A toolkit is available containing information and communication materials, including fact sheets, posters, a digital signage slide, and a presentation. Feel free to use these materials, along with the information provided in this article, when responding to questions from your department.

Dutch information sheet
English information sheet
Posters (UK + NL)
Narrowcasting slide
Presentation (UK + NL)
General video 3 new features
Video Connections
Video Viva Engage
Video WUR Support Portaal

For questions, please contact one of the communications advisors within your knowledge unit.

For technical support or issues with Teams and its apps, please submit an IT support ticket through the WUR Support Portal.

 VOICE (Virtual Online Internal Channel Engagement) is the name of the project that a team has been working on over the past year to   develop new features in the online Teams environment. The new features make it easier to find and share news and information for and   by employees. The vision for the online channels (website and intranet) can be found in the attachments to this article (on the right-hand side).

As a WUR employee, you have access to Microsoft Teams, which is installed on your laptop or desktop by default. The various apps, such as calling, chatting and meeting, are visible via the icons in the left sidebar. The following new apps have now been added:

• Connections
• Viva Engage
• WUR Support Portal (the portal is also accessible to students)

If an app is not visible in the left sidebar:

• In Microsoft Teams, click on the three dots (More apps) at the bottom of the left sidebar;
• Find the desired app, for example Viva Engage;
• Click on the app to open it;
• Right-click on the icon in the left sidebar to pin the app to the sidebar for quick access.

In 2025, the contract with the intranet provider will expire. This presented an opportunity to explore how we want to use our main communication channels (website and intranet) in the coming years. At the same time, there is both the need and the ambition to create a modern, smarter internal digital workplace tailored to the needs and requirements of both staff and students. In other words: we want to improve the user experience for our employees.

The three new functions in the Teams environment will help and support staff in the way we communicate, collaborate, and share knowledge with each other, both online and offline. It’s almost self-evident that the way we work has changed significantly compared to, say, five years ago. A different type of online platform for staff is therefore a logical next step. The new Teams functions ensure that you stay connected with your WUR colleagues whether you’re in the office, working from home, or elsewhere. This renewal also offers the opportunity to better organize management, roles, and permissions. In addition, we want to make the most of the innovations now available in online systems.

If you go to intranet.wur.nl, you will be redirected to voice.wur.nl, which then redirects you to the knowledge article you are currently viewing 

The documents and information that used to be in “Groups”?
The documents, knowledge, and information that were available in Groups have been converted into knowledge articles in the WUR Support Portal. You can find them through the categories in the navigation menu or by searching for the topic in the search bar. 

The documents and information from “Practical Information” and “About WUR”?
The documents, knowledge, and information from Practical Information and About WUR have been converted into knowledge articles in the WUR Support Portal. You can browse the topics via the navigation menu or search for them using the search bar. 

News items from before September 2025?
In Connections, you will find the news items published from September 2025 onwards. A conscious decision was made not to migrate an archive of earlier news into the new environment. 

Agenda items from before September 2025?
In Connections, you will find the agenda items published from September 2025 onwards. A conscious decision was made not to migrate an archive of earlier agenda items into the new environment.

The intranet groups I was a member of?
Administrators of intranet groups could choose either to move their group (including members) to Viva Engage, or to leave it behind with the intranet. You have automatically been added to the community of your science unit, as well as to communities with the same name as the intranet groups you were already a member of. If the administrator of your group did not create a community with the same name, then it was not transferred.

Conversations from the intranet groups?
When creating the new communities, intranet group administrators chose to make a fresh start. The (social) conversations have not been migrated to the communities. If groups contained substantive knowledge, this has, in principle, been transferred into a knowledge article in the WUR Support Portal. 

In the online vision, we examined how WUR’s available online channels can be used as effectively and efficiently as possible. The Microsoft Teams environment currently offers suitable applications to best support the exchange of information between the organization and staff, as well as among staff themselves (Connections and Viva Engage).

Although the WUR Support Portal is not a Microsoft application, it is smartly integrated into the Microsoft Teams environment.

For clarity: Viva Engage and Connections are available to WUR staff (including PhD candidates). The WUR Support Portal is available to staff, students, and in part also to external visitors.

The online vision can be found here.

To help you decide where best to place your content, a decision tree has been created. Consult this to see which channel is most suitable for your communication.

In the new apps, both the new visual identity and digital accessibility have been taken into account as far as the respective systems allow.

In 2023, an online vision was developed for the internal and external communication channels. This led, among other things, to an overview of the functions of the current intranet. The direction chosen by the steering committee was to explore to what extent these functions could be accommodated within existing services. An assessment of existing applications and services showed that the five functions of the old intranet could be covered—without additional licensing or hosting costs—by using a combination of ServiceNow and Microsoft 365. The steering committee approved this idea, and the project group has since followed it up and implemented it.

WUR takes the concerns around Microsoft and Big Tech very seriously and, as a sector, we are working on alternatives. At present, the use of Microsoft is something we, as a sector, are collectively doing—for a wide range of purposes, including security. Together with the boards of the universities, the CIOs/IT directors, SURF, and UNL, we are considering where we may need to make different choices collectively. This is complex and extensive, but at the same time we are also working on concrete pilots. Alternatives work differently, and we need to gain experience with them—both from a user perspective and from a technical perspective.

You can now find internal vacancies in Connections on the homepage. Click "Show more" in the Dashboard with the tiles to see the internal vacancies tile:

The links to the WUR applications are now in Connections. You can find Connections in Teams, in the menu bar on the left. If you open Connections and scroll down, you should see the 'Resources', with all applications: