Manage and Test Your Viva Connections Setup
After deploying Viva Connections, ongoing management is key. This article covers how to monitor dashboard experiences, review SharePoint storage in Active sites, and validate audience targeting in Microsoft Teams.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure you have:
- SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator role
- Viva Connections set up in the Microsoft 365 admin center
- At least one Microsoft 365 or Entra ID group configured for audience targeting
- Access to the SharePoint admin center
Monitor Experiences in the Admin Center
The Viva Connections admin center gives you a central place to track all configured experiences, their status, and their assigned audiences.
Steps:
- Sign in to admin.microsoft.com.
- Go to Settings > Viva > Viva Connections.
- You’ll see a list of all configured experiences. Each entry shows:
- Name of the experience
- Status (Active or Inactive)
- Assigned audiences
- Linked SharePoint home site
- Select an experience to open its detail pane.
- Review permissions, analytics, and linked app settings.
- Select Edit dashboard to open the dashboard editor on the SharePoint home site.
- In the editor, review all cards for accuracy, broken links, or outdated content.
- Use the Preview button to simulate the experience for different user roles.Note: If your organization has multiple Viva Connections experiences — for example, one for corporate staff and one for frontline workers — each experience is managed separately from this page.Tip: Check card descriptions and icons periodically. Cards that are no longer relevant should be removed or replaced to keep the experience clean.
Review Storage Usage in Active Sites
Monitoring storage in SharePoint helps you avoid hitting tenant or site-level limits, which can disrupt workflows and prevent content uploads.
Steps:
- Open the SharePoint admin center at admin.microsoft.com/sharepoint.
- In the left navigation, select Active sites.
- On the Active sites page, locate the Storage used (GB) column.
- Select the column header to sort by storage from highest to lowest.
- Identify sites that are approaching their limits.
- Select a site name to open its detail pane, then go to the Storage tab to view detailed usage.
- To set or adjust storage limits:
- Go to Settings > Site storage limits.
- Choose Manual to set per-site storage caps.
- Enter a storage limit in GB for high-priority or high-risk sites.
- To enable notifications, instruct site owners to configure storage alerts from their Site Settings > Storage Metrics page.Note: Storage data in the admin center can lag up to 24–48 hours. Do not rely on real-time figures for urgent decisions.Tip: Use the Export option on the Active sites page to download a CSV of all sites and their storage usage. This is useful for regular reporting or capacity planning.
Understanding storage allocation:
| Storage Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Tenant pool | Shared storage available across all sites |
| Per-site limit | Optional cap set by admin for individual sites |
| Site usage | Actual storage consumed by files, lists, and metadata |
Test Audience Targeting in Teams
Audience targeting controls which users see which dashboard cards in Viva Connections. Testing this before a full rollout prevents users from seeing irrelevant or incorrect content.
Steps:
- Navigate to your Viva Connections home site in SharePoint.
- Select Edit to open the dashboard editor.
- Select a card you want to target, then select the pencil (edit) icon.
- In the card settings panel, scroll to the Audience field.
- Type and select one or more Microsoft 365 groups or Entra ID groups.
- Repeat for all cards that require targeting.
- Select Preview from the top toolbar.
- In preview mode:
- Switch between Desktop and Mobile views.
- Check that targeted cards appear only for the correct audience.
- Confirm non-targeted cards are visible to all users.
- Look for layout gaps where hidden cards leave blank spaces.
- Exit preview and make any adjustments needed.
- Select Publish to save and push changes live.
- Open Microsoft Teams, go to the Viva Connections app, and sign in as a test user who belongs to the targeted group.
- Confirm the correct cards are displayed.Note: After publishing, changes can take up to 24 hours to fully propagate across all users in Teams.Important: Users who do not belong to any targeted group will only see cards with no audience restriction. Make sure at least some cards are available to all users so the dashboard is not empty for anyone.
Audience targeting behavior at a glance:
| Card Setting | Who Sees It |
|---|---|
| No audience set | All users |
| Audience group assigned | Only members of that group |
| Multiple groups assigned | Members of any of those groups |
