In this interview, Imogen Gifford speaks to Wes Hackett, Microsoft 365 MVP and Addin365 CTO, about the latest release of Addin Analytics: new ways to understand how different employee groups engage with the digital workplace through SharePoint analytics and Viva Engage insights.

The latest release helps communications and IT teams see the bigger picture of their digital workplace without weakening the access controls organisations already rely on in Microsoft 365.

Imogen: What does filtering analytics reports by audiences make possible? 

Wes: Lots of things in Microsoft 365 create a group, and any of them can become an audience. A Microsoft Teams team is a group, so you can filter your analytics to a project team and see what its members consume during a transformation project or product introduction. 

Viva Engage communities create groups too. If you are trying to get a strategy in front of everybody, you can see which communities are engaging with it and which are not, then tailor your approach. You can also group accounts by office, department, length of service or role level. 

Combine those audiences with Journey Explorer, our journey report, and you can follow how different employee groups move through the digital workplace, helping you identify where their journey could be improved. The same audiences also drive the targeting of news posts and content, making it easier for employees to engage with content that’s relevant to them.  

Imogen: If different audiences search very differently, what can that reveal? 

Wes: Search appears in two places. The first is a dedicated SharePoint-level search report showing every search term and where it was performed. Overlay an audience filter and you can compare groups. London and New York, for example, might search for different things, such as process guides versus benefits. 

That shows what each audience is looking for, and what it cannot find, so you can decide which menu items or content to target. The second place is Journey Explorer, which shows where in a journey searches happen. If engineers keep searching for the same acronym on a process guide, the content owner can explain it on the page. 

Imogen: Why is it important to make finding individual SharePoint sites and pages faster? 

Wes: Our filters already cover date range, audience and geographic location. We have now added site and page filters, so you can look up a site or page by name or URL. 

Content lives in different places and is owned by different people, but employees use it collectively. News articles, process guides and a sustainability page might together form one lens on environmental performance, for example. Put them in one filter and your analytics show how that content group performs. 

Imogen: Why give teams one place to see all their Viva Engage communities? 

Wes: Nowhere natively lists all your communities and takes you quickly to their analytics. Our tabular report does. It shows whether each community is open or closed, its members, owners and age, with a direct link to the Viva Engage analytics. 

Imogen: Why are privacy, member count, owner count and age the right details to show? 

Wes: Customer feedback told us communications teams wanted to know how easy their communities are to join. Employees can opt in to a public community themselves. For a private one, employees have to know about it and ask, so somebody needs to tell them. The report gives a clean snapshot of the landscape, so teams can advise community owners on improvements. 

Imogen: What questions should signals like few owners, or years without scrutiny, prompt? 

Wes: Membership size does not equal value. A small community of specialists can add real value if it is driving an outcome. Member and owner numbers are key pointers, but not the only KPI. 

Governance matters too. If a community has owners but no members, you should probably retire it, or at least ask the owners why it exists. If it is large and long established, check who a message would reach and whether people engage.

Imagine you were told there are 50 fire safety experts, but the community is vibrant with only eight members. That prompts a conversation with the owner about encouraging the others to join. It is about air traffic controlling your engaged footprint. 

Imogen: How did you balance wider visibility with the access controls organisations rely on? 

Wes: The entire product is security trimmed, so you do not see numbers for anything you cannot access at source. You should group the sites you can access, own or govern into views, such as your intranet. An unrestricted view of everything is dangerous from an IT and data governance point of view. 

We decided early on to follow Microsoft 365 best practice: you see what you are allowed to see. In Viva Engage, if you are not allowed into a community, you cannot get in, but you can see who the owner is and contact them. 

How Addin Analytics helps you meet your business objectives

Addin Analytics enables you to start with the business outcome you want to drive, then shows you whether your current internal communications and digital workplace strategy are helping you reach it. It goes beyond counting views by tracking consumption, understanding and sentiment for the audiences and locations that matter to you.  

Consumption: is the content being read? Views, likes, shares and reading time show what gains attention. Filters then reveal whether that content is reaching the right audience.  

Understanding: are people following the journey? Journey Explorer and search reports show where readers take the next step, where they drop off and what they cannot find. This helps internal comms teams identify where employees may need greater clarity and what content needs to be updated.  

Sentiment: how is it landing? Viva Engage analytics add responses, reactions, unanswered questions, recurring topics and sentiment reporting, giving comms teams greater insight into how employees receive communications. This helps teams identify positive and negative sentiment and use that insight to shape future communications.

Ready to turn your intranet analytics into more effective communications? 

If you’re looking to better understand how employees engage with your content, identify opportunities and improve communications impact, our experts are here to help. Discover how Addin Analytics turns engagement data from SharePoint and Viva Engage into actionable insights that inform your next steps.