Roles and permissions in Viva Goals

Role types in Viva Goals

Role Description Common Activities
Viva Goals Administrator Viva Goals Administrators are assigned by Global admins or user admins from the Microsoft 365 admin center or Microsoft Entra ID. Viva Goals Administrators are users typically from the IT team (IT admins) and manage the policy settings for Viva Goals for the entire company.

This role is optional. In the absence of a Viva Goals Admin, the Global admin can manage these Viva Goals policy settings for the company.

For more information on assigning roles in the Microsoft 365 admin center, see Assign admin roles.

Related content: Microsoft Entra roles in the Microsoft 365 admin center
Some of the tasks managed by Viva Goals Admins are:

- Configuring who can create organizations within Viva Goals.

- Configuring integrations available for all Viva Goals organizations in the tenant.

- Controlling the URLs that can be embedded in Viva Goals Dashboards.

- Raising Product support tickets via MAC to Microsoft's support team.
Organization owner Organization owners are generally the executive leader of a department/business unit/company for which the organization was created; alternatively, they might be members who manage the OKR process rollout for the org, such as OKR champions.

When an organization is created in a tenant, the organization owner role will be given to the global admin or any user who has organization creation permissions. This ownership can be transferred to another user in that organization through the organization's Admin section.

Organization owners manage members and teams. They have default ownership of organization-level OKRs, though organizational objectives can be owned by other members as well. Organization owners can configure OKR process properties (such as time periods), add or remove users in the org, and create teams within an organization. An organization can have more than one organization owner.
Some of the tasks managed by organization owners are:

- Creating teams.

- Creating OKRs for any team.

- Creating organization OKRs.

- Accessing the admin settings at the org level.

- Setting policy on who can add members to the org, who can create teams in the org, who can create new tags, and who can export OKRs from their org.

- Changing time period and notification setting options.
Team owner Teams are functional units within a Viva Goals organization. Team owners are generally OKR champions at a team level; they manage the setup of a team, which includes adding new members to the team and overseeing settings such as those related to permissions and notifications. A Team can have multiple team owners.

Team owners are typically managers of their respective teams. They might be managers of people or managers of cross-functional teams.
Some tasks managed by team owners are:

- Creating teams, if the team creation policy at the org level admin console allows for it.

- Adding members to the team.

- Modifying the notification schedule settings of the team.

- Modifying the OKR and initiative creation permissions for their team.
/br>- Editing and making check-ins for all their team's OKRs.

- Creating OKRs for their team.

- Editing their team's OKRs. (This is a default activity.) 
Member Being a regular "member" is the default role for everyone; members are typically users within an organization who want to actively participate in the OKR process. Viva Goals recommends all users be added as members. Some of the tasks managed by members are:

- Creating team-level or org-level OKRs and initiatives in teams or orgs, provided they have the necessary permissions.

- Editing, aligning, and making check-ins on OKRs they've created or been assigned.

Permissions

Action Access
Create an OKR or initiative By default, any regular user is able to create organization-level OKRs and initiatives unless an organization owner has set explicit permissions against doing so.

A user can create an OKR or initiative within a team only if they are a member of that team.

Org owners and team owners who want to control OKR or initiative creation access for specific users can configure that access in org/team settings.

The following roles always have the permissions necessary to create OKRs/initiatives in the specified context:

Organization-level OKRs
    Organization owner

Team-level OKRs
    Organization owner
    Team owner(s)

Everyone in an organization can create individual OKRs or initiatives (that is, goals that don't have assigned teams).
Check-in
The following users get default check-in access for an OKR:
    1. The OKR owner(s)
    2. The OKR's creator
    3. The team owner(s)
    4. The org admin/org owner
    5. Any OKR owner's manager
    6. Any owner of the parent OKR (that is, the OKR under which the relevant OKR is aligned)

OKR owners also can grant users check-in access by making them check-in owners.
Alignment By default, any member in an organization can align to any OKR they have access to view. OKR owners can manage who can check in on an OKR they own by granting users alignment access.
Edit Users with edit access to an OKR can also perform the following functions on that OKR:
    1. Delete 
    2. Modify weights and rollups
    3. Close
    4. Reopen

The following users get default edit access for OKRs:
    1. The OKR owner(s)
    2. The OKR's creator
    3. The team owner(s)
    4. The org admin/org owner
    5. Any OKR owner's manager
    6. Any owner of the parent OKR (that is, the OKR under which the relevant OKR is aligned)

In addition, by modifying permissions to OKRs they own, OKR owners can grant users edit access.

Note: A delegate is a user who can perform all the functions of a user with edit access except change the owner for an OKR or initiative.
Clone A user can clone an OKR into a team for which they have OKR creation access. If the user doesn't have the creation permission, the OKR is cloned as an individual OKR (that is, one not associated with a team).
Comment/Share/Like/Follow Any user who is a part of an organization can perform these actions.