In coming months, the Yammer Service in Cornell Office 365 will undergo cleanup and maintenance as Microsoft takes steps to upgrade outdated Yammer instances to the current version of the service. As part of the process, unused Yammer groups will be removed and automated cleanup features will be turned on.  

Yammer will work mostly the same after the update. Two changes are the end of unlisted groups (already initiated by Microsoft in late 2022), and the deletion of files attached only to private chats. Both features have had almost no use at Cornell in recent years.  

Only a few unlisted groups have more than a few dozen posts with the latest post made since 2019.  Their owners have been asked if the groups, unreachable since Microsoft turned off access December 1, 2022, should be converted to an Office 365 private group. Since such a conversion removes the privacy of group names and membership under which unlisted groups were created, unlisted groups with no recent significant use will be deleted rather than converted to Office 365.  

Files attached only to private Yammer messages will not be preserved in Office 365. The fewer than fifty individuals who ever sent a file using a private message in Yammer will be contacted and provided with a link to download the file if they would like to continue to have access to it.  

Once Yammer groups are converted to Office 365 groups in April, there will be a cleanup to remove groups that are no longer used. To strike the best balance for notification during cleanup, there will be three categories of Yammer groups: active, inactive, and groups that are abandoned, for testing, or empty.

Active Groups  Groups with any posts or activity in 2022 or 2023 will remain active. A setting will begin to notify owners of groups which have a year with no activity that if they want to keep the group, someone will need to post within a month. If there is no response, the group will be assumed to no longer be wanted and will be deleted. This change is in response to requests by members of the Cornell community to reduce Yammer groups to only ones in current use, so that active conversations can more easily be found.  

Inactive Groups   Two types of groups are considered inactive: 

• Groups with any activity between 2019 and 2021, but nothing since 
• Groups that have no activity since 2018 that contain three or more members and have more than five posts 

Inactive group owners will receive a message in April, letting them know if nothing is posted in the group, it will be deleted. A single post will be sufficient to keep a group active for a year.

Abandoned, Test, and Empty Groups   Groups with only one or two members and five or fewer messages, all 2018 or older, will be deleted. These tend to be tests used to investigate Yammer’s features. General messaging, such as an announcement in the Yammer All Company community, will promote awareness of this change. 

Automated Notifications for Ownerless Groups 

Some groups have no owner because their prior owner left the group or Cornell. An automated process will start asking members of an ownerless group whether they want to take ownership. If no one does and there is no activity in the group for a year, the group will be cleaned up as noted above in Active Groups. 

The easiest way to keep a Yammer group available is to post in the group.

Visit Cornell Yammer through the web.  Viva Engage is Microsoft’s branding for Yammer inside Microsoft Teams. Install the Viva Engage app in Microsoft Teams.