Note: This guidance is applicable only to Viva Engage admins.
We want to give admins more control to curate discovery for situations when a controversial or highly active niche community dominates the Home feeds and discovery emails for your users. For example, if your organization has an extremely active pet community, or a community that’s prone to have long, controversial discussions, people who aren’t members might not to receive those messages.
What does muting do?
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If users are not members of the community, conversations from this community will not appear in their Home Feed or weekly discovery email.
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If a user is a member of the community, conversations will appear normally in the Home Feed and weekly discovery email.
How to mute a community
Note: While this action does not notify the community owner, we recommend having a conversation with the community’s representatives as this can adversely impact community engagement.
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Navigate to the community you want to mute for your network.
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Press More Options in the community header.
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Click Mute community in feed.
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Click Continue.
An icon will appear in the community header that is only visible to network admins, reminding you that you have muted this community.
Best practices
We recommend using this feature sparingly and for special cases. Our general recommendation is to leave community involvement in the hands of end users, as they have the ability to mute if a community is not relevant to them. The most effective means of managing the conversation flow is to amplify positive content that you want to exemplify in your network by featuring conversations. There are special cases, however, where the community should exist, but it is not desirable to have it appear in discovery for any user. For those cases, we recommend muting the community.
FAQ
Q: Can users still search and browse for muted communities?
A: No, users can still find and navigate to these communities.
Q: Will the community owner be notified?
A: No, but we recommend starting with a conversation before muting the community.
Q: Should I use this feature to mute communities not related to work?
A: That’s a personal decision, but research suggests social groups are beneficial at building a sense of belonging and social capital---both of which help people be more effective at work.
