Viva Goals Retirement To Happen on December 31, 2025

Viva Goals is an implementation of the Objections and Key Results (OKR) methodology to allow organizations to define and measure progress against goals (the OKRs) set at the organization or team level. Goals wasn’t part of the original launch for Microsoft’s Viva employee engagement suite in February 2021. As part of its work to extend the Viva suite Microsoft acquired Ally.io in October 2021. The technology was subsequently rebranded as Viva Goals and reached general availability in August 2022.

Microsoft’s decision to retire Viva Goals came like a bolt from the blue. The first public indicator emerged when Microsoft published MC949603 in the Microsoft 365 admin center on December 5 along with a companion explanatory article to let customers know that Microsoft ceased development for Viva Goals on December 5, 2024 and will retire the product on December 31, 2025. Microsoft also said that no prospect exists to extend access to Viva Goals past the retirement date.

Looking back, the resignation of Ally.io founder Vetri Vellore from Microsoft in December 2023 might be seen as an early indicator that things weren’t going so well with Viva Goals. Vellore is now leading the development of Rhythms.ai, an “AI-powered operating system for high-performing teams.” It’s not unusual for founders of acquired companies to depart after their retention agreement expires, and Vellore departing to set up another startup fits the pattern. However, it probably didn’t help. Losing leadership is never good for a struggling product.

Why Forced the Viva Goals Retirement?

When it announces decisions, Microsoft often stresses its use of telemetry acquired from user activity to inform those who make the decisions. In this case, Microsoft says that “While some customers have recognized value, overall adoption and usage of Viva Goals across the Viva Suite customer base has not grown. Microsoft has been unable to reach the scale and impact needed to continue further investment.” In other words, some customers like Viva Goals but not enough have opted to use it to warrant further development.

Given the scale that Microsoft 365 runs at, it’s unsurprising that Microsoft has high hopes for new products. If products don’t attract substantial customer interest, the potential for failure and retirement always exists. Introducing OKRs into an organization is not like launching an application like Planner. According to some successful practitioners, executive buy-in and leadership is needed to drive the adoption of the methodology. Support from the top of the organization can’t be half-hearted or inconsistent. It’s got to be fully committed and ongoing, and while some customers are enthusiastic about OKRs, it’s obvious that most didn’t view Viva Goals as an important part of their cloud infrastructure.

The most recent usage number revealed by Microsoft was that the Viva Suite had 35 million monthly active users (July 2023). However, Microsoft did not specify usage data for individual products within the suite. The situation is further complicated because Viva Engage (Yammer) components like the Q&A app show up in Teams and might accrue some usage through that route. Another example of how Viva Engage embraces Teams in a way that should drive usage is the support for storylines in Teams chat announced at Ignite 2024 and due for availability in early 2025.

The Second Viva Element to Fall

Viva Goals is the second element of the Viva Suite to be axed following another surprise decision to retire Viva Topics earlier this year. In the case of Viva Topics, Microsoft pointed to Microsoft 365 Copilot as a replacement. Since the announcement, Microsoft has delivered features like custom agents to allow tenants to develop their own form of knowledge infrastructure, albeit for much higher license costs.

The path forward for customers who use Viva Goals is less obvious. In the FAQ for the Viva Goals retirement, Microsoft says that they are “exploring third-party solutions and partnerships to facilitate a smoother transition.” It seems like a lot of work needs to happen between now and December 2025 to create migration tools to export data from Viva Goals to other platforms. We’ll have to see how the transition unfolds.

More Disruption in Viva?

The retirement of two products from the Viva suite might cause some to think that it’s not worthwhile to invest any more time into Viva products. That’s an understandable feeling. Given the way that Microsoft has demonstrated absolute ruthlessness in cutting underperforming products from its portfolio, the future of any Viva product is certainly something to consider. The current line-up is:

• Viva Connections
• Viva Engage
• Viva Amplify
• Viva Pulse
• Viva Glint
• Viva Insights
• Viva Learning

Seven products seem like too many. It’s certainly confusing at times to understand what each product does. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft trims the line-up further in 2025.

So much change, all the time. It’s a challenge to stay abreast of all the updates Microsoft makes across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Subscribe to the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook to receive monthly insights into what happens, why it happens, and what new features and capabilities mean for your tenant.