Converting Yammer groups to O365 Connected Yammer Groups

[Pooya Obbohat]

Hi all,

We have only given selected users the permissions to create Office 365 Groups. Creating a Yammer group with an account without this permission results in a normal Yammer group (not an O365 Connected Yammer Group). This is fine, but we do want these groups to be converted to Connected Groups later on. 

What I did to test this was added an account with the permissions to create O365 Groups as an admin to the Yammer group. Nothing happened. Logged in with the account that created the group and left it, but still, nothing happened. My assumption was that all Yammer groups will be converted to O365 Connected Yammer groups if they are eligible. I can create connected groups with the account that has the right permissions, but I can't figure out how to convert the normal  Yammer groups. 

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Try this.

First, make sure the eligible user you added as an admin in Yammer is also listed as an owner for the underlying group in the Office 365 admin portal.

Second, change the group from private to public and back again (or vice versa). We had a case where MSFT advised us to do this to force provisioning.

[#3]

All I had to do was change it to public and back to private and the group was automatically converted to an Office 365 Connected Yammer Group. Thanks for sharing the solution. 

[#4]

Do I have to create an Office group with the same name as the Yammer Group to be able to perform this?

[#5]

The Office 365 group will be created and linked automatically. All I had to do was change the privacy setting of the Yammer group and set it back to the previous setting. This initiates the provisioning of the O365 group. You do need the following to make this work:

- The user doing this should be allowed to create Office 365 groups

- Private Yammer groups are only supported if they are listed in the directory

- O365 connected Yammer groups only work if you have 1 Yammer network 

- O365 connected Yammer groups only work if you have enforced O365 identities

[#6]

Thank you Pooya for your quick reply.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to make it for me.

If I create a new Yammer-group it is an Office Group with all its capabilities such as SharePoint and OneNote. However, now I would like to convert the old Yammer groups which is very active and with a lot of members to an Office Group enabled Yammer group. The trick worked on a “sandbox” group I have that was private, however, when I try on my public main group it doesn’t work.

[#7]

Are you switching the privacy setting of the group by using an account with the permission to create Office 365 groups? When you have other O365 connected Yammer groups, this means that you already have a 1-on-1 network-tenant configuration and you are enforcing the O365 identities. The only other requirement for connected Yammer groups is that the account creating the group (or in this case, the account changing the privacy setting to public and back to private & listed in the directory) has the permission to create O365 groups. The only other thing I can think of that could cause this is when you already have an O365 group with the same name. Not sure what will happen then. Changing the privacy setting has worked for me in multiple tenants where only a selected group of people are allowed to create O365 groups. 

[#8]

Can anyone confirm if this toggling of the privacy setting still works to connect an existing group to an O365 group? I tried it several times today without success.

Thanks,

Brian

[#9]

Creation of connected groups as stopped working in my own tenant. Have to create a ticket because the network meets all requirements and Office 365 group creation is enabled (tested by creating a Plan). Will report back when that is fixed. Can't test this unfortunately on other networks I have access to. 

[#10]

Issue was fixed and now I can confirm that toggling of the privacy setting still works. Couple of things you could check:

- make sure you have a 1:1 network:tenant configuration. To check, simply go to Yammer admin, start network migration. Is there a network you can merge? if not, then it's 1:1

- make sure O365 identities are enforced 

- make sure that in security settings of Yammer admin portal, connected groups is enabled

- user needs permission to create O365 groups

Only public and private & listed groups are supported. 

[#11]

Thanks @Pooya Obbohat for the follow up info! 

[#12]

Hi  i have enabled the network settings on our tenant but still shows disabled for the office 365 group creation tenant

[#13]

when your network has the correct configuration and it still doesn't work, then I would recommend creating a ticket with MSFT support. Have shared the requirements above. Have also noticed that in the security settings for Yammer it might say that connected groups are enabled even if you have multiple Yammer networks. It also won't say "disabled" if users don't have the permissions to create O365 groups. The fact that it shows "disabled" means that something else needs to be fixed and the only thing that I can think of that would result in it being disabled is when you're not enforcing O365 identities.