Using Sensitivity Labels to Limit Automatic Creation of Microsoft Viva Topics

Microsoft Viva Topics is a new feature in Microsoft 365 that helps employees find and understand the information they need to do their jobs. Topics are created automatically from content that is stored in Microsoft 365, such as documents, sites, and pages. However, you may not want all of your content to be turned into Topics. For example, you may have some sensitive information that you do not want to be indexed by Viva Topics.

In this blog post, I will show you how to use Sensitivity Labels to limit the automatic creation of Microsoft Viva Topics.

What are Sensitivity Labels?

Sensitivity Labels are a way to classify information based on its sensitivity. For example, you could create a Sensitivity Label for “Confidential” information, or for “Customer Data.” Once you have created a Sensitivity Label, you can apply it to documents, emails, and other types of content.

Sensitivity Labels

How to Limit Automatic Creation of Microsoft Viva Topics

To limit the automatic creation of Microsoft Viva Topics using Sensitivity Labels, this is the technique to use:

From the Topics Management Console

First of all, navigate to the Viva Topics Console within the M365 Admin Console.

Top level Viva Topics Admin console

Then enter the Topic Experiences section.

Manage Viva Topics console

There are two places here where you can limit the automatic creation of Topics. Firstly we have the Exclude Topics section. Clicking on here lets you provide a csv formatted list of topics that you wish to exclude. This is very useful if you don’t have the subscription level required to make use of Sensitivity Labels.

Using a CSV formatted list to exclude topics

Secondly, once you click the Advanced Settings option, you are presented with a list of Sensitivity Labels for you to choose to exclude.

Excluding Topics from the list

In here you can also prevent Topics from suggesting certain users as being relevant to Topics.

Usage

Once you have created a Sensitivity Label with the Exclude option selected, you can apply it to the content that you do not want to be turned into Topics using whichever method is most appropriate for the content.

Once you have applied the Sensitivity Label, Microsoft Viva Topics will not create a Topic for that content or use it as a suggested resource. If you have Automating labeling turned on, this will obviously happen automatically.

Conclusion

Using Sensitivity Labels, you can limit the automatic creation of Microsoft Viva Topics. This can help you to protect sensitive information and to keep your organisation compliant with regulations around data visibility.

Team blog by David Davies

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