Improving Admin Center setup and deployment times to boost time-to-value
COMPANY
Microsoft
ROLE
Lead Designer
Duration
6 weeks
Team members
1 PM, 2 Engineers
Overview
The Viva app management dashboard in the Microsoft admin center enables admins to set up, deploy, and manage their organization's Viva apps.
The dashboard guides admins through key configuration tasks, including permissions, role and audience assignment, and content sources, to ensure all app features are fully operational.
Problem
Viva app setup success rates declined over 8% in six months, driven by invisible status, fragmented experiences, and incomplete setups.
Left unaddressed, this would lead to lower usage, slower time-to-value, and increased customer churn.
Solution
An updated setup dashboard that reports status and a consolidated and more standardized setting configuration process
Results
Reduction of setup and deployment times
Quicker time-to-value
Constraints
Working within a rigid design system, focusing on patterns the were familiar to admins
6 week design and ship timeline due to urgency of the problem
01. Finding the cause of the problem
Auditing existing design
Using data gathered from support tickets, my first step was to run a product audit to identify specific areas where the problems were occurring
Notable findings:
1
Lack of information that left users in the dark about what is complete, in progress or even needs to be started
2
The look and feel of setup pages could vary wildly and sometimes occur outside of the Admin Center almost entirely
3
Users had a general uncertainty about what steps needed to be done first or if the steps needed to be done at all
02. lightweight cross-functional workshopping
Collaborating on ideas
Workshop structure
I used the audit results to help support a collaborative session with my PM and engineering partners.
Before ideating, I ran an alignment exercise that helped guide participants to take known frustrations and identify what solving each successfully looked like. This built a common understanding around what our goals and focuses might be.
I used that to power an ideation session and a dot-voting session to select what ideas best matched our goals.
Impact mapping
After summarizing categorizing the ideas outside of the workshop, I brought the team back together for some impact mapping. The categories I identified were:
1
Notify
Ideas that focused on improving how users were informed of any action needed
2
Organize
Approaches that could present info in a more consistent way to streamline the process
3
Consolidate
Ways to bring all setup steps into the same admin center dashboard
Core design focuses
At-a-glance information (Notify)
Informed progress (Notify)
Uniform design & shared components (Organize)
03. Iterating
Exploring design options
As I explored designs I wanted to make sure I kept in mind the following:
A minimal disruption to users typical workflow
Staying within the Microsoft Admin design system (MADS) guidelines
Creating a scalable, flexible design for different app setup needs and future updates
Setup dashboard landing page
To best understand existing Admin design patterns that could indicate progress, status, health or compliance, I audited existing admin centers like Microsoft Intune's
The Intune design leveraged simple status (called compliance) displays so users could easily see if there were any issues or tasks to be done.
Thanks to MADS, adding a similar status column component with colored icons for quick reference was an easy lift for design and engineering that would also drive impact.
Settings configuration page
To best help users complete individual settings setup and configuration quickly and avoid missing steps, I landed on two familiar-to-admins patterns that focused on clear presentation of info and required steps and a consistent experience
Design A
Separate settings out in a table similar to the landing page
Surface the priority of each setting on the app setup page
Place each setting's individual steps in a fly-out component
Design B
Surface settings steps upon entering page
Provide a guided process through each step
Mark "priority" steps with a relevant icon
04. Fast validation to ship with confidence
Structured walkthroughs to validate designs
Rapid validation
Before committing to a direction, I setup a testing plan and ran structured walkthroughs with 5 admins.
This kept things lightweight while still giving enough signal to pressure-test our two directions against real mental models.
Within a couple days, I had a clear picture of where each approach broke down.
Findings: Feedback favored "Design A"
Design A won on every dimension that mattered.
Faster understanding
Admins identified where to start and what to do next quickly due to the consistent table design
Freedom of movement
Admins enjoyed having the freedom to click through each setting without constraint
Confidence on setup status
Admins could quickly see when setup was done. Users expressed confidence that the app was ready to use
I then brought the findings to my PM and engineering, aligned on designs, and we began the handoff process.
05. Final designs
Design before & after
1
Setup dashboard landing
2
App settings status
3
Configuration panel and settings display table
06. Post-launch qualitative data pushes for updates
Iterating from feedback
To stay informed post-launch, I worked with engineering to surface a feedback widget prominently throughout the setup flow.
This gave us a stream of qualitative signal from user without slowing down the ship date. It also gave us a mechanism to catch friction early.
Following user feedback
While the design performed well in the structured walkthrough, some users had mentioned that the sudden shift from the old design confused them.
Finding a solution
We hypothesized that the shift in design may have strayed too far off from a user's existing mental model for setup in the admin center.
To counter this, we also added in an onboarding process that would show up on first load to guide users through the new system.
This shift in product strategy helped to anticipate adoption risks and mitigate them through design.
Key impacts
21.7% task time drop
7.1% success increase
Value improvements
Project takeaways
Compromises
To further emphasize the user's need for at-a-glance information I wanted to integrate a color-coded data-visualization that could tell users how far along they were on each step.
However, in discussing with engineering, I learned that the data available couldn't account for progress of individual steps within settings.
This led to me reaching a middle ground with engineering that used a "done or not done" status column.
Next steps - Implementing opportunities to promote premium plans
While not within the scope of the project, I identified an opportunity to leverage unused white space for promotion premium features (known as "add-ons").
This would not only make a user aware of available features that would improve their experience, but also take could work to notify users if a "add-on" was purchased and needed setup.
Unfortunately, this idea was tabled after I moved to a different product team, but at the time, it was noted by product leadership as an idea that could boost sales and adoption rates, while also increasing value customers received from their Viva apps!
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