Project Cortex is dead – Viva Microsoft Viva!

Project Cortex, SharePoint Syntex and Microsoft Viva: Podcast Interview with Chris McNulty

February 5th, only one day after the official global launched of Microsoft Viva, M365 Voice Podcasting Team has  invited Chris McNulty, Director of Product Marketing, Office 365, to talk about SharePoint Cortex and the latest announcement of Microsoft Viva.

Microsoft Viva introduces four key modules:

• Viva Insights: Balance productivity and wellbeing
• Viva Topics: Harness knowledge and expertise
• Viva Learning: Accelerate skilling and growth
• Viva Connections: Amplify culture and communications

Hear his insights on Project Cortex, Topics, and details on SharePoint Syntex like document curation, auto labelling, document understanding, metadata processing, OCR, and many other goodies.

my main take-aways are:

• SharePoint Syntex is an Add-On License to E1 and E3 but offers a lot of value for automatically attached IP retention labels and security + compliance policies when E5 is used. Only E5 provides this engine for labeling.
• Document understanding engine inside SharePoint Syntex: auto labeling capability is coming to the forum processing engine in just a few weeks
• “We are kind of slowly retiring the Project Cortex name (…) It was with a clear understanding that by calling it a project we’re making, hoping to make it clear that that wasn’t necessarily the product name”
• Viva topics and SharePoint Syntex are the principal places to look for that information moving forward
• “Idea of SharePoint Syntex is to really take the AI power and make it available to as many people as possible, especially people who don’t write code”
• Lots of investements into OCR, being able to look at handwriting or look at optical renditions of words. Office Documents, Images and PDFs are key. Chris McNulty would like to hear which other file types would be relevant.
• Next step in that journey for topics specifically is to include mining engine which will look at the external content (130 connectors already available for ServiceNow, FileShares, Salesforce etc)  as well as internal content. Microsoft’s mission over the next six months is to kind of broaden the scope of content that can flow into knowledge.
• Microsoft sees knowledge as being one of the instrumental measures of being able to improve the quality of people’s everyday work experience -especially in Pandemics times when Working from Home –  by using the AI.  Viva Topics is able to automatically recognize and organize content into topics which we deliver through Microsoft 365, through Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Search and other Apps.

Don’t wait any longer and listen to M365 Voice Podcast or watch the video! Thank you so much for excellent interview, Sarah Haase, Mike Maadarani, Antonio Maio and of course Chris McNulty!

How can you continue?

• Learn more about Microsoft Viva by visiting landing and product page and watching Satya speak at launch event
• Visit Microsoft Tech community blogs on Connections, Insights, Learning, and Topics
• Watch explainer videos on Connections, Insights, Learning and Topics
• Read FAQs about Topics
• I am talking a lot about Microsoft Viva in our weekly Thursday evening (9pm CET) Video Live Streams with Alex Eggers
• Join my Clubhouse Sessions about Microsoft Viva with Alex Eggers, Thomas Seliger, Peter Geissler and Pia Kaffka. Just follow me on Clubhouse
• You don’t want to join Clubhouse because you are using Android or have data protection concerns? Join me on Dive where I am also hosting panels.
• Find my Blogposts about Viva, Cortex and Syntex in this category