Microsoft extends Purview sensitivity labels to Viva Engage communities
Microsoft has rolled out Purview sensitivity labels for Viva Engage communities, applying container-level governance to the platform. The update finishes global deployment in early April 2026 and allows administrators to control privacy, external sharing, and guest access directly through the underlying Microsoft 365 group. Administrators can assign these labels via the Microsoft 365 or SharePoint admin centers. The update does not include encryption inheritance, and community owners retain the ability to manually override the assigned labels.
Before this update, Viva Engage operated with a governance blind spot. While administrators could lock down external sharing and guest access in Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, Viva communities often bypassed these strict controls, creating compliance risks through their connected Microsoft 365 groups. Now, the entire collaboration suite shares a single set of container rules. Applying a strict label to a Microsoft 365 group instantly blocks guest access across its connected Team, SharePoint site, and Viva Engage community simultaneously. However, because community owners can still manually override these labels, administrators must actively monitor compliance rather than assuming the settings are permanent.
Analysis
Stop treating Viva, Teams, and SharePoint as separate governance problems. Create three baseline Purview container labels for Internal, Confidential, and External use, and apply them directly at the Microsoft 365 Group level to plug guest access backdoors across your entire tenant. Finally, set up an automated audit report to catch site owners who try to downgrade these labels, because they inevitably will.
Citation
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