M365 Changelog: (Updated) General Availability of Viva Topics for Yammer

MC494737 – Updated January 5, 2023: Microsoft has updated the timeline below. Thank you for your patience. Microsoft is announcing the General Availability of Viva Topics for our Yammer customers.

The General Availability of Viva Topics for Yammer experiences enables us to leverage a more robust and secure infrastructure for Topics. It also enables organizations to use these Topics outside of Yammer (for example, Topics can be tagged in Teams chats or in Outlook messages).

If you would like to learn more about the benefits of Viva Topics, click here.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 72184

When this will happen:

Standard Release: Microsoft will begin rolling out in early May (previously mid-January) and expect to complete by mid-July 2023.

How this will affect your organization:

Effective January 3rd 2023, any organization setting up a new Yammer network will have their Topics experience in Yammer supported by Viva Topics infrastructure. In the first half of 2023, existing Yammer customers will have their preexisting Topics in Yammer converted into full Viva Topics if they have purchased a Viva license.

Customers that have purchased a Viva license will get the benefits of having Yammer Topics converted into full Viva Topics, however, unlicensed customers will not see an interruption in the Topics experience in Yammer. The Viva Topics back-end will be used to store Yammer Topics, but the end user experience of using Topics in Yammer for unlicensed customers will remain the same. Given this is just a back-end change for unlicensed customers, these customers do not need to communicate the upcoming change to end users. 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action is needed from admins.