Cannot invite Gmail users to an external group?

[Deleted]

What about inviting gmail users to a Yammer External Group (that have signup for an associated Microsoft account via account.microsoft.com)? I can invite such a user (e.g., a consultant) to SharePoint Online, but not to a Yammer External Group, instead I get "An email address you entered is not allowed. If you're using a personal email address, try a work one instead." Will this be possible in the near future? It is very useful to many for inviting people outside the organisation to discuss (Yammer chat) and collaborate on documents (SharePoint Online).

Did I not understand how to invite this user, or is this a bug, a decision not to allow gmail accounts, or something MS will look into?

[#2]

Yammer External networls allow you to invite Yammer users in other companies to your network, as there can't be a network for gmail.com, you can't invite those users.
You could invite them as network level guests afaik, but they would then have access to all your public groups.
What you are asking for will probably happen at some point in the future, Yammer is becoming aligned with groups, and external members are coming to groups, logically this would allow MSA to access Yammer, but it's not been stated and I've not heard a likely timeframe.

[#3]

Yammer wants you to collaborate with users at other companies. But "gmail" isn't a company name, it's a personal email address.

Surely the people you want to collaborate with have a "real company" email address that you can invite them with, yes?

[#4]

Kevin, even if all users do have a company email address (and FYI, not all of our external users do) the question of the business logic behind the differences between SharePoint and Yammer external access still remains. Externals using e.g. Gmail can be invited to access our SharePoint sites to view and collaborate on content, but they cannot be invited to our external Yammer groups to engage in similar activities.

[#5]

What about scenarios where you're running a project with multiple suppliers some of which are sole proprietors with no company website/domain and end up using gmail, yahoo or similar mail services. What you're saying is that #Yammer encourages collaboration with external users as long as they have their own domain name. How does that make any sense? 

[#6]

I wouldn't think to use Yammer when running a project with multiple suppliers, it's not at all the right type of tool for these 'inner-loop' type scenarios. Microsoft Teams is a better answer, and will soon support guests without corporate credentials.

[#7]

Yeah, this pretty much killed my ability to work with clients in Yammer. I have a client who can't join with his work email or his personal email. So now I have to find another solution.

[#8]

You can do this with Teams now

---

@Lance E. Cummings wrote:

Yeah, this pretty much killed my ability to work with clients in Yammer. I have a client who can't join with his work email or his personal email. So now I have to find another solution.

---

[#9]

@Kevin Crossman 

What about not profitable organisation.  My organisation using Microsoft and I would like to use yammer with my team and some team members using gmail account