Manage skills library

You can manage your skills library by adding and deleting skills from the default skills library. You can import, export, and delete skills from your custom skill library. You can also control whether skills are available for users.

Manage where skills are available and skills suggestions

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, select Settings, and then select Viva.

2. Select Manage skills library, and then select Settings.

3. Select Skills library in the Settings tab to view and manage availability of skills in your organization.

   1. Select Turn on skills library to make the skills library available in your users' profiles.

      Clear Turn on skills library to turn off skills. Users won't be able to search for and add new skills or receive skills suggestions. They'll still have access to their confirmed and dismissed skills.

   2. Select Turn on skills in Viva Insights (if available in your tenant) to send skills data to Viva Insights. Learn more about the skills landscape report in Viva Insights.

4. Select Skill suggestions to see details about the settings. Users receive skill suggestions relevant to their role by default.

   When skill suggestions are enabled, users have the option to turn it off for themselves in their skill settings. When skill suggestions are turned off, users don't see any suggested skills and can only manually confirm skills from a list.

   If you need to disable skill suggestions for specific users, groups, or your entire tenant, create an access control policy. For more information, see control access to features in Viva.

Manage your organization’s skills library

Your skills library is managed in two parts. You can add and delete skills you’ve selected from the default skills library in Viva, and you can reimport custom skills.

Manage default skills library in Viva

View and manage the skills you selected from the default skills library in Viva. The more skills you include from the default library, the more specific suggestions users see in their skills profiles. Our recommendation is to use all 7,000+ skills, with a minimum of 500 skills.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, select Settings, and then select Viva.

2. Select Manage skills library. Select the Skills library tab, and then select Skills library in Viva.

3. Review the list. You can filter by domain and search by skill name.

4. To add skills, select + Add Skills. Select the skills you want to add. You can filter by domain and search by skill name. Select Add.

5. To delete skills, select the skills you want to delete. You can filter by domain and search by skill name. Select Delete skills. Select Delete again to confirm you want to delete the selected skills.

   Deleting skills immediately removes the skills and associated skills data from your organization and from your users' experience.

6. Select Done.

   Note

   If your library is published for users, the changes are reflected within 24 hours in their experience.

Manage custom skills

Manage your custom skills library and role-to-skills mapping import. If you didn't import custom skills as a part of your initial setup, you can add it later. This step is optional if you’ve selected skills from the default skills library in Viva.

View your custom skills

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, select Settings, and then select Viva.

2. Select Manage skills library. Select the Skills library tab, and then select Custom skills. You can filter by role and search by skill name.

3. Select View details to see an overview of your imported files, who completed the import, and the import date.

Import custom skills library

Follow these steps to either import your custom skills library for the first time or to reimport with changes to your initial custom import.

To import customs skills into Skills for Viva:

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, select Settings, and then select Viva.

2. Select Manage skills library. Select the Skills library tab, and then select New import.

3. Select Download library template and Download mapping template.

4. Open the template files you downloaded. Follow the steps in Create the custom skills files to create your skills library and skills mapping files.

5. Paste the file paths for both files into the Skills library file path and Skill mapping file path fields.

6. Select Next to begin file validation. If there's a problem with the file, you see an error message at this step.

11. Review your custom skills data.

12. Acknowledge that importing custom skills will immediately impact your users' experience if skills is turned on.

13. Select Confirm to import.

If your library is published for users, the changes are reflected within 24 hours in their experience.

Export custom skills

You can export the custom skills that you've set up in your skills library.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, select Settings, and then select Viva.

2. Select Manage skills library. Select the Skills library tab, and then select Custom skills. You can filter by role and search by skill name.

3. Select Export custom skills to export your custom skills import files.

Delete custom skills

Deleting custom skills immediately removes all of these skills from your users’ experiences deletes all data associated with those skills.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, select Settings, and then select Viva.
2. Select Manage skills library. Select the Skills library tab, and then select Custom skills.
3. Select Delete custom skills.
4. Select Delete to confirm that you want to delete your custom skills.