Community administrators manage their community's appearance and membership. They can also designate other community admins to help with these tasks.
To manage community files and resources, see Manage pinned files and links in Viva Engage.
Add or remove community members
Visit your Engage community at engage.cloud.microsoft.
On the right panel, select Add people
in the People module.Enter a name in the search box or use Suggested members and guests for this community.
Select Add
to add someone or Cancel 
to the remove them.When you add or remove a member, the community content doesn't change. New members get access to all content (including previous posts) in the community.
Former members of a private community can no longer access that community's content, except for their old posts through the All Activity feed and notifications. Their posts remain in the community feed.
Note
Updates you make to community membership, permissions, and other settings in Viva Engage or Microsoft 365 can take up to 24 hours to replicate across your network. Member counts can be inaccurate for up to 30 days due to user lifecycle.
Add or export Viva Engage community members with a CSV file
Add members
If you need to add large groups of members, manage your community's membership as a group in Microsoft Entra ID. Learn more about Viva Engage and Microsoft 365 groups.
Because Viva Engage is Microsoft 365 connected, community admins can add large numbers of new community members at once with a CSV file. Members must already belong to the network and therefore, have a Microsoft 365 Entra ID account. The CSV can include Azure AD B2B guests, provided they're already in the network. Use the principal name for the email address of a B2B guest.
Export a member list
Export a Viva Engage CSV member list to serve as a contact sheet or to verify your membership. See Bulk download members of a group in Microsoft Entra ID.
Each file can contain a maximum of 20,000 email addresses.
- In Microsoft Excel or a spreadsheet app, create a workbook.
- Starting on row 1, column A, enter an email address. This is the UPN from Azure Active Directory.
- Continue adding one email address per row (up to 20,000 max), leaving all other columns empty. Make sure that the file has no added notes, names, or special characters or the import process will fail.
- When you’re done, select File > Save as > File Format and select CSV UTF-8 format.
Important: The default file format for Microsoft Excel, Excel Workbook (.xlsx) by default, will fail to import. - On the right panel of Viva Engage, select Add people
.
- Select CSV import.
- Locate your CSV file and select Open. The import process can take up to 24 hours to complete.
Note
- If guest user access isn't enabled in Engage, bulk CSV imports that contain guest users won't add those guests to the Engage community. Those guests are added to the backing Entra ID group during the import process, so guests obtain access to other connected workloads, such as the Microsoft 365 group-backed SharePoint site.
- If community guest access is needed, the Engage network admin must enable guest access on their networks from the Viva Engage admin center's Security settings -> External messaging page.
Upload community images
Your cover photo illustrates your community's identity and purpose, or it can publicize a community event. Use a simple, recognizable image that reads well on mobile devices. Community admins can upload a photo for their community on the web or in the mobile app. Cover images must be 20 MB or less, 1400 x 524 or 700 x 262 pixels, and use PNG, JPEG, or non-animated GIF format.
For the community icon or logo, use a square image. Uploaded images resize to 72 x 72 pixels.
Upload a cover photo on the web and mobile
- Hover over the cover photo and select Update cover photo.
- From the file list, select an image to upload.
.
Customize the visual appearance of your organization's Viva Engage community
Make Viva Engage feel like an extension of your organization. With custom branding, you can personalize the Viva Engage experience to reflect your organization's unique identity and culture. This feature helps create a more familiar, trusted environment where members recognize and connect with your organization's brand. Custom branding is available across multiple all Viva Engage experiences.
To customize Viva Engage branding, you must be one of the following administrator roles:
- Engage admin
- Network admin
- Global admin
- Verified admin
What you can customize
- Company or brand logo: Display your organization's logo in the Viva Engage header, the right panel on the web, and the mobile app.
- Company or brand name: Add your organization's name alongside the Engage brand in the header.
- Color theme: Apply your organization's brand color to key interface elements such as headers, buttons, links, and backgrounds.
Apply your organization's brand to Viva Engage
- Open the Viva Engage Admin center.
- Select to Brand center.
- Enter your organization's brand name.
- Upload a large logo and a small logo.
- Choose an existing theme color or create a custom color that aligns with your organization's brand guidelines.
- Save your changes.
- Review the preview to see how branding will appear across supported Viva Engage experiences.
- When you're satisfied with the results, select Publish.
Add a community admin
If you’re a community admin, you can assign other community admins. Communities can have up to 100 admins.
Viva Engage verified admins can also assign community admins. A Viva Engage network admin can assign community admins for a public community. You must belong to the community to assign other admins in a private community.
- Open a Viva Engage community.
- Under People, select View all.
- Browse or search for a person by name or email.
- Under Role, select More
and select Admin.
Respond to member questions
As a community admin, you monitor the conversations and concerns in your community.
- To ensure that no one’s question has been overlooked, in the community feed select the filter Questions with no response to quickly find any unaddressed questions.
- To provide an official response or confirm accurate answers, filter by Questions with no best answer and mark the best answer.
Accept requests to join private communities
If you're the community admin for a private community, you'll get a notification in Viva Engage each time someone requests membership in your community.
- To receive an email notification for each request, go to your email notification preferences and select Someone requests to join a private community I administer. For steps, see Enable or disable email and phone notifications.
Find and add related Viva Engage communities
A well-established Viva Engage community can have relationships with other communities of related topics. These relationships give members a chance to discover more communities and resources. For example, a community with a broad-based subject, such as a popular spreadsheet program, can have related communities for subjects such as pivot tables, complex math, use of Copilot prompts in datasheets, and so on.
- Visit a community you are interested in.
- On the right panel, a Related communities list appears below any other community features. Related communities won't display if the community administrator has not established them.
- If you are an admin, navigate to the community's settings> Related communities > Edit. Select a related community from the drop down menu.
Admins can add or remove communities to the Related communities list. Make sure a Related community selection makes sense for the context of both communities. Select Edit.
- Add a related community by entering a name or title to filter for similar community names or select from the list.
- Remove a related community by selecting Remove
.
- Close when you're finished, and Viva Engage adds the community to the list.