New for communicators: Theme moderation in Viva Engage

Microsoft

Jun 11, 2025

Moderation in Viva Engage just got easier and more impactful, thanks to new proactive, AI-powered capabilities.

Engage network admins and corporate communicators can now use theme moderation to keep an eye on conversations. Theme moderation is available as part of the new Communications Dashboard within Engage.

Theme moderation is now rolling out for Viva suite and Employee Communications & Communities customers. Theme moderation requires a user to have the corporate communicator, network admin, or global admin role.

How does theme moderation work?

Creating and moderating with themes in your network allows you to customize how you target and track messages. Themes are not required to be exact matches like keywords, instead they can be either broad topics or specific words or phrases.

View themes and detected conversations in the advanced moderation tab within the Communications Dashboard

Once enabled, theme moderation is always-on, working tirelessly on your behalf to scan and monitor conversations. It leverages the power of AI and LLMs to detect conversations across languages and context to extend the powers of moderators beyond what is possible through traditional keyword monitoring or human effort.

Setting up theme moderation

Simply define themes by typing in the word, phrase, or concept you’d like to monitor. You have the option to automatically mute all matched conversations upon detection.

Muting removes conversations from the Engage home feed and email digests, significantly reducing reach. Auto-mute and themes work together to help moderators keep conversations professional and productive within their network.

When conversations match themes, they show up in the detected conversations table. From there, moderators can take further action or adjust criteria to meet their needs.

Create a theme, set the auto-mute capability, and add team members to notifications to stay on top of new activity

Conversations can be manually muted and reviewed after detection

How do themes and keywords fit together?

Themes and keywords work together to moderate conversations across Engage. While themes benefit from contextual matches and LLM technology, keywords monitoring looks for exact matches based on your criteria.

Themes are best for capturing broadly specific discussions where language evolves and automatic actions like mute are necessary. Keywords are well suited for unique, relatively static terms.

Customers with access to both themes and keywords may find that over time, themes are the primary path to monitoring and moderating at scale. Consider the impact moderators can have with both tools together.