Microsoft Viva Engage: The External users feature retires October 1, 2024
The External users feature in Microsoft Viva Engage will be retired on October 1, 2024, to maintain compliance and support Native Mode networks. Users invited as guests before Native Mode must be reinvited as Entra B2B users with Office authentication enabled. No action is required from admins to prepare for this change.
As part of the effort to fully integrate Microsoft Viva Engage into Microsoft 365 and maintain the highest standards of compliance, we will be retiring the external users feature on October 1, 2024. The external users feature is incompatible with Native Mode networks and needs to be removed to support all customers being fully Native.
External users are users that were invited to a Microsoft Yammer or Viva Engage community as guests prior to the introduction of Native Mode. You can find these users by following the instructions in Find external messaging participants in a Viva Engage network, so they can be reinvited as Entra B2B users.
Note: Office authentication must be enabled to invite these users as Entra B2B users. Only Global admins can modify this setting.
How this will affect your organization:
Customers in Native Mode will not see this feature present in the Viva Engage admin center but will see users renamed Former user after the feature is fully disabled on or after October 1, 2024.
Customers in legacy mode will have this feature disabled and removed from the Viva Engage admin center on or after October 1, 2024. Historical threads with users who do not have a Microsoft Entra identity will display Former user after this deprecation takes effect.
What you need to do to prepare:
Admins do not need to take any action to prepare for the deprecation. If you would like to turn off the feature prior to October 1, 2024, you can follow these instructions.
References
- External messaging in Viva Engage – Frequently asked questions | Microsoft Learn
- Find external messaging participants in a Viva Engage network | Microsoft Learn
- Enforce Microsoft 365 identity for Viva Engage users | Microsoft Learn
- Disable external messaging in a Viva Engage network | Microsoft Learn
Message ID: MC806102