Microsoft Viva gets improvements and Teams integration
In case you’ve forgotten that Microsoft cares about your wellbeing — at least, up to the extent that your employers care about it — take a moment to remember Microsoft Viva, the company’s “employee experience platform.” It now will be integrated directly into Microsoft Teams, meaning you’ll get all the health-minded perks of Viva amidst the onslaught of work being slung at you from colleagues on Teams.
What are those health-minded perks, you ask? Well, they include items such as Microsoft Learning, which Microsoft says “empowers people to better themselves with employee training—naturally and without disruption” that’s designed to “encourage a culture of growth that helps people reach their potential.”
And in terms of brand-new Viva features, you can look forward to mindfulness exercises and guided meditations in Teams’ Viva Insights app. Better yet, later this year, Viva Insights’ upcoming focus mode will silence Teams notifications so you can plow through work without coworkers pestering you. And that’s not all the focus mode will do. According to Microsoft, it will “feature Focus music from Headspace and implement timers to help you make progress on important tasks in regular intervals with breaks planned in between.”
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Wake on Touch could be a new hardware feature for Windows 11 PCs
A new hidden feature has been found in a leaked build of Windows 11. Wake on Touch suggests Microsoft has plans for new hardware that will let you wake your PC simply by touching the display. Maybe we’ll see it in a Surface Pro 8 later this year?
Xbox Game Pass is Microsoft’s biggest opportunity since Windows itself
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