Last week Microsoft announced it will be deprecating two of its Yammer features for integrating Yammer into SharePoint 2010 and 2013. Microsoft announced they are deprecating the Yammer App on September 15th, 2015, you SharePoint 2013 / SharePoint Online folks have been using. The Yammer Web Part has a slightly longer life span but will none the less be discontinued on March 15th, 2016.
Microsoft will be looking to focus its support around Yammer Embed which makes sense as this provides a cross-platform integration strategy not too unlike how we integrate other social platforms onto our websites. At the end of the day this should not change your organization’s social integration strategy a great deal. If anything this will make everything more streamlined for IT and design UI/UX.
What this all means is that if you are currently using the Yammer App or Yammer Webpart, you will need to replace them with Yammer Embed as soon as you can schedule testing and deployment. Remember, once the app or webpart are deprecated, they will no longer be working or showing any data.
With more and more companies looking to integrate Yammer into their Intranets and Extranets, this move makes a lot of sense for Microsoft. They will now be able to offer more support across any platform, as well as provide a more straight forward upgrade strategy. Microsoft has a detailed outline on how to include your Yammer feeds through Yammer Embed. With many ins and outs of governance, best practices and terms of services for both Yammer and SharePoint, it is important that your IT team be familiar with both sides of the coin when embedding. Christian Buckley at GT Consulting pointed out some problems that can occur especially when working with private Yammer groups.
You going to Ignite in May, or do you need another reason to get one of the remaining spots? Since there has been such a trend of integrating social into company portals, we are going to see many sessions on Yammer at Ignite. As announced recently, I will be delivering a session at Ignite with Naomi Moneypenny on Yammer and SharePoint integration. I hope you can join us where we will be covering all of these hot button issues that you and your IT team need to know when developing and deploying Yammer into your portal, with a big focus on Yammer Embed.
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