An apparatus for providing for virtual communication and collaboration comprises a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) application executing within a distributed data processing system, and a navigation module implemented within the CVE application. The CVE application provides a virtual world represented as a grid of an interconnected set of locations each divided into a set of zones and each having an assigned context through a user interface provided to a plurality of users through one or more client systems. The CVE provides each user with a respective avatar representation for navigating and interacting within the locations of the virtual world. The navigation module provides a user interface element for each user to specify a respective set of navigation settings. The navigation module automatically directs the avatar representation for each user to traverse the set of zones of a respective subset of the set of locations of the virtual world in a particular order of locations and at a particular rate for each location according to the respective set of navigation settings specified by the user.