Viva Glint's 2026 Roadmap: Continuous Releases, Granular Permissions, and AI-Driven Insights

Microsoft has announced a significant evolution in its Viva Glint platform for 2026, moving beyond incremental updates to a foundational shift in release strategy, security architecture, and AI integration. This transformation positions Viva Glint not merely as a survey tool, but as a strategic platform for managing organizational change, particularly in the context of AI transformation and hybrid work models.

What Changed: From Monthly Releases to Continuous Delivery

The most substantial operational change is the abandonment of the traditional monthly "release day" cadence. Microsoft is transitioning Viva Glint to a continuous release model, where smaller, more frequent updates are deployed as features reach maturity. This shift directly addresses customer feedback about the wait times and risks associated with large, monolithic monthly updates.

For enterprise administrators, this means:

• Faster access to improvements without waiting for a target date to align
• Reduced risk through smaller, incremental changes that are easier to monitor and roll back if issues arise
• Minimal disruption, with most updates occurring with low or zero downtime

The company will continue to publish General Availability (GA) timing on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, but the expectation is that features will ship when ready rather than being held for a specific monthly window. This aligns Viva Glint's development velocity more closely with the pace of modern cloud services and reduces the planning overhead for IT teams managing the platform.

Enhanced Security: Granular Permissions and Role Refactoring

In February 2026, Viva Glint will introduce a more sophisticated permissions model designed to address enterprise security requirements while maintaining operational flexibility. The current "Company Admin" role, which grants broad administrative access, is being replaced with a more granular system.

New Service-Level Permissions

Five new permissions are being introduced, allowing organizations to assign specific administrative responsibilities without granting full platform control:

• Advanced Configuration: Access to advanced platform settings
• Question Library: Management of survey question repositories
• Service Configuration: Control over core service settings
• Nudges: Management of notification and reminder systems

All existing Company Admins will automatically receive Advanced Configuration access, ensuring continuity. The role itself is being renamed to Viva Glint Service Admin to align with naming conventions across the Microsoft ecosystem.

The New Survey Designer Role

A particularly significant addition is the Survey Designer Role, which enables organizations to grant users the ability to create and deploy surveys without broader administrative permissions. This targeted role is specifically designed for initiatives like:

• AI transformation programs
• Hybrid work initiatives
• Change management employee listening campaigns

By decoupling survey design from platform administration, organizations can empower HR business partners, change management teams, and department leaders to launch feedback cycles quickly while maintaining security boundaries. This is especially valuable for large enterprises where centralized IT or HR teams cannot be the sole owners of all survey deployment.

Governance Control

Assignment of new Service Admin roles will be restricted exclusively to the Microsoft Admin Centre (MAC), ensuring tighter governance and centralized control. This eliminates the possibility of decentralized role assignment and provides a single source of truth for administrative access.

Copilot Integration: Default On and Centralized Management

Starting in March 2026, Copilot in Viva Glint will default to ON for all customers. This represents a strategic commitment to AI-assisted employee listening, making AI capabilities the standard rather than an opt-in feature.

More importantly, Copilot access management will be consolidated into Viva Feature Access Management (VFAM), removing the existing Glint-specific admin toggles. This change:

• Reduces administrative overhead by providing a single control point for Copilot access across Viva services
• Ensures consistent governance experience aligned with other Microsoft Copilot implementations
• Simplifies compliance and auditing processes

Organizations should review their VFAM settings in preparation for this transition. The move reflects Microsoft's broader strategy of creating a unified governance model for AI features across its productivity suite.

New AI-Powered Features in Preview

Copilot Highlights

The private preview of Copilot Highlights is now live with phased customer access. This dashboard feature uses AI to instantly summarize survey results, highlighting:

• Team strengths
• Opportunities for improvement
• Engagement trends

For managers and leaders, this provides rapid assessment capabilities, enabling them to pinpoint focus areas and celebrate achievements without manually analyzing raw survey data. Organizations can express interest in joining the preview here.

Continuous Employee Engagement with Workplace Metrics

A more ambitious integration is in private preview for March 2026, with early builds available starting January 2026. This feature bridges Viva Glint survey data with Viva Insights workplace metrics, creating a continuous feedback loop between stated employee sentiment and actual workplace behaviors.

For focus areas like "Work-life balance" and "Collaboration," this integration allows senior leaders to:

• Examine supplementary data points (e.g., meeting patterns, after-hours work, collaboration frequency) alongside survey responses
• Conduct more data-driven discussions about organizational improvements
• Maintain visibility into team dynamics between formal survey cycles

This requires enabling data flow from Viva Insights to Viva Glint at the tenant level. Express interest in the preview here.

Operational Improvements: Reporting and Focus Areas

Executive Summary Report Export

Managers can now export the default sections of the Executive Summary report directly to editable PowerPoint slides. This enhancement replaces the previous method of static screenshots, enabling easier customization and consumption of insights outside the Viva Glint platform.

Focus Area Enhancements

Based on customer feedback, Microsoft has restructured how Focus Areas (previously called goals) relate to survey cycles. Previously, the connection between Focus Areas and the surveys that generated them was unclear, leading to reporting confusion.

The update now directly ties Focus Areas to their originating survey cycles and removes the separate goal period concept. No Focus Areas were deleted during this transition. This ensures that reported goals accurately reflect insights gathered from specific surveys, simplifying analysis and improving actionability.

Learn more about Focus Areas in the documentation and implementation guide.

Strategic Context: Beyond HR Surveying

The changes align with Viva Glint's evolution toward supporting "Beyond HR" scenarios. A recent Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) session explored how the next generation of Viva Glint will have greater impact across the organization, particularly for AI transformation and change management initiatives.

This strategic direction is supported by new thought leadership research: "Designing AI Feedback Systems by Industry." The research indicates that employees want a voice in AI transformation, and organizations that listen early and often see accelerated adoption. A key finding is that AI feedback is inherently social—informal conversations and team meetings remain the most powerful channels for surfacing real-time signals about what's working and what's not.

The research suggests that by designing feedback systems that meet employees in the flow of work, leaders can iterate faster and turn everyday interactions into engines of AI readiness and impact. Read the full research here.

Implementation Considerations

For organizations planning their 2026 Viva Glint strategy, several key decisions emerge:

1. Permission Architecture: The shift to granular permissions requires planning role assignments. Organizations should identify which teams need survey design capabilities versus full administrative access.

2. Copilot Governance: With Copilot defaulting to ON in March, organizations should review VFAM settings and establish governance policies for AI-assisted employee listening.

3. Data Integration: The Viva Insights integration for continuous engagement requires technical preparation, including tenant-level data flow configuration.

4. Release Management: The continuous release model reduces the need for monthly testing cycles but requires more ongoing monitoring of update impact.

5. Survey Strategy: The Focus Area enhancements and "Beyond HR" direction suggest organizations should consider expanding survey usage beyond traditional HR metrics to include change management, AI transformation, and operational excellence initiatives.

Resources and Support

For technical guidance, Microsoft Learn provides comprehensive documentation on:

• Adding new employee attributes
• Score calculations
• 360 report categories
• Team Conversations user experience
• Phased reporting access
• Survey program hyperlink options

The Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) offers direct engagement with product teams, exclusive previews, and networking opportunities with other customers. Participation includes access to dedicated sessions for Viva Glint & Pulse, roadmap discussions, and iterative design reviews.

Looking Ahead

The 2026 roadmap positions Viva Glint as a central component of Microsoft's employee experience platform, particularly for organizations navigating AI transformation. The platform's evolution reflects broader industry trends: the need for continuous feedback mechanisms, granular security controls, and AI-powered insights that integrate with daily workflows rather than requiring separate analysis cycles.

For enterprise leaders, these changes represent both opportunity and responsibility. The opportunity lies in more agile, secure, and intelligent employee listening capabilities. The responsibility involves adapting governance models, permission structures, and survey strategies to leverage these new capabilities effectively.

As organizations continue to adapt to hybrid work models and AI integration, the ability to listen continuously, act quickly, and measure impact will become increasingly critical. Viva Glint's 2026 roadmap appears designed to meet this need, transforming employee listening from periodic assessment to continuous organizational intelligence.

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This article is based on the January 2026 edition of the Viva Glint newsletter from the Microsoft Community Hub. For the latest updates, visit the Viva Glint Blog.