Yammer is now Viva Engage: what changed for your network

By Nicolas Saliba · Updated October 2026 · 11 min read

In short

Yammer still exists, under the name Viva Engage. Microsoft renamed it in phases during 2023 and kept the capabilities, but the legacy pieces around the network were switched off in 2025 and 2026. If you own a network, check that it runs in Native Mode, that nothing still depends on the old admin center or yammer.com addresses, and that your community governance matches the new model.

Key takeaways

Microsoft announced in February 2023 that all of Yammer would become Viva Engage that year, with the Yammer.com web experience renamed in June 2023.

Microsoft said the rename would not change the capabilities, value or pricing of Yammer for existing Microsoft 365 customers, and that admin policies carried over.

Native Mode is required for every Viva Engage network; legacy external networks had until 1 June 2025 to align with Microsoft Entra.

The legacy Yammer admin center, private content mode and third-party app registration were set to be retired by the end of June 2025.

Viva Engage email moved from @yammer.com to @engage.mail.microsoft, with the rollout complete on 31 March 2026.

Does Yammer still exist under another name?

Yes. Yammer was renamed, not replaced. In February 2023 Microsoft announced that Yammer experiences would be rebranded to Viva Engage over the following year, to align the product with Microsoft Viva and end the confusion of running two apps that surfaced the same services and content. The same post said that in 2023 all of Yammer would become Viva Engage, retiring the Yammer brand.^[1] Microsoft’s own FAQ now answers the question “Can I still use Yammer?” in one line: Yammer is now Viva Engage, and even though the name changed, the product is largely the same.^[2]

The rename did not happen on one day. Microsoft moved the surfaces one at a time, starting with the apps people opened least and finishing with the web experience most networks used every day.

When	What changed	What it means for your network
February 2023	Rename announced; in-app banner in the Yammer mobile app	The Yammer brand is scheduled for retirement
March 2023	Communities app in Outlook rebranded to Viva Engage	Automatic, no action needed
April 2023	Yammer mobile apps for iOS and Android renamed Viva Engage	Users had to update the app to see the change
June 2023	Yammer.com web experience becomes Viva Engage; desktop app rebranded	The main day-to-day surface carries the new name
Later in 2023	Yammer.com URLs updated, with redirection planned for legacy URLs	Existing links and integrations were meant to keep working

The timeline comes from Microsoft’s announcement, updated in March 2023.^[1] The redirection still works: when we opened www.yammer.com on 15 October 2026, it forwarded to the Viva Engage feed at engage.cloud.microsoft. Old links in your intranet pages, onboarding guides and email signatures will land in the right place, but they are worth replacing so that nobody depends on a redirect Microsoft does not have to keep for ever.

What stayed the same after the rename?

For most networks, the content and the people did. Microsoft’s announcement promised that the branding changes would not change the current capabilities, value or pricing of Yammer for existing Microsoft 365 customers, and that everything available under an existing Microsoft 365 licence would stay available under the new name. Its FAQ also confirmed that the content moderation and other admin policies set in Yammer would remain.^[1]

Several traces of the old name are still visible today, and knowing them saves your team a support ticket:

The admin role. Engage administrators are still called Yammer administrators in Microsoft Entra ID.^[3] If you are looking for the person who can change network settings, search Entra for that role name.
The service plan. The core licence appears as “Viva Engage Core or Yammer enterprise” and comes with Microsoft 365. It covers communities and storyline.^[3]
The classic client. Microsoft’s Viva Engage service description still lists Classic Viva Engage as a generally available client, alongside New Viva Engage, the Teams app, the desktop app and the mobile apps.^[4] If some colleagues still see an older-looking interface, that is a supported client, not a sign the network was left behind.

Not every surface offers the same features. Microsoft’s FAQ lists Yammer features missing from the Viva Engage app in Teams, including posting on behalf of another user, choosing a skin tone for reactions and viewing a community’s document library or info pane.^[2] If your community managers moderate from Teams, tell them which tasks still need the web experience.

What was added when Yammer became Viva Engage?

The rename came with new features, and they are the main reason the network does more than it did. In the same February 2023 announcement, Microsoft listed experiences rolling out to Viva suite customers: storyline announcements for leaders, Leadership Corner, Ask Me Anything events, campaigns, advanced analytics and Answers in Viva.^[1] Today these premium experiences need a tenant that owns Microsoft Viva Suite or Microsoft Viva Employee Communications and Communities, while communities and storyline stay in the core plan.^[3] Our comparison of Viva Engage and Viva Engage Premium sets out where that line falls.

One of these additions changes how you organise content, not just what you can publish. Storyline is person-centred: a leader posts to their own storyline and it reaches followers rather than community members. That suits leadership communication, but it also means some of your most visible posts sit outside any community, with no community owner and no charter. Decide whether executive content goes through Leadership Corner, storyline or a named community, and write the decision down, so the CEO’s most-read post of the year does not fall outside every reporting structure you have.

Is your network running in Native Mode?

Native Mode is the requirement that matters most for an old Yammer network. Microsoft describes M365 Native Mode as the format that uses Microsoft Entra identities and policies, and states that it is required for all Viva Engage networks in the enterprise. It maps users, groups and content to their counterparts in Microsoft Entra and Microsoft 365, and it supports eDiscovery through the Microsoft Purview portal.^[5] The 2023 announcement already warned that the new experiences would require Native Mode and that all networks would soon have to upgrade.^[1]

According to Microsoft, nearly all customer organisations with significant Viva Engage networks were already on the Native Mode standard by April 2025, and the remaining customers had until 1 June 2025 to align their external networks with Microsoft Entra.^[5] For most internal networks, this is therefore a check rather than a project. Ask your Engage administrator three questions:

Is Microsoft 365 identity enforced for Viva Engage users, and is the network in a one-network-per-tenant configuration? Both are conditions for communities connected to Microsoft 365 Groups.^[6]
Do your communities show the Microsoft 365 Resources section in the right-hand pane? That is how you can tell a community is connected to a Microsoft 365 group.^[6]
Did the organisation run a legacy external network for partners, customers or alumni, and has it been moved to the new model?

What happened to Yammer external networks?

External networks did not disappear, but they were rebuilt. Under the modern model, every new external network maps to its own Microsoft Entra tenant, uses Microsoft 365 Groups, Entra B2B and SharePoint storage, and needs at least one user with a SharePoint licence in that tenant. Setting it up requires Global Administrator privileges, and members of the legacy network are exported to a CSV file and bulk-invited as guests.^[5] Premium features are not supported for external networks.^[4] If your dealer, franchise or partner community ran on a Yammer external network, its members are now guests in a separate tenant, which also changes how you can segment them in reporting. We cover that boundary in intranet and extranet measurement.

Which legacy Yammer pieces have been switched off?

The rename was finished in 2023, but the clean-up continued for another two years. In April 2025 Microsoft announced what it called the final step in the move to a fully unified Viva Engage platform: retiring legacy components that had been designed for the older Yammer architecture and no longer met its security standards.^[7] Here is what went, and where the task lives now.

Legacy piece	What happened	Where the task lives now
Yammer admin center	Retired as part of the 2025 modernisation, due by end of June 2025^[7]	Engage admin center: tenant options, usage policy, sentiment analysis and feature analytics
Private content mode	Deprecated in the same change^[7]	No direct replacement named; check whether your network used it
Third-party application registration	Deprecated in the same change^[7]	Check every integration that used it
Legacy external networks	Alignment with Microsoft Entra required by 1 June 2025^[5]	A modern external network in its own Entra tenant
@yammer.com email sender addresses	Moved to @engage.mail.microsoft (EU: @eu.engage.mail.microsoft); rollout complete on 31 March 2026^[8]	Mail flow rules, gateways and safe-sender lists
Live events powered by Teams Live Events	Retired on 15 April 2026; events already scheduled are supported until 28 February 2027^[4]	Engage events powered by Teams town hall

The email change is the one most likely to break something quietly. Microsoft’s Message Center notice says no admin action is needed unless your organisation has custom configurations based on the old domain; if it does, review transport rules, email gateways and third-party integrations that reference @yammer.com.^[8] If your community digests or announcement emails suddenly stopped reaching a site in 2026, check the mail gateway allow-list before you blame the content.

None of this means Yammer features were taken away from users. The retired pieces were administration and integration plumbing; the communities, conversations and history moved across with the network.

What did the move change for community governance?

The biggest practical change for internal communication teams is not on the release notes. In a Native Mode network, a community connected to Microsoft 365 Groups is a Microsoft 365 group, with a SharePoint site and document library, a OneNote notebook and a Planner plan behind it.^[6] That brings community governance into the same machinery that governs Teams and SharePoint, with three consequences you will feel.

Who can create a community. Connected communities follow the tenant’s rules on who can create Microsoft 365 groups and any group naming policies.^[6] Many tenants restrict group creation to a named security group to limit Teams sprawl. Ask to be added before a campaign launch, not on the morning of it.
How long a community lives. If the optional Microsoft 365 group expiration policy applies, owners are asked to renew; any group that is not renewed is deleted and can be restored within 30 days. Viewing a post in Viva Engage counts as activity that renews a group automatically, and admins can name an address that receives notices when a group has no owner.^[9] Audit owners: a community created by someone who has since changed role is the one most likely to expire unnoticed.
What compliance can see. Retention policies for Viva Engage cover community messages and user messages, including storyline posts. Files are not included in those policies and follow their own.^[10] Rewrite the community charter with your compliance colleague so moderators know what belongs in an open community.

Detailed admin center settings are a separate topic; our first 90 days guide to a Viva Engage estate covers the inheritance in more depth.

Can you compare activity before and after the switch?

A rename, a Native Mode migration or a rebuilt external network is a natural point to take a baseline. Communities that expired disappear from the numbers, communities that changed owner may have changed name, and external members who became guests may lose the department and country attributes you used to segment them. The trend line you present to leadership spans all of that.

Before the next change lands, record for each active community: members, active members, posts and replies per month, and the share of readers who also react or comment. Record the same figures by department and country, so you can tell whether a drop is a real change in behaviour or an artefact of the migration. Then follow the same measures every month. Our article on what Yammer changed in your organisation explains why continuity matters more than any single month’s figure.

This is where we can help. Analytics for Viva Engage reads your network’s activity, joins it to your organisational structure and keeps history in one place, so the Yammer years and the Viva Engage years can be compared as one series rather than two sets of screenshots.

Check your network in ten minutes

Confirm with your Engage administrator (still called Yammer administrator in Entra ID) that the network runs in Native Mode.
List any legacy external network and confirm it was moved to a modern external network in its own Entra tenant.
Ask IT whether any mail rule, gateway or archiving tool still references @yammer.com.
Replace old yammer.com links in intranet pages, onboarding guides and templates.
Move any event still planned on Teams Live Events to an Engage event powered by Teams town hall.
Export communities with their owners, and flag those with fewer than two active owners or under an expiration policy.
Write down where executive content lives: storyline, Leadership Corner or a named community.
Take a baseline of activity by community, department and country before the next change.

If you want to see how your network’s history before and after the move to Viva Engage looks in one view, book a 15-minute call with Jérémy.

Frequently asked questions

Is Yammer still available?

Not under that name. Microsoft renamed Yammer to Viva Engage in phases during 2023, finishing with the web experience in June 2023. Microsoft’s FAQ says Yammer is now Viva Engage and that the product is largely the same. Your communities, conversations and members carried over.

Is Viva Engage free?

Microsoft’s FAQ says Viva Engage is available to most Microsoft 365 customers at no additional cost, and that it requires either a Viva Engage or a Yammer licence. Premium experiences such as Leadership Corner, campaigns and advanced analytics need Microsoft Viva Suite or Viva Employee Communications and Communities.

Do old yammer.com links still work?

Microsoft planned redirection for legacy Yammer URLs so that existing links and integrations keep working. When we tested www.yammer.com on 15 October 2026 it redirected to engage.cloud.microsoft. Replace old links anyway, because a redirect is not a commitment.

Is Classic Viva Engage being retired?

Not according to Microsoft’s current service description, which still lists Classic Viva Engage as a generally available client alongside New Viva Engage. What was retired in 2025 were legacy admin and integration pieces such as the Yammer admin center, private content mode and third-party app registration.

What replaced Yammer external networks?

Modern external networks. Each one maps to its own Microsoft Entra tenant and uses Microsoft 365 Groups, Entra B2B and SharePoint storage. Legacy external networks had until 1 June 2025 to align with Microsoft Entra, and their members are moved across as invited guests.

Why can I no longer create a community?

In a Native Mode network, communities connected to Microsoft 365 Groups follow your tenant’s rules on who can create groups. Many organisations restrict group creation to a named security group. Ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to add the internal communication team or agree a turnaround time for requests.