My Viva Engage Community was deleted

Dear @Tibbs, Jamie D,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A forum.

I'm sorry to hear that your Viva Engage community has been deleted and is now showing the "Sorry, this community was deleted" message when you try to access it via the link. As a forum moderator, I genuinely wish I could directly access your account or delve into the backend systems to diagnose and fix this for you. However, our role here is limited to providing general guidance and solutions that can be applied by users.  

From my research, Viva Engage communities are tied to Microsoft 365 Groups (especially in native mode, which is standard for most organizations). When a community is deleted whether by the owner/admin, another admin, or due to group expiration/policy it enters a soft-deleted state for 30 days. 

Likely Reasons for Deletion:

• Accidental or intentional deletion by you (as creator/owner) or another community admin/verified admin.
• Group expiration policy (if enabled in your org, inactive M365 Groups can auto-delete after a set period).
• Retention policy or compliance action (though less common for full community deletion).

Since this happened recently, you're almost certainly within the 30-day window. Here's what you can do to restore the community:

If you have admin access:

• Go to the Microsoft 365 admin center (admin.microsoft.com).
• Navigate to Groups > Deleted groups.
• Look for the group matching your community (name "Medicaid CM Leadership" or by ID from the URL: the encoded part likely points to group ID).
• If found, select it and choose Restore group. This should bring back the community, members, posts, etc.

If you don't have admin access:

• Reach out to your Microsoft 365 global admin or Help desk.
• Provide the community name, the full URL, and screenshot of the deletion message.
• Ask them to check deleted groups in the admin center and restore it. They can do this quickly if within 30 days.

If you don't know who your IT administrator is, please refer to this article: How do I find my Microsoft 365 admin? - Microsoft Support  

I hope this information is helpful. Please follow these steps and let me know if it works for you. Thank you for your patience and understanding. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments so I can continue to support you. I'm looking forward to your reply.

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