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In June 2018, we're making changes to the native social capabilities in SharePoint Online

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wbaer
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Apr 06, 2018

In June 2018, we're making changes to the native social capabilities in SharePoint Online.

 

Office 365 includes two options for enterprise social features: Yammer and the SharePoint Newsfeed. 

The native SharePoint social features in SharePoint Online were designed to let people work together in ways that are most effective for them through providing great collaboration tools that anyone can use to share ideas, find people and expertise, and location business information. 

 

Over the course of the past 18 months we've introduced new capabilities designed to take advantage of the latest innovations across intelligence, mobile and more to deliver solutions that allow people to communicate more effectively from Office 365 Groups to Team News, Communication Sites, and Yammer.  

 

With these new innovations deployed globally we'll be making changes to the native social features in SharePoint Online.  In June 2018 we'll make the company feed read-only in SharePoint Online and remove the option to implement the Newsfeed feature in navigation and through Tenant Administration.

 

The company feed is an organization’s public newsfeed. All posts appear to the company, including those created by people that users might not be following. 

 

How does this affect me?


Beginning in June 2018, the company feed will be set to read-only for existing Tenants and the option to implement the Newsfeed capability will be removed for new Office Tenants.  For customers using the company feed we recommend considering options such as Team News, Communication Sites, and/or Yammer.

 

You can learn more about SharePoint Communication Sites at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-a-SharePoint-communication-site-94A33429-E580-45C3-A090-5512A8070732 and Team News in SharePoint Online at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Team-News-in-the-SharePoint-mobile-app-for-iOS-67ace508-93d0-49f0-b0e3-d572014709b2

 

Frequently Asked Questions


Does this change affect the Site Feed feature?
No- we will continue to support Site Feed in its current form.


Are there any other features impacted with this change?
No- this change impacts only the Aggregated Newsfeed feature.


How do I turn on Yammer in my Office 365 Tenant?
Prior to this change Office 365 included two options for enterprise social features: Yammer and the SharePoint Newsfeed. If you pick Yammer to be your social experience, follow the Enterprise Activation process to activate Yammer. After activation, a Yammer tile appears on the Office 365 portal page and the app launcher, making it easy for Office 365 users to reach Yammer. Also, if your network is eligible, users can sign-in to Yammer using their Office 365 account.


What is SharePoint Team News?
Using SharePoint Online team news is how you keep up with and broadcast key events and accomplishments with other members of the team and extended stakeholders. You can use team news for things like trip reports, best practices, project updates, highlights of new documents and content, welcoming a new team member, sharing team goals and celebrating milestones or other scenarios the company feed previously provided.  To learn more about SharePoint Online team news refer to https://support.office.com/en-us/article/keep-your-team-updated-with-news-on-your-team-site-495f8f1a-3bef-4045-b33a-55e5abe7aed7


Will this change affect SharePoint 2016?
No.  This change is currently limited to SharePoint Online in Office 365.

Updated Apr 02, 2018
Version 1.0