The IT admin’s guide to maximizing Microsoft Viva Insights

Most people think of Microsoft Viva Insights as a tool for tracking productivity or workplace well-being. But for IT admins? It’s also a goldmine of operational insights if you know where to look. With a little digging, Viva Insights brings you data-driven recommendations needed for action.

Let’s break down how you can turn collaboration data into action while keeping your Microsoft 365 environment squeaky clean and compliant. 

What Viva Insights is and why it matters for IT admins

Microsoft Viva Insights is an analytics tool within the Viva suite. It gives a broad snapshot of how employees work within your Microsoft 365 environment, pulling in data from Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint. Curious about work patterns or how your team collaborates? Viva Insights has you covered.

With Copilot Analytics now available in Viva Insights, you can track AI readiness, usage, and adoption right from the web app. This can give you a broader view of how Copilot is actually being used across your tenant. Everything you see on these dashboards is protected by Microsoft Entra ID—access controls will apply to Viva Insights, letting you stay compliant and protect your data. 

Viva Insights can show you where collaboration is happening, but it can’t tell you who owns a guest-enabled workspace or let you revoke access across multiple sites at once. That’s where ShareGate steps in. Use ShareGate to spot inactive teams, fix permission issues, and clean up clutter so the trends you’re tracking in Viva Insights actually lead to action. 

How to use Viva Insights across Microsoft 365 apps

Think of Viva Insights as a central hub that collects data from every single connected M365 app. As an IT admin, this data shows you where things are working and where they could use a helping hand. 

Here’s how Viva Insights works in different M365 environments.

Copilot analytics and dashboards

If Viva Insights is for people analytics and Copilot analytics tracks AI data, then bringing them together gives you a glimpse into how your company works.

At a glance, you can see things like:

• The overall Copilot adoption rate for licensed employees
• Total M365 licenses against total Copilot licenses
• Active Copilot users
• Total number of assigned Copilot licenses for Copilot governance

A broad overview of this data helps you quickly spot missed opportunities. For example, if Copilot is boosting productivity in Outlook but adoption is lagging in other areas, you’ll know where to focus first. 

Viva Insights in Microsoft Teams

Now let’s get into the big one: Teams. 

When Microsoft Teams is your go-to communications platform, a lot of employee engagement data can pile up quickly. From the total number of meetings to after-hours messages, Viva Insights for Teams helps businesses spot trends before they turn into problems.

IT admins can use Viva Insights to track interaction with certain channels. At a glance, you’ll see:

• Overused Teams channels
• Underused workspaces
• Channels or groups that need cleanup 

If you want more info, you can dig deeper with ShareGate Protect. Easily build reports tailored to your governance goals, like finding teams with no active owners, flagging sites shared with external users, or spotting workspaces that haven’t been touched in months. Filter by activity, ownership, sensitivity, or external sharing to see exactly what needs your attention. No exports or PowerShell required. 

Viva Insights in Outlook

Viva Insights for Outlook focuses on how employees spend their time. Are they in a meeting? Responding to emails? Getting a couple hours of deep focus in? Outlook’s Viva Insights shows you this and more. And if something seems off, it might be a sign of deeper issues, like clunky add-ins or governance settings that need a closer look.

With Viva Insights, you get a clear view of how Outlook runs day to day. Step in where needed, streamline workflows, and keep things running behind the scenes.

How ShareGate enhances governance and visibility with Viva Insights

If you’re ready to take action, that’s where ShareGate comes in. Fix the root cause of bottlenecks, rapidly adjust permissions, and clean up misconfigurations at scale—all in one place. 

Here’s how to get more from Viva Insights with ShareGate.

Turning visibility into action

Viva Insights is an analytics engine, highlighting collaboration trends, bottlenecks, and inactivity. It might flag a low-activity Teams channel or reveal a pattern of employees duplicating workspaces on their accounts. That information is great to have but won’t do much without a plan to move forward.

ShareGate turns insight into action. You can bulk-review and archive inactive Teams, clean up permissions, or reassign ownership. Instead of just data on the page, ShareGate turns Viva Insights into a practical tool you can use to streamline your Microsoft 365 environment.

Compliance and reporting

Every IT admin knows that compliance gets complicated, especially when managing hundreds or thousands of users in M365. While Viva shows you how employees work together, ShareGate makes sure collaboration stays compliant.

ShareGate lets you quickly generate reports that add richer insight to Viva’s data. This much-needed governance layer helps you spot things like:

• Incorrect access controls: Scope out who can access data in OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams, and whether someone has permissions they shouldn’t.
• Misconfigured external sharing: Lock down compliance issues with secure external file access and identify files without proper permissions.
• Ownership and lineage: Track who owns what workspaces and make sure important data is never left unmanaged.

Beyond just showing you potential issues, ShareGate helps you fix them.

It’s like going from ‘We think there’s a problem’ to ‘Here’s the audit-ready report that proves we fixed it.’

Secure collaboration made simple

Viva Insights does a great job at showing exactly where user activity happens. But the issue is identifying who owns or has access to these channels and deciding how securely that work is being done.

ShareGate helps fill in the details, providing extra insights that help your flesh out the full story. Instead of seeing that your company heavily relies on Teams, you can peel back the layers and see which accounts own different channels and where to tighten data configurations. 

With ShareGate’s full visibility, it’s easy to adjust permissions, close access gaps, and keep sensitive data right where it belongs. When Viva Insights shows you the pattern, ShareGate enables a response.

Get more from Microsoft Viva Insights with ShareGate

Collaboration patterns, communication channels, shared sources—MS Viva Insights helps you see a lot. But insights alone aren’t enough to meet compliance regulations and keep your M365 environment running smoothly. 

ShareGate Protect gives you a practical set of tools to actively improve your M365 system, letting you pinpoint usage errors and remedy them quickly as well as adjust user permissions to keep your data safe.

Ready to act on what Viva shows you? Start your free 15-day trial today and get your first Governance risk assessment in minutes. See what’s at risk, fix it fast, and move on.