Frequently asked questions (Yammer activation guide)

Find answers to frequently asked questions about activating Yammer.

Licensing, offers, and eligibility
Activation process
Working with admins

In this guide:
Yammer activation guide	Set up your Yammer network	Frequently asked questions

Licensing, offers, and eligibility

How do I purchase Yammer Enterprise?

Yammer Enterprise is available online with the following plans:

Yammer Enterprise Standalone
Office 365 Enterprise Plans
Office 365 Midsize Business
SharePoint Online and Yammer Enterprise plans
Office 365 Education plans

These offers can be purchased directly through the Yammer Pricing page or via Office 365. Yammer can also be purchased with a Volume Licensing Enterprise Agreement or through a Microsoft sales partner. For more information on the purchasing options for larger organizations, see Volume Licensing. If you are an existing Office 365 customer with one of the above Yammer-entitled plans, you can activate a Yammer Enterprise network.

I bought Yammer Enterprise as a standalone service, why do I have to sign up for Office 365?

Yammer is part of the Office 365 family, similar to other services like SharePoint and Exchange. Signing up for Yammer Enterprise automatically generates an Office 365 account for you to manage your billing, licenses, Office 365-level settings, and Yammer activation.

If the domains you have under your Yammer network are verified on an Office 365 tenant, the network will be automatically associated with the Office 365 tenant.

See more information about the benefits of managing the Yammer service in Office 365.

Can I try Yammer Enterprise before I make my purchase?

Yes, you can get a free trial of Yammer Enterprise by by signing up for one of the Office 365 trials that include Yammer (such as Office 365 E3 trial or Office 365 E5 trial. When an Office 365 tenant is create, a new Yammer network will be automatically created under the *.onmicrosoft.com domain in your tenant. At the end of the trial, you can either purchase Yammer Enterprise to keep your activated network or let the trial expire. If you decide to let the trial expire, the network will be subject to the data handling processes of Office 365 and will be deleted. For more information: What happens when my trial ends?

Keep in mind that a domain can be verified on only one tenant at a time. To preserve the activated Yammer Enterprise network post-trial, you must upgrade from your trial account, either by purchasing the Office 365 plan to keep all of the Office 365 trial features, including Yammer Enterprise, or by purchasing Yammer Enterprise as a standalone product.

If you decide to move your domain to a new tenant, a new network will be created under that tenant and the domains that were migrated will be automatically synced into the newly created network.

Activation process

My company already has a Yammer Basic Network. What happens to that data and content when I activate Yammer Enterprise?

All data, content, and users are preserved when you upgrade your Yammer Basic Network. To upgrade, be sure to verify the same domain associated with your Yammer Basic network in your Office 365 tenant, and select it when activating Yammer.

I'm an existing Office 365 customer, and I have already added my company domain to my account. Do I have to perform this step again?

If you have already verified your domain for another Office 365 service and have added at least one Global Admin to that domain, you do not need to perform these steps again. Simply skip to Activate Yammer and continue from there. Please note that if your organization also uses SharePoint Online Sites, you cannot activate Yammer Enterprise using the same domain. Check to make sure that you've verified both www.contoso.com for use with SharePoint Sites and contoso.com for use with Yammer Enterprise.

Why am I getting a "web service exception" error message when I try to activate Yammer?

If you get this error when you try to activate Yammer, the domain might be already used for a SharePoint Public Website. To change this, go to Manage domains > Manage DNS to see which services are selected for your domain. See Selecting services for your domain in Office 365 for more information.

Tip: Domains used for SharePoint public websites should always be in the www.contoso.com format, or your SharePoint website will not function correctly, and you will have a conflict when you attempt to activate Yammer on contoso.com.

I'm getting a message that it can take up to 72 hours to verify a domain. Do I really have to wait 72 hours?

It depends on the registrar that you've used and how long it takes for their DNS servers to be updated.

If verification is taking a while, your best bet is to check back in the Office 365 Admin Portal periodically and see if the DNS servers have updated. As soon as they are, the verification will continue. Note that this isn't specific to Yammer activation. This process takes place anytime you verify a domain.

I activated Yammer Enterprise for the wrong domain. How do I upgrade the right network now?

If you activated the wrong domain for your Yammer network and need to activate a different domain, please Contact Office 365 for business support for assistance.

My organization already has users in Office 365, do they receive automatic access to Yammer Enterprise?

Users in Office 365 are licensed to use Yammer Enterprise, but they are not automatically added to your Yammer network. The simplest way to ensure that your Office 365 users are on Yammer is by adding them with you Yammer Admin. Or, add Yammer as a link in your organization's Office 365 navigation bar so users can navigate directly to the network. Otherwise, users who are on the same company domain as your Yammer network can join the network by creating a Yammer account at www.yammer.com. If your Office 365 users are on different domains or subdomains, consider adding those domains to your activated home network via a Support request.

My company has multiple domains and I want to activate Yammer Enterprise for all of them. How do I do that?

Office 365 supports one activated Yammer Enterprise network per account. If your organization has multiple domains, start by activating your home network using the domain that accommodates the majority of your users. Then, you can work with Support to add your additional domains to your home network. Note that you need to verify these domains in Office 365.

How can I prevent users from accessing my organization's Yammer network?

In general, we do not recommend that you block users from joining the network. Your organization will get the most value from Yammer by facilitating a network effect, which is amplified by having everyone in your company in Yammer. However, in cases where it is necessary to block users, Yammer Admins have the option to achieve this via SSO or the Yammer Block Users tool.

Option 1: Block Users via single sign-on (AD SSO)

Designate a group of users within your Active Directory (AD) to block from accessing Yammer, and then prevent your organization's Identity Provider (IDP) from sending an assertion to Yammer for those users. This option can only be implemented by Verified Yammer Admins.

To block users via single sign-on

Implement Yammer SSO.
Add users that you want to block from Yammer to a group in Active Directory that has deny permissions to access Yammer, using Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) issuance authorization rules.
When the user attempts to log on to Yammer, they will be redirected to www.yammer.com instead of the logon experience.

Note: Blocked users are prevented from accessing Yammer, even when Yammer appears in the suite navigation in Office 365. They are not blocked by Yammer, but by the federation service of choice, preferably AD FS. A user that's been blocked is presented with an error, which can be configured in your federation service. It's easiest to do on AD FS 3.0 native to Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2.

Important:

Yammer SSO is being deprecated and will stop working after December 1st, 2016. You will not be able to set up new configurations with Yammer SSO after April 1st, 2016. Instead of Yammer SSO, we recommend that you use Office 365 sign-in for Yammer.
For more information about the deprecation and how to transition out of Yammer SSO, see Plan for Yammer SSO and DSync deprecation.

Option 2: Block users in Yammer

Manually enter individual email addresses to the Yammer Admin "Block Users" tool to block those users from accessing your Yammer network. Users with blocked email addresses cannot join your Yammer network unless you or another admin unblocks those addresses. This option can be implemented by Network and Verified Yammer Admins.

Note: This feature does not include bulk update capabilities. For a scalable implementation, we recommend using SSO, as outlined in Option 1.

Working with admins

How do I make someone a Verified Admin in Yammer?

Office 365 and Yammer admin functions are currently managed separately. There are two ways to make someone a Yammer admin:

If someone is made a Global Admin in Office 365 and added to the matching contoso.com domain, they are automatically made a Verified Admin in Yammer. This can be done at the time of activation or later. Once someone is a Global Admin, the only way to remove them from being a Verified Admin in Yammer is to change their Office 365 admin status to something other than Global Admin. You cannot change their admin status in Yammer.
You can appoint someone to be a Network or Verified Admin within Yammer, without making them an Office 365 Global Admin. Their admin status is controlled completely within Yammer, and they have access only to Yammer admin features.

How do I change an admin role for Yammer?

To edit an admin's role, you can go to the Yammer Admins Page and select the user you'd like to change. Note that admins cannot edit their own roles.

If the admin is an Office 365 Global Admin, you can click Change Status of Office 365 Admins. This takes you to the Office 365 Admin Center, where you can assign that Office 365 Global Admin to a different role. The user are then removed as a Verified Admin within Yammer.
If the admin was made a Network or Verified Admin directly in Yammer, you can change that user's role within Yammer Admin Center.

Does every Office 365 Global Admin on my account automatically become a Verified Admin in Yammer?

Yes, when the Yammer Enterprise network is activated, all existing Office 365 Global Admins who are on the matching company domain automatically become Verified Admins in Yammer. Later, whenever an Office 365 user is appointed to a Global Admin role, they are also added as a Verified Admin in Yammer. Note that these Global Admins still need to create an account and log on to Yammer to access the Yammer Admin Center.

Can I make someone a Yammer Verified Admin from the Office 365 Admin Portal without making them an admin in Office 365?

No. To make a user a Verified Admin in Yammer via Office 365, you must make them an Office 365 Global Admin.

To grant a user only Yammer Verified Admin rights, appoint them from within Yammer. Making someone a Verified Admin directly in Yammer does not grant them Global Admin rights in Office 365.

I activated my Yammer Enterprise network, but when I log on in I don't see any admin tools. How come?

Check the following troubleshooting options to determine why your admin isn't receiving emails from Yammer:

Has the admin created a Yammer account?

The Office 365 automated process syncs the Global Admin as a verified admin in Yammer, but the user must still create an account in Yammer to receive a confirmation email.
Is the admin on the correct domain?

The user must have an email address that is in the same company domain that you've used to activate Yammer. If you create an admin in customer.uk, but the Yammer network you've activated is customer.com, the admin will not be synced as a Yammer Verified Admin. For more information on how to edit an admin's domain, see Assign Global Admins.
Is the admin using a generic email?

An admin cannot have a generic email address and must be assigned to a real user. To regulate this, there are certain words that are not allowed in the email address of a Global Admin:
- admin, noreply, help, support, workfeed, feedback, yammer, api, abuse, postmaster, hostmaster, root, new, create, index, show, destroy, delete, and update
Has your company added Yammer.com to the Safe Recipients list?

Your email service could be blocking emails from the Yammer domain. Please check to make sure Yammer.com is on a Safe Recipients list at your company and is not otherwise prevented from delivering emails.

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