Microsoft Viva Engage (Yammer)

Yammer is a social networking tool designed for internal communication and collaboration within organizations. Since August 2022, Microsoft Viva Engage has provided enhanced experience for the Yammer Communities app for Microsoft Teams and Outlook. Viva Engage introduced new features such as Stories that gave employees new ways to communicate and share information. As of March 2023, Microsoft began merging Yammer with Viva Engage to create a single application under the new name, in a process expected to last through the end of the year.

Yammer is still supported by Microsoft and will be in some form through the end of 2023, after which Yammer will be known as Microsoft Viva Engage. Viva Engage will have all the features that Yammer users have come to expect from their workplace collaboration tool.

Communities in Yammer are groups of users who come together around a common interest or purpose, such as a department, project or business initiative. Communities can be either public or private, allowing organizations to control the level of visibility and accessibility to the information shared within them. Yammer communities can also be a great way to break down silos, encourage cross-functional collaboration and improve decision-making.

Yammer offers two types of messages, group and private. Groups are useful for supporting collaboration between teams or around specific subject areas. Private messages support one-to-one and small group conversations. As an enterprise collaboration tool, any message sent in Yammer can potentially be managed and viewed by company administrators.

Each organization can set its own retention policies for Yammer and Microsoft Viva Engage messages, which by default apply to all users. These policies define the lifecycle of the data-in-place. End users can edit or delete their Yammer/Viva Engage messages as long as they haven’t been deleted under the workspace retention policy. The original version of these messages is copied into a holding folder until the applicable retention period has expired.

The Yammer Communities app is a group collaboration application from Microsoft that integrates with Microsoft Teams. This app was rebranded as Microsoft Viva Engage in 2022 and provides enhanced functionality for teams to communicate across the digital workplace. Viva Engage allows employees to join communities around departments, job functions and personal interests. Viva Engage also offers a Leadership Corner where company leaders can speak directly to their employees.

Office 365 Government GCC is Microsoft’s government-approved offering for the remote workplace. Yammer (now Microsoft Viva Engage) is not included in Office 365 GCC as standard but can be included for each Enterprise Agreement user on an E1 or E3 Plan license.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU legislation defining the rights that users have to their data. Microsoft has a robust set of privacy and security controls in place to ensure that Yammer complies with the GDPR and other data protection regulations. However, it is up to company administrators to configure Yammer to be GDPR-compliant when setting up their workspace.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations apply to covered entities and their business associates that handle Protected Health Information (PHI), and impose strict requirements for the storage, transmission, and processing of such information. If an organization wants to use Yammer for handling PHI, it needs to ensure that it is configured and used in a manner that complies with HIPAA requirements. Organizations using Yammer for handling PHI should assess their specific use cases and ensure that they are in compliance with HIPAA.

Yammer (and Microsoft Viva Engage) administrators can create external user networks that authorize people from outside the organization to join their digital workspace in a limited capacity. Third-party users are limited to viewing and interacting with the content in the external network only. They cannot see or send messages in any other part of the Yammer or Viva Engage environment. This helps administrators limit and control external user activity within their Yammer workspace.

Yammer and Microsoft Viva Engage are typically included with Office 365 Enterprise plans, such as Office 365 Enterprise E1, E3, and E5. However, it may not be included with all Office 365 plans. If Yammer is included with your Office 365 plan, you can access the platform directly from the Office 365 portal and use it to communicate and collaborate with other employees in your organization. This integration with Office 365 can help streamline your workflow and make it easier to stay connected and productive.

Aware supports eDiscovery in Yammer and Microsoft Viva Engage datasets by ingesting messages in real time into an immutable archive, accessible through AI/ML-infused federated search. Aware captures a complete, contextual record of Yammer and Viva Engage messages, including edits and deletions. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) metadata normalized for each individual organization accelerates eDiscovery workflows by enabling search and results refinement by multiple parameters, including channel, custodian, sentiment and keyword. All Aware data is further protected through comprehensive audit logs so administrators can understand who initiated workflows or searched the results Aware produces.

Aware ingests data-in-place from Yammer/Microsoft Viva Engage in real time and proactively analyzes content for predefined keywords and regular expressions that can indicate sensitive information is being shared. Examples of these data types include Personal Identifiable Information (PII) such as social security number (SSN), passport number or driver's license number. Protected Health Information (PHI) includes details of diagnoses, test results and medical appointments. Payment Card Industry (PCI) data includes card numbers, expiration dates and bank account numbers. Aware can also be configured to detect company-specific sensitive information such as intellectual property (IP) using configurable automated workflows.

With Microsoft enterprise licenses such as E3 or E5, users can enhance their security and mitigate risk across Microsoft software and applications, including Yammer and Microsoft Viva Engage. The E3 license provides access to various features including the Microsoft 365 family of apps, supported by security and compliance solutions from Azure, BitLocker, and Compliance Center. For even more advanced security, the E5 license offers everything in the E3 license plus additional threat protection, information protection, and compliance capabilities. Aware offers data loss prevention (DLP policies) and advanced eDiscovery tools to enhance security in Microsoft Yammer and Viva Engage, as well as from other collaboration data sources such as Slack, Zoom and Webex by Cisco, enabling business administrators to take control of their entire collaboration ecosystem from a single, centralized contextual intelligence platform.

Aware contextual intelligence platform provides comprehensive risk mitigation, governance and organizational intelligence insights for all major enterprise collaboration tools, including Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom Team Chat, Webex by Cisco and Workplace from Meta.

Aware utilizes proprietary Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies to gauge message intent through sentiment and conversation health analysis. This information is aggregated to provide valuable business intelligence from digital conversations at scale. Many top corporations rely on Aware to alert them of changes in organizational culture and to gain new insights into specific groups, departments, policies or projects across their enterprise through Aware’s advanced reporting.