Enable praise history in Microsoft Teams

In this post we will explore how to access praise history, what to do to enable/disable it plus a use case around the praise history app not working.

What is praise?

Praise is feature within the Viva Insights app in Microsoft Teams that lets you send praise messages about employees or co-workers. Praise messages are shown as notifications in Teams and can be sent via a private chat, or for wider recognition in a Teams channel conversation.

Praise history

Praise history is a feature in Microsoft Teams that was released in late February 2022 that allows you to see personal praise history you have received over the last six months. When you give praise or view a praise badge in the Teams app you will see a link to “review your praise history”.

*An example of a praise badge sent to a colleague in Microsoft Teams.*

Can’t access praise history

Praise history relies on the Viva Insights app being allowed and available in Microsoft Teams within your tenancy. If you have Teams apps permissions policies in place without the Viva Insights app allowed, or haven’t deployed the Viva Insights app yet you will see this message when clicking on the review your praise history message:

*App not found: the app may not exist, or your organisation may have disallowed you from using it.*

How to enable praise history

To enable praise history you will need to enable the Viva Insights app in your tenancy. To do this you will need to be have the Teams Admin role applied to your account:

Open the Teams admin center
Expand Teams apps > click on manage apps
Find the Viva insights app > ensure it’s status is allowed

*Ensure the Viva Insights app is allowed from manage apps in the Teams admin center.*

You will also need to ensure the Viva Insights app is added to any custom permission policies or a customised global (default) policy. The example below shows a customised global permission policy allowing specific apps – including the Viva Insights app:

*Ensure the Viva Insights app is added to any custom policies and the global default policy if changed.*

Now, when you click on “review praise history” you will be taken to the praise history page within Viva Insights.

Things to note

There isn’t a direct, named link to praise history from the Viva Insights homepage. You have to press “send praise” from the homepage in order to actually find praise history

Praise history is only visible to the logged in user only, there is currently no way for managers to see the praise history of their team members, or for developers to access praise information via the Graph API