M365 Changelog: Topic migration update and enhancements rolling out in Viva Engage

MC586548 – In January, Microsoft announced the General Availability of Viva Topics for our Viva Engage customers. In support of this change, topic migrations began for Viva Engage (Yammer) networks in Native mode and will continue until all Viva Engage networks have migrated to Viva Topics. To support the migration of topics, in June 2023 Microsoft is releasing a set of enhancements and fixes, such as revisions to our data export and API behavior.

Why is this change happening?

Shifting to Viva Topics leverages a more robust and secure infrastructure for Viva Engage topics. The migration also helps make community-sourced knowledge accessible across an organization and supports a consistent topics experience in Microsoft 365. For organizations not using premium Viva Topics experiences, the use of topics in Viva Engage will appear the same before and after topic migration. For organizations using Viva Topics, you will gain the premium benefits, such as topic cards in Yammer (Viva Engage), Viva topic pages, and centralized topic management.

When this will happen:

Topic migrations began in January 2023 and will continue to roll out to all Viva Engage networks in Native mode. Supporting fixes and enhancements to data export and Topics API v1 will be rolling out beginning mid-June 2023 and expected to compete by mid-July.

How this will affect your organization:

No action is needed from admins. Migrations from Viva Engage (Yammer) topics to Viva Topics are in progress for all Viva Engage networks in Native mode. The migration is a change to the back-end system used to store Topics and all existing topics will be migrated. To ensure quality topic experiences, Viva Engage topics applied to less than 10 Viva Engage conversations or with no usage in the last 18 months will still be migrated but will not be surfaced in topic picking experiences.

In support of the migrations, Microsoft is rolling out enhancements and fixes to Viva Engage. Please review documentation on API behaviour and data export in the following resources:

• Export data in Viva Engage
• Export topics created in Viva Engage with PowerShell
• Yammer Topic API changes with Viva

What you need to do to prepare:

Tenants in Native mode should ensure they are using modern authentication methods. More information on the use of AAD Authentication