Yammer has been powering community experiences at Microsoft for over a decade. In that time, we’ve seen our customers use the tool to influence their company’s culture, bring employees together in times of difficulty, share knowledge and training on a platform that positively influences and brings together change in their organizations. During this time, our users have inspired us and grown with us. Six months ago, we took the first step to rename the Yammer Communities app from Teams to Viva Engage, bringing Yammer closer to our Viva suite of employee experiences. Since then, we’ve continued to add new functionality to the Viva Engage and Yammer apps, including the storyline feature. Over the past few months, we’ve heard feedback that having two apps deliver similar experiences and the same services has created confusion and hindered adoption and clarity for end users.
Therefore, Yammer will become Viva Engage.
Over the next year, Yammer experiences will be renamed to Viva Engage, in order to better align with Microsoft Viva and become a unique pillar of the Microsoft Employee Experience Platform. We are excited that this change will unify Viva Engage across web, mobile, Teams, Outlook and beyond. This change is a direct result of feedback we’ve heard from our users and will help us deliver a seamless experience and a single Viva Engage platform across apps and endpoints, wherever you choose to participate.
We guarantee that these rebranding changes will not change the features, value or pricing of Yammer for existing customers of Microsoft 365 and/or M365 SKUs. All of the features that users enjoy today with their existing M365 license will continue to be available, just under a new name.
New features are being released today
In September, we announced new features coming to Viva Engage that enable leadership engagement, authentic expression, corporate communications, events, and knowledge sharing and discovery. Today, these experiences are starting to be implemented all over the world.
Newly released features for Viva package customers include:
- Storyline Ads for Leaders
- Leadership Corner for Employees
- Ask Me Anything
- Social Media #Campaigns
- advanced analytics
- Answers on Viva
Answers on Viva is also available to Viva Topics customers.
Learn more regarding these features here.
How to get the new features
- Native way: New experiences require Native Mode and soon we will require all networks to be upgraded to Native Mode to allow users, groups and content to be supported and mapped to their counterparts in Azure Active Directory and Microsoft 365. Learn more regarding what this change means and how to plan your upgrade.
- New admin center: Administrators will see a new Viva Engage admin center where they can complete tasks and assign roles and responsibilities for licensed Viva Suite users. Learn more regarding these new admin actions here.
What’s next for Viva Engage
In 2023, all Yammer will evolve to become Viva Engage, taking the Yammer brand out of business. The first phase will begin in March 2023 with updates to the Communities app for Outlook and Yammer mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Later in March, the Communities app for Outlook will be updated to reflect the Viva Engage brand. This change will happen automatically, with no action required.
Additionally, in the same month, the Yammer mobile apps for iOS and Android will be rebranded as Viva Engage to provide a native mobile experience optimized for social sharing and rich media. Users will need to refresh the app to see the changes.
As we refine the schedule beyond March for the remaining Yammer endpoints to be renamed to Viva Engage, we will continue to share details with our employees, customers and partners.
Join us at the Viva Engage AMA
The Viva Engage product and engineering teams look forward to building the future of this product with users throughout this year and beyond. To learn more regarding the changes announced today, join Microsoft on February 23 for an AMA with Product Leads from the Viva Engage team.
What can users expect from the news?
The rebranding to Viva Engage will happen in phases throughout 2023, with Outlook and the mobile apps changing first, followed by the web experience. Here is a brief timeline:
- February: An in-app rebranding banner will appear in the Yammer mobile app, giving you advance notice of the change.
- March: The Yammer mobile app becomes Viva Engage. It will still be searchable as Yammer for a while (for example, Apple’s Spotlight Search). Around the same time, the Communities app in Outlook will also be renamed to Viva Engage.
- April: The rebranding banner will begin appearing in the Yammer.com web experience, giving you advance notice of the change.
- Winter 2023: The Yammer.com web experience becomes Viva Engage, with some UX/UI enhancements. The Yammer.com URL will remain for a while while the team makes additional backend updates.
- Later in 2023: Yammer.com URLs will be updated. We plan to support redirection to legacy URLs so that existing links and integrations continue to work.
Like all brand restructurings, this change will take time. As we complete the move from Yammer to Viva Engage, users can expect a familiar experience. All existing features, which are already part of the routine of millions of workers across the planet, along with the latest features, remain the same.
While this process marks the beginning of the discontinuity of our celebrated Yammer brand, it also marks an exciting new beginning for us to co-create experiences with our users that will revolutionize the way your employees connect and thrive at work.
Common questions
Where can I get help setting up Viva Engage?
Contact FastTrack, your account manager, or learn how to deploy Yammer/Viva Engage here. You can also find helpful adoption materials at Viva Engage – Microsoft Adoption. We will continue to add materials for customers to use for communication and training as more resources become available.
Will the same content moderation and other administrative policies set in Yammer carry over to Viva Engage?
Yes, all administrative policies and features will remain.
