Delve for admins

The more you and your colleagues use Microsoft 365 to work together by viewing, editing, and sharing each other's documents, the more useful Delve is for all of you. Learn more about how you as an admin can help users get the most out of Delve.

Delve is powered by the Microsoft Graph and shows users the most relevant content based on who they work with and what they're working on. The information in Delve is tailored to each user. Delve doesn't change permissions and users see only what they already have access to.

As an admin, you can make sure that your organization can access Delve, and that you set up other Microsoft 365 services that Delve uses, such as SharePoint and OneDrive. You can also help people get started with Delve, and address questions that users might have.

What you need to get Delve

Delve is available for Microsoft 365 Enterprise (E1, E3, and E5), Microsoft 365 Education (E1, E3, and E5), Microsoft 365 Government (E1, E3, and E5), Microsoft 365 Business Basic, and Microsoft 365 Business Standard.

Regardless of which Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscriptions you have, you need to activate the SharePoint service and assign users a SharePoint license before they can start using Delve. You also have to set up Exchange Online if you want attachments to show up on users' Home pages in Delve. If you set up Microsoft Teams, users can start Microsoft Teams conversations directly from Delve.

The Delve app is also enabled for modern authentication. For more information, see How modern authentication works.

Control access to Delve

You control access to Delve from the SharePoint admin center. By default, users in your organization have access to Delve.

1. Go to Settings in the SharePoint admin center, and sign in with an account that has admin permissions for your organization.

   Note

   If you have Office 365 operated by 21Vianet (China), sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center, then browse to the SharePoint admin center and open the Settings page.

2. At the bottom of the page, select classic settings page.

3. Under Delve, select one of the following options:

   • Enable Delve

   • Disable Delve

For more information about disabling Delve, see What is the effect of enabling or disabling Delve.

Control access to documents in Delve

Users can limit their Delve experience to only show profile information by turning off Show documents in Delve under Settings > Feature settings in Delve. As an admin, you can also remove documents from Delve through the item insights privacy settings. For more information about item insights privacy settings, see Customizing item insights privacy in Microsoft Graph (preview).

Introducing Delve in your organization

Use these resources to get your organization started with Delve.

Before you announce Delve

• SharePoint and OneDrive are the primary sources of content in Delve. How you and users manage permissions on documents and sites affects what users see in Delve. For more info, see Overview: best practices for managing how people use your team site and Plan your permissions strategy.

Using Delve on a day-to-day basis

• You can point users to the Delve help articles. What is Delve? is a great starting point, and users might be particularly interested in the information in the articles Are my documents safe in Delve?, Connect and collaborate in Delve, and Store your documents where Delve can get to them.

Data and geographic region

• When users go to Delve, for example by entering delve.office.com in a browser, they're automatically redirected to the geographic region where your organization's environment is located. After the redirect, a three letter prefix indicating the region is added to the URL, for example https://nam.delve.office.com for North America, or https://eur.delve.office.com for Europe.

Help users troubleshoot Delve

To help troubleshoot issues with Delve, see the following info.

• Users don't see Delve in the Microsoft 365 app launcher

• Users see incorrect colleagues in Delve

• Users don't see user pictures in Delve

• Users see documents from other users who have turned off Documents in Delve

• Users see little or no content in Delve

• Users can't find a specific item in Delve

• Users are concerned that private or sensitive documents are available in Delve

Users don't see Delve in the Microsoft 365 app launcher

If one or more users in your organization don't see Delve in the app launcher, check the following settings. All these settings need to be in place for your organization before people can start using Delve.

Solutions

• Check that you allow your organization to access Delve.

• Check that you're using a subscription that supports Delve.

• Check that you've assigned the correct user licenses.

Check that you allow your organization to access Delve

1. Go to Settings in the SharePoint admin center, and sign in with an account that has admin permissions for your organization.

   Note

   If you have Office 365 operated by 21Vianet (China), sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center, then browse to the SharePoint admin center and open the Settings page.

2. At the bottom of the page, select classic settings page.

3. Under Delve, make sure that you've selected Enable Delve.

   Note

   If you have a SharePoint standalone service (SharePoint Plan 1 or SharePoint Plan 2) you'll see the Delve setting in the SharePoint admin center. However, users won't be able to use Delve or see Delve in the app launcher, because Delve is not available for standalone services yet.

Check that you're using a subscription that supports Delve

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center as a SharePoint Administrator or other administrator. (If you see a message that you don't have permission to access the page, you don't have Microsoft 365 admin permissions in your organization.)

   Note

   If you have Office 365 operated by 21Vianet (China), sign in at https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/. Then select the Admin tile to open the admin center.

2. In the left pane, select Billing > Licenses.

3. Verify that you have one of the following subscriptions:

   • Office 365 Enterprise (E1, E3, or E5)

   • Office 365 Education

   • Office 365 Government (E1, E3, or E5)

   • Microsoft 365 Business Basic

   • Microsoft 365 Business Standard

   • Microsoft 365 Business Premium

Check that you've assigned the correct user licenses

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center as a SharePoint Administrator or other administrator. (If you see a message that you don't have permission to access the page, you don't have Microsoft 365 admin permissions in your organization.)

   Note

   If you have Office 365 operated by 21Vianet (China), sign in at https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/. Then select the Admin tile to open the admin center.

2. Select Users > Active users.

3. Select the box in front of the name of the user who you want to check the licenses for.

4. Verify that the user has one of the following combinations of licenses:

   • Office 365 Plan E1 plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

   • Office 365 Plan E3 plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

   • Office 365 Plan E5 plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

   • Microsoft 365 Business Basic plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

   • Microsoft 365 Business Standard plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

   • Microsoft 365 Business Premium plus SharePoint (Plan 1 or Plan 2)

   For more information about how to manage licenses, see Assign licenses to users.

Users see incorrect colleagues in Delve

If Microsoft Entra ID has outdated information or isn't synced with the SharePoint user profiles, Delve might not show the most relevant colleagues.

Delve uses information from user profiles to determine who users in your organization work with most closely. These profiles contain information from Microsoft Entra ID and from SharePoint user profiles. Every 24 hours, people information from Microsoft Entra ID is automatically added to SharePoint user profiles.

Solutions

• Check and clean up your Microsoft Entra ID, and wait for the information to sync to SharePoint user profiles.

• If you're an academic organization, the sync between Microsoft Entra ID and user profiles isn't automatic. Your users need to sign in to SharePoint at least once to create user profiles.

• If you have an on-premises Active Directory and if you set up Active Directory synchronization, make sure it's synced correctly with Microsoft Entra ID.

Users don't see user pictures in Delve

The user pictures in Delve come from the SharePoint user profiles. If there's no picture for a user in their SharePoint user profile, Delve has no picture to show.

Solution

• Make sure that users upload their user profile picture to SharePoint. For more info, point users to View and update your profile in Delve.

Users see documents from other users who turn off documents in Delve

When users turn off documents in Delve, they don't see any documents in Delve, and Microsoft Graph excludes their activities and relationships.

However, if other users still have access to documents from a user who turns off documents, they can still see those documents in Delve, just as they can search for them in SharePoint.

Other information that's available to everyone in the organization is also visible even if a user turns off Documents, such as information from the Microsoft Entra ID.

Solution

• No action needed.

Users see little or no content in Delve

Delve displays content from different content sources such as Exchange Online, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

If users don't have any recently modified or viewed content in these content sources, and they don't have access to other users' content, Delve might show little or no content. Users also need to have licenses to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 services and they need to have the item insights privacy settings enabled.

Solutions

• Encourage your users to store and share documents in SharePoint and OneDrive. For more info, point users to Store your documents where Delve can get to them.

• Check the permission settings on SharePoint sites to make sure that the user has access to the correct sites and their content.

• Check that the user is in Active Directory and a member of the correct Active Directory groups. To verify, go to Microsoft 365 admin center > Users > Active Users.

• Make sure that the user allows Delve to show documents. To verify, have the user go to App launcher > Delve > Feature settings and make sure that Show documents in Delve isn't turned off.

• Make sure that you assign users a license to access the Microsoft 365 services that you activate.

Users can't find a specific item in Delve

Delve doesn't change any permissions and users only see what they already have access to. Not all content types appear in Delve, and it can take up to 24 hours for new documents to show up. Also, Delve prioritizes content that's been modified or viewed in the last three months.

Solutions

• Check the steps under Users see little or no content in Delve.

• Check when the document was added. It can take up to 24 hours for new documents to show up in Delve.

Users are concerned that private or sensitive documents appear in Delve

Any document that a user can view or edit in Microsoft 365 can also appear in Delve. Delve doesn't change any permissions, and users only see documents they already have access to. However, there are times when you might want to prevent a document from appearing in Delve.

Solution(s)

• Check the permission settings for the documents, sites and libraries and make sure that only the intended users have access to the content.

What is the effect of enabling or disabling Delve?

When you change the Delve setting in the SharePoint admin center, you enable or disable the full Delve experience for all users in the tenant. If you enable Delve, users in your organization have Delve in the app launcher and they can use all the functionality in Delve. Selecting a person in Delve opens that person's page. The person page contains user profile information such as contact information and org chart details, and also documents relating to the person.

If you choose to disable Delve for your organization, Delve is removed from the app launcher for all users. When users visit a person's page, for example by clicking on a person in OneDrive, that person's page contains only user profile information. No documents are shown. Users can still search for other people, but not for documents or boards. If the Delve setting is disabled, users don't see the frequent sites and suggested sites in the SharePoint start page.

Additional resources

End users

• What is Delve?

• What is OneDrive?

• How does Delve know what's relevant to me?

Admins

• SharePoint Planning Guide for Microsoft 365 Apps for business

• Manage SharePoint user profiles from the SharePoint admin center

• Microsoft 365 integration with on-premises environments

• User Account Management

• Directory synchronization roadmap

• Viva Engage - Admin Help

• Plan Options

• Set up the Standard or Targeted release options in Microsoft 365