If you are a Yammer customer, you will know that the identity and directory synchronization has been separate from the rest of Office365. This means that you need separate servers and software installations to sync users from your on-premises AD and provide SSO capabilities to Yammer. If you are unsure about this configuration, check out my post from last year that details all the particulars.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced it is finally deprecating the Yammer specific tools. From the announcement –
Yammer single sign-on (SSO) and directory synchronization (DSync) are legacy tools that Yammer developed being acquired by Microsoft. As Yammer gets closely integrated with Office 365, we are removing the need for customers to learn and maintain separate tools for Yammer. Instead, customers can use the familiar Office 365 tools to setup single sign-on (Office 365 sign-in with federated identity) and directory synchronization (Azure Active Directory Connect).
This is a huge announcement! Microsoft has finally integrated the identity functions for Yammer into the rest of O365. Here is the schedule:
Yammer SSO and DSync are now deprecated tools. Yammer networks that currently use Yammer SSO will need to transition to using Office 365 sign-in for Yammer. Networks using Yammer DSync will need to transition to using Azure Active Directory synchronization.
Important dates for this deprecation:
- November 18, 2015: Announcement to deprecate Yammer SSO and Yammer DSync tools.
- April 1st, 2016: Yammer networks will not be allowed to set up new configurations of SSO or DSync.
- December 1st, 2016: Yammer SSO and DSync will stop working.
After December 1st, 2016, if you do nothing, the following changes will take place:
- Yammer SSO: Yammer single sign-on will stop working. The network will start using Office 365 identity (if the network is associated with an Office 365 tenant) or Yammer identity (username and password sign-in).
- Yammer DSync: Yammer directory synchronization will stop working. No further changes to your on-premises Active Directory will be reflected in Yammer.
For more information, see the full announcement here.