Microsoft is retiring the Yammer model and transferring its apps and options to Microsoft Viva Have interaction, part of its employee-experience platform for a hybrid work world. It is also rolling out new premium Viva options. 

Over the previous few years Microsoft has been constructing out the Viva with Yammer-based apps. Final summer time, it launched Have interaction for Viva, an app based mostly on the Yammer Communities app for Groups.   

The Viva worker expertise suite, which runs on prime of Groups, consists of Viva Have interaction, Viva Be taught, Viva Subjects, Viva Connections and Viva Targets. Viva Connections was additionally based mostly on Yammer, which continued to run as Yammer apps alongside the Viva apps. 

Now, Microsoft will retire the Yammer model and fold all of it into Viva Have interaction in a transfer designed to scale back confusion about overlapping functionalities. 

“We have heard your suggestions on this preliminary step and within the coming yr, all of Yammer will develop into Viva Have interaction, retiring the Yammer model. As well as, we’ll proceed to boost Viva Have interaction with new capabilities that spur management engagement, genuine expression, occasions, and data discovery, together with new experiences rolling out right now,” Seth Patton, normal supervisor of Microsoft 365 mentioned in an announcement. 

In a separate blogpost, Microsoft clarifies that customers have given suggestions that “having two apps surfacing related experiences and the identical companies and content material has launched confusion and made it difficult to drive adoption and create readability for finish customers.”

Microsoft acquired Yammer in $1.2 billion in 2012, ran it beneath the Workplace division, and pushed the enterprise social community alongside its cloud companies together with Workplace 365, SharePoint, Dynamics and Skype.     

In March, Microsoft will replace the Communities app for Outlook and Yammer cell apps for iOS and Android beneath the Viva Have interaction model. 

Additional parts of the rebrand will happen all through 2023. In April, Yammer.com will show a banner notifying customers of the Viva Have interaction rebrand arising in summer time 2023. Then later within the yr, Microsoft will replace all Yammer.com URLs and roll out redirects. 

Microsoft additionally introduced that it’s going to begin the worldwide roll out of new premium modules for Viva that it unveiled in September. 

The brand new options embody Storyline Bulletins for leaders; Management Nook for workers; Ask Me Something Occasions; Social Media #Campaigns; Superior Analytics; and Solutions in Viva. There’s additionally a brand new admin heart. Microsoft has an in depth breakdown of every module’s capabilities in a separate blogpost. 

Microsoft launched Viva as an worker expertise platform in 2021 in response to hybrid work amid the pandemic. It was its entry into instruments for worker onboarding, employee schooling, and data discovery. Total, Viva is meant to assist organizations onboard workers, join workers with one another, and join workers with firm assets. It caters to workers engaged on website, remotely, or in hybrid work roles.