Use Viva Glint's Comments report

The Comments report helps managers and leaders understand employee comments by surfacing topic areas, sentiment analysis, keywords, and representative comments. Comments provide helpful context for survey scores and can be reviewed by demographic group or survey item.

Viva Glint uses text analytics to process comments and organize them into meaningful themes. Depending on your organization's configuration, topic assignment may use either the standard Viva Glint natural language processing pipeline or Copilot-enhanced topic assignment.

Read Narrative Intelligence: Enable true understanding of employee feedback to learn how individual comments are surfaced and calculated.

Access the Comments report

The Comments report is accessed from the Viva Glint dashboard by selecting the Reports tab and then Comments.

The Comments report is divided into sections.

Overview

• Comments: Total number of comments, defined by number of commenters and percentage of respondents
• Comment Sentiment: A bar graph indicating overall positive, negative, and neutral sentiments
• Topics: Topics mentioned most often, including the number of mentions

View the Questions section

This section can be viewed in grid or table view and includes:

• Top questions by volume
• Top questions by positive sentiment
• Top questions by negative sentiment

View the Keywords section

This section can also be viewed in keyword or table view. Keywords are words and phrases that occur most frequently across comments.

• The color of each keyword indicates the aggregated sentiment or favorability of related comments:
  • Blue = positive
  • Grey = neutral
  • Red = negative
• The size of a keyword reflects the volume of related comments.
• Hover over a keyword for more information about sentiment or favorability.
• Select a keyword to view all related comments.

View the Topics section

Topics are high-level themes found across employee comments. They help you understand what employees are talking about without reading every comment individually.

The Topics section may be viewed as a cloud view or table view.

• The color of a topic indicates the aggregated sentiment or favorability of related comments:
  • Blue = positive
  • Grey = neutral
  • Red = negative
• The size of a topic reflects the volume of related comments.
• Lines between topics indicate related topics. Thicker lines indicate a stronger relationship.
• Select a topic to view related comments.

Topic results are generated from comments available in the selected report, subject to Viva Glint confidentiality and data suppression rules.

How Viva Glint assigns topics to comments

Viva Glint supports two approaches for assigning topics to comments: standard topic assignment and Copilot-enhanced topic assignment.

The topic assignment approach a user sees depends on whether Copilot in Viva Glint is turned on for the organization.

• If Copilot in Viva Glint is turned off, Viva Glint uses standard topic assignment.
• If Copilot in Viva Glint is turned on, Copilot-enhanced topic assignment is automatically available for supported survey programs and reports.

There's no separate toggle to configure for Copilot-enhanced topic assignment.

Both approaches appear in the Comments report as part of the existing Topics experience.

Standard topic assignment

For organizations that use the standard Comments report experience, Viva Glint uses its natural language processing pipeline to analyze comments and assign them to Viva Glint's standard topic set. This approach helps provide a consistent topic structure across survey programs and reporting periods.

Viva Glint assigns topics after a survey response is submitted and the full response is analyzed. Topic assignment isn't immediate at the time the employee enters a comment.

For non-English comments, Viva Glint first translates the comment to English, and then evaluates the translated comment for topic assignment. For a comment to be analyzed, the comment language must be selected before comments are submitted in General Settings > Comment analytics language.

Admins enable supported languages in General Settings > Comment analytics language. Language enablement must happen before comments are submitted. If a comment is submitted in a language that was not enabled for comment analytics at the time of submission, it may not be analyzed for topic assignment and can appear as N/A in topic fields.

Not every comment is assigned a topic. If a comment doesn't align to Viva Glint's standard topic set, the topic value appears as N/A in the report or export. This can happen even when the comment is long enough to contain meaningful feedback if it doesn't align to the standard topic set. When you export comments to a spreadsheet, comments that don't align to a standard topic show N/A in the topic column. For non-English comments, the export reflects the topic assignment made after translation and analysis.

The standard pipeline also supports related comment analytics, including sentiment, keywords, representative comments, and prescriptive comments.

Copilot-enhanced topic assignment

For organizations where Copilot in Viva Glint is turned on, Viva Glint uses a large language model to improve how comments are assigned to topics in supported survey programs and reports.

Copilot-enhanced topic assignment is automatically available when the org-wide setting for Copilot in Viva Glint is turned on. There's no separate toggle to configure. Copilot enhanced topic assignment does not apply to custom Glint policies; it determines how comments are processed at the tenant level, not the role level.

Copilot-enhanced topic assignment is designed to improve assignment of comments to Viva Glint's standard topics. This helps comments align more accurately to the topics that best represent their meaning.

Copilot-enhanced topic assignment doesn't require admins to configure topics before use. Once available and enabled, topic results appear in the Comments report as part of the existing Topics experience.

Currently, enhanced topic assignment is available for ad-hoc and recurring survey types with support for always-on survey types to follow.

Why you may see one topic assignment approach instead of another

The Comments report uses the standard topic assignment experience unless Copilot in Viva Glint is turned on for the organization.

A user may see the standard topic assignment experience when:

• Copilot in Viva Glint isn't turned on for the organization.
• The survey program or report isn't yet supported for Copilot-enhanced topic assignment.
• The organization is using the standard Viva Glint Comments report experience.

A user may see Copilot-enhanced topic assignment when:

• Copilot in Viva Glint is turned on for the organization.
• The survey program and report are supported.
• The user has permission to view the Comments report data.

If Copilot in Viva Glint isn't turned on, Viva Glint continues to use the standard topic assignment pipeline. This fallback preserves the existing Comments report experience for organizations that don't use Copilot-enhanced features.

How Copilot-enhanced topic assignment processes data

Copilot-enhanced topic assignment uses comments and related survey context already available within Viva Glint. It doesn't introduce external data sources.

Key points:

• Uses comments from the applicable survey report.
• Uses survey context, such as the originating survey question, to help interpret comment meaning.
• Operates within Viva Glint service boundaries.
• Doesn't use raw survey responses or user attributes to train foundation models.
• Doesn't share one organization's comments, topics, or topic patterns with another organization.
• Respects Viva Glint confidentiality thresholds and suppression rules.
• Stores topic-comment associations so users see consistent topic results when they return to the same report.
• The model is used as an internal backend process and is not exposed as a public topic-generation API.
• Safety filtering is applied before content is sent to the model.
• The model is restricted to classification against the approved topic taxonomy.
• The model output must conform to a defined JSON schema.
• The application performs server-side validation against an allowlist.

Copilot-enhanced topic assignment is designed to identify themes in aggregate comment data. It does not identify individual employees or generate topics based on personally identifiable information. You can find additional information on data, privacy, and security for Microsoft 365 Copilot in Viva Glint here.

Incorporate Copilot into your Comments report

Copilot in Viva Glint allows users to explore employee comments with natural language queries or suggested prompts. Copilot in Viva Glint brings the AI revolution into your employee engagement programs. Read about using Copilot in the Comments report.

Add sections to the Comments report

In the Comments section, you can view all comments or see them by category.

There are two ways to add sections:

• Select the + Add section button, or
• Use the More dropdown menu and choose + Add Section

Select sections by scrolling through the tabs in the slider window. Add or delete sections at any time.

• Select the + button to add the section.
• If a right-facing arrow displays, choose it to filter by attributes. Then select Add.

Translate comments

Viva Glint comments aren't automatically translated when viewed in the platform. To translate comments, select Translate in the upper-right corner of the comments page to translate all comments at once. You can also select the globe icon next to an individual comment to translate only that comment.

When a comment is translated, both the original text and the translated text are displayed. The translated comment also includes a "Translated from [language] by Microsoft" label.

Comments exported to a spreadsheet aren't translated. Even if you use the Translate option in Viva Glint before exporting, comments in the exported file remain in their original language.

For more information about exporting comments, see Use Viva Glint's Comments report.

Prescriptive and representative comments

Viva Glint suggests using both prescriptive and representative comments when reviewing your Comments report.

• Prescriptive comments are identified by Narrative Intelligence, which offers specific actionable suggestions for improvement in a Focus Area. You can access deep insights from Narrative Intelligence. Continuous listening as part of ongoing conversations, and developing Focus Areas with your teams lead to identifying the most appropriate actions to improve employee engagement and business goals.
• Representative Comments represent overall themes that are isolated and shown together. You only need to read a few to get a sense of the whole.

Redact and quarantine comments

You may redact terms flagged as Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or as profanity:

• Select Redact All Terms to replace all PII and profanity with five-pound signs (#####).
• Select Un-Redact All to replace ##### with the original comments.
• Use the vertical ellipses next to an individual comment to select Redact or Un-Redact.

To redact or quarantine, follow this process:

1. Select the ellipses next to the comment.
2. By selecting Quarantine, the comment is visible only to admins with Manage Sensitive Comments capability. Comments may be unquarantined.

Mixed Comments analysis

Our platform classifies every comment as positive, negative, neutral, or mixed. Mixed indicates both positive and negative sentiment in the same comment. From this data, a histogram of red, grey, and blue is generated.

• A negative comment is red.
• A positive comment is blue.
• A neutral comment is grey.
• Mixed comments count as half of a blue and half of a red comment.

Export, save, or share from the Comments report

Selecting this dropdown menu allows you to perform multiple functions: Export report to PowerPoint, Export report to PDF, Export report to spreadsheet, Export report to Images, Export Comments to XLSX Spreadsheet, Save, Save As, and Share.

When exported to a spreadsheet, comments that don't align to a standard topic show N/A in the topic column. For non-English comments, the export reflects the topic assignment made after translation and analysis.

Best Practices for Using Comments

• Optimize survey design: Limit the number of items presented per survey and focus on topics. The comments section of each item allows employees to provide detail, color, explanation, and nuance to their answers. From comment summarization, analytics can mine deep insights.
• Explore comments after reviewing scores.
• Consider related topics: Review how topics connect to each other in the bubble visualization for a new way to gain a deeper understanding of the intention.
• Take action from Prescriptive Comments.
• Beware of comment bias: It's natural to take comments personally, however, resist the urge. Survey comments tend to be more negative than positive.
• Explore different populations: Filter by different attributes to see what your key populations are talking about.
• Review keywords.
• Explore Representative Comments: Viva Glint isolates a short list of comments that are representative of overall themes. Read just a few to get a sense of the whole.

Frequently asked questions

Does Copilot-enhanced topic assignment replace the Comments report?

No. It improves topic assignment within the existing Comments report experience.

Is there a separate toggle for Copilot-enhanced topic assignment?

No. Copilot-enhanced topic assignment is automatically turned on when Copilot in Viva Glint is turned on and available for all ad hoc or recurring survey types.

Will all organizations see Copilot-enhanced topic assignment?

No. Organizations that don't have Copilot in Viva Glint turned on continue to use the standard Viva Glint topic assignment experience.

Are organization-specific topics shared across customers?

No. Organization-specific topics are generated from that organization's own survey comments and aren't shared with other organizations.

Can admins configure or approve topics before they appear?

No. Copilot-enhanced topic assignment is designed to work without admin setup.

Can I compare topic results generated before and after Copilot-enhanced topic assignment was enabled?

Use caution when comparing results. Topic results generated before Copilot-enhanced topic assignment was enabled may have used a different mapping approach than results generated afterward. Because the same comments may be mapped differently under the new approach, changes between reporting periods may reflect the change in mapping rather than an actual change in employee feedback.