Forum Discussion
Moving Content from Yammer IT Pro Network
There is a tremendous amount of valuable content is the existing O365/ITPro Yammer Network. I frequently refer people to posts that I know exist and other users have found this approach very helfpful.
How will I be able to do this in the future? What is going to happen to all of those good answers provided by community members and MS staff.
AFAIK, many of the answers from MS staff do not exist in any other location
Whilst there should indeed be a record made available if needed, as discussed in Yammer, many of our conversations were done in a spirit of a relatively closed, professional environment. There is a LOT of discussion and no small amount of files in the Yammer itpro network that people would certainly not want accessible via a Google/Bing search since it might well appear out of context and be taken wrongly.
It is utterly bonkers that Microsoft would simply close the existing Yammer network without any reference to the people who made it what it is. Why can't the Yammer network at least be made read-only with data retained for reference for a period that would allow us to extract and close down the information in a sensible fashion and to find other ways to build up the relationships with professionals across the world that we currently only know through Yammer.
(I'm not, of course directing this at you Dean as we have both been vocal on the Yammer side).
Hi Dean,
Like you I really hope that the content will be moved across, but I can imagine that this might be a challenge from a technical perspective. If it can't be moved across I certainly think it would be preferable to keep it in read-only mode.
- Mike Grafham
Microsoft
We had a similar challenge when moving across from the older incarnations of the Yammer customer networks, and the challenge wasn't necessarily technical but related to the social contract under which the information had been contributed. This network, being publicly searchable, is a different dynamic so to just migrate the content over would break the contract under which the info was originally provided.
I'd strongly suggest finding your favorite / most useful content and paraphrasing it in new posts / continuing the discussions here. That's the approach that we took when moving from earlier versions of the network and will help a lot with the social contract part of this puzzle.
Definitely see the argument for read-only access to the old network but really what we want to be doing is taking all that goodness over here (through re-creation, it seems) over time.- MichaelHolste
Agreed Mike. And to add to this, a lot of the context of conversations (participants, point in time, product features) would be lost. On top of moving 500k conversations, we wouldn't be able to member profiles to this new place, as the sign in requirements are different. There isn't a perfect symmetry of groups either. As the products continue to change, so do the conversations. That's why we are starting fresh.
Cai, I've heard nothing at all in the weeks leading up to this announcement about maintaining the O365 network in read-only mode, and in fact I doubt this is even possible. The shutdown of the Yammer Customer Network was only a short time ago, and I'm sure that if such a solution had been available, it would have been under broad discussion.
I think the safest working assumptions are that the O365 Network will be gone-gone in September, and that none of your favorite content will be relocated that you don't move yourself.
- I've struggled with this. SOOO much valuable information in the network, but like Julian said, there is lots that I wouldnt feel "comfortable" just plopping into an open / searchable platform.
I didnt even use my OrgID, but my personal Microsoft account to register as I can't represent my organization to a "public facing" forum.
That makes the most massive hurdle to overcome (besides this horribly inefficient UI/UX) the fact that everything is starting over from scratch. The network probably won't be that useful for in-depth knowledge for quite a long time....
