Yammer External Groups

Yammer external groups, which let administrators include people from outside their organizations in Yammer groups, are now generally available. While external groups could improve the utility of Yammer by letting organizations collaborate with customers and partners who are not part of the organization’s domain, the feature has limitations that could slow its adoption, and some organizations may want to opt out entirely.

Discussions Can Include Customers, Partners

Yammer is a Microsoft-hosted social networking service for organizations. It offers communication and sharing similar to that provided by Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and has proven useful inside companies for many-to-many communications tasks, such as resolving support questions.

Yammer now supports external groups, which allow members from outside an organization to participate in specific groups within an organization’s Yammer tenancy. Including external users within a Yammer group could make it easier to work with customers and partners. Microsoft has turned this feature on for all Yammer tenants by default.