Viva Engage - Multi tenant organization (MTO) 🌏

Bjørnar Aassveen
May 20
3 min read

Did you know that Viva Engage supports multi-tenant organizations?

MTO is based on Hub & Spoke architecture where Hub is the owner and Spoke is a member in the Cross-tenant setup

✅Using a hub-and-spoke model, one central HUB tenant can communicate effectively with all spoke tenants (local or regional entities). This allows you to:

Share storylines, campaigns, and Leadership Corner content across the entire organization.
Ensure that important information from management reaches all employees at the same time.

✅Multi-tenant Viva Engage makes it possible to build a common digital community, even if employees are distributed across different legal entities or countries.

✅ Create and use global communities

Users from different tenants can participate in the same Viva Engage communities, without having to switch accounts or log in to a different tenant.

This provides a seamless experience and strengthens collaboration and community across the entire organization

Viva Engage

Hub

Central node: Acts as a central hub that can be connected to multiple Spokes
Shared services: The Hub contains shared groups, typically corporate groups that all Spokes are interested in. In addition, the Hub can contain internal groups that are not shared with Spokes.

Spoke

Isolated Networks: The spoke networks are isolated and manage Engage separately.
Hub Connection: Each spoke network connects to the hub to access the shared services.

Hub members do not need duplicate licenses in Spoke, and Spoke members do not need duplicate licenses in HUB. It is the user's associated tenant that must meet licensing requirements, these licenses cross Hub and Spoke.

Microsoft 365 Requirements

Entra P1 or P2 license: Included in Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, and Microsoft 365 F1 or F3 SKUs.
Microsoft Entra ID: Manages all networks.
Microsoft Graph API: Must be enabled.

Viva Engage Requirements

Administration: administrative rights to Viva Engage. (Yammer Administrator)
Native Mode: The networks must be in Native Mode.
(All networks provisioned after January 2020 are in Native Mode by default.)
One Network: Each tenant can only have one Viva Engage network.
Full Trust: Full trust must be established between all tenants. - Important that this is configured on both ends, in both Hub and Spoke(s). Cross-tenant access overview - Microsoft Entra External ID | Microsoft Learn
Licensing: All users in both HUB and SPOKE tenants must have a Microsoft Viva Suite or Communications and Communities license.
Storyline: Must be enabled on the hub tenant. (For storyline features in MTO)
All Engage networks must belong to the same GEO location. For example, all networks must belong to "EU geo" or "US geo"

If you have an Engage network that needs to be moved, this can be done by contacting Microsoft support, this is done directly to the Yammer Reprovisioning team via email: yamrepo@microsoft.com

After the request has been sent, it will take up to 7 days before you receive a response in return where Microsoft asks for some information about you and your company that you must fill out and send back. Eventually, the person with signing rights for the company will receive a document by email that must be digitally signed, only when this is done will the Yammer repro team contact the registrant again and arrange a move date. NB! When moving, you will lose ALL content in Engage.

Once all the above requirements are met, you can file a support case with Microsoft requesting that they enable MTO for your network. What they need from you is the Tenant ID on the HUB and Spoke tenant as well as screenshots of the Cross-Tenant setup and a screenshot showing the Engage "Feature management" panel, as shown in the images below.

Once Microsoft has enabled MTO for you, you will get an additional option under the "Feature Management" panel - "MTO Policy"

During initial setup, you select which tenant will be the HUB (which you have defined in the HUB & spoke setup earlier). It is important to be careful here, if you select the wrong HUB, you will have to report the issue to Microsoft again to reset the setup.

After you have set up and selected the HUB network, it takes up to 48 hours for it to be reflected in both camps.

As an example, I have defined my user in the HUB (Aassveen) tenant as the leader for all users in the HUB and Spoke (Miles AS - Demo) tenants, this means that when I post a post with my user in the HUB tenant it will also appear under "Leaders" in the Spoke tenant.