLMs) to data in the Microsoft Graph and Viva apps. Practically speaking, this means that users can now query, in natural language, any Microsoft Viva app, and get a result generated by the LLM from across all the apps.
• “Viva Glint” = Copilot + Glint data + Microsoft behavioral and collaboration data. We’ve known for a while that Glint was moving to Viva, and that by doing so, it would be in the same “family” as Microsoft’s behavioral and collaboration data (provided via Viva Insights). However, it’s one thing to be in the same family – it’s another thing to share data effectively. The addition of Copilot changes the game, as it allows all those data to be accessed easily in an interface that is already well-known by Glint customers.
• Productivity x Engagement = Performance. Microsoft also released a new study (conducted by the People Science team at Glint) that shows why business leaders should care about engagement: because there is a strong relationship between engagement levels in organizations and financial returns. Based on this, they have thus come up with what they are calling the new performance equation: Productivity x Engagement = Performance.

Let’s dive into the details more.

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