What Is Viva Engage (Formerly Yammer)?

Your communications director posts an important announcement in Teams on a Monday morning. By Thursday, half the plant in Drummondville has never seen it: the message was buried under the chat traffic of the current project. That is exactly the problem Viva Engage, formerly Yammer, was built to solve.

The figures cited come from Microsoft and from McKinsey; they describe global trends, not the precise reality of your organization.

According to Microsoft's February 2023 announcement, 51% of employees surveyed for the Work Trend Index say their relationships outside their immediate work group have weakened since the shift to hybrid work.

What is Viva Engage and what happened to Yammer?

Viva Engage is the enterprise social network of Microsoft 365, directly descended from Yammer: Microsoft announced on February 13, 2023 that the Yammer brand was being retired, and the rename rolled out through 2023 with no data migration. The product was not replaced by another piece of software. It was renamed, redesigned and attached to the Microsoft Viva employee experience platform.

Often compared to a Facebook for business, the tool spreads news, announcements and photos across a community of employees. At PlanAxion, where consultants work at different client sites, that is what first caught our attention: informing the whole team without depending on a single office.

A few figures to put the tool in context, drawn from Microsoft's press releases and its official FAQ:

• 2008: Yammer is launched by David Sacks, initially to fix an internal communication need in his own company.
• June 25, 2012: Microsoft announces the acquisition of Yammer for US$1.2 billion, when the service counts more than 5 million corporate users.
• February 13, 2023: Microsoft announces that all of Yammer becomes Viva Engage and that the Yammer brand is retired.
• Late 2023: the Viva Engage app in Outlook replaces the former Communities app.

How is Viva Engage different from Teams and email?

Teams is for real-time teamwork, email is for targeted exchanges, and Viva Engage is for open communication across the whole organization. A Teams conversation disappears into the channel feed within hours. A Viva Engage post stays findable, open to comments and visible to colleagues who do not know each other.

This is not a detail. McKinsey Global Institute estimated back in 2012 that a knowledge worker spends about 28% of the workweek managing email and nearly 20% looking for internal information or the right person. A well-run internal social network attacks the second portion, not the first.

Concretely, the question to settle before any rollout is the same as for a project communication plan: which message goes where, and who needs to see it. Without that rule, you end up with three channels saying the same thing and nobody knows which one to read.

Which Viva Engage features actually serve internal communication?

Five features do the real work: communities, announcements, the personal feed (storyline), questions and answers with a marked best answer, and live events. The rest, campaigns, Leadership Corner and advanced analytics, belongs to the Viva Suite and mostly interests large organizations.

The collaborative space remains the foundation. It lets employees of the same organization collaborate even when they do not know each other or do not work in the same place: sharing ideas, knowledge and news across the whole company rather than a single office.

The microblog, now called storyline, lets you publish an internal-only post that is more detailed than an email and read by people who chose to read it. File, image and link sharing, messaging, and the security inherited from Microsoft 365 (compliance, eDiscovery) round out the package.

Since 2025, Microsoft 365 Copilot is available in Viva Engage to summarize threads and surface information, provided you hold the corresponding Copilot licence.

What does the move from Yammer to Viva Engage change for your organization?

For most organizations, nothing to migrate: same communities, same conversations, same files, and an existing Yammer licence still gives access to Viva Engage according to Microsoft's FAQ. What changes is the front door. The tool now lives in Teams, in Outlook and on the web, and legacy Yammer links are redirected.

The real work is not technical. An enterprise social network that was empty in 2019 will stay empty in 2026 under its new name. The rebrand is the opportunity to relaunch communities, name community leads and decide what will no longer go through email.

Renaming Yammer filled no community: an internal social network lives on what leadership is willing to say there first.

It is a change management issue more than a licensing one. If managers keep announcing decisions by email, employees will keep looking for information in their inbox.

How do you roll out Viva Engage without creating a ghost network?

Start with three useful communities, a clear usage rule between Teams and Viva Engage, and one executive who posts personally every week. A manufacturing SME in the Montérégie region does not need twenty communities. It needs a Company News channel, a Questions for Leadership channel and one channel per site or plant.

Then measure readership, not the number of posts. If the announcement of the new remote work policy is seen by 40% of employees within a week, you know where to go find the remaining 60%. That is more reliable than assuming the email was read.

Finally, separate communication from task tracking. Announcements go in Viva Engage; the actions that follow go in a tool such as Microsoft Planner. Mixing the two is the fastest way to lose both.

Should you still talk about Yammer in 2026?

No, except to find your old links and old training material: the product is called Viva Engage, it is integrated into Teams and Outlook, and it remains the Microsoft 365 tool for organization-wide communication. The right question is no longer “what is Yammer?” but “which message deserves to be seen by everyone, and where do we publish it?”

Frequently asked questions

Does Yammer still exist?

Not under that name. Microsoft announced on February 13, 2023 that the Yammer brand was being retired and replaced by Viva Engage. The product, existing communities and conversations were kept. According to Microsoft's official FAQ, the product remained largely the same: only the name and interface changed, with new features added since then.

Is Viva Engage included in Microsoft 365?

Core features are available with a Viva Engage licence or the legacy Yammer licence included in most enterprise Microsoft 365 plans, according to Microsoft's FAQ. Advanced features such as Leadership Corner, campaigns and detailed analytics require the Viva Suite or the Communications and Communities module. Check your plan before promising those options to your teams.

What is the difference between Viva Engage and Microsoft Teams?

Teams is for real-time teamwork: chat, meetings and the files of a given project. Viva Engage is for organization-wide communication: leadership announcements, communities of interest, and questions and answers open to everyone. Microsoft describes Viva Engage as the social fabric of Microsoft 365, accessible directly inside Teams, Outlook and the web.

What happens to content published in Yammer before 2023?

It remains accessible in Viva Engage. Microsoft stated that no features or data were lost for Microsoft 365 customers during the rebrand, and that legacy Yammer links would be redirected. External Yammer networks are still visible from the Teams app, but you participate in them through the Viva Engage web experience.