MC1045211 - Microsoft Viva Engage: Private content mode will retire as of June 30th, 2025

Updated June 12, 2025: We have updated the timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

In alignment with Microsoft 365 core workload administration best practices, the private content mode user experience on the classic Yammer admin center will be retired as of June 30th, 2025. This feature has been utilized for specific use cases related to Viva Engage administration and management, and we have outlined alternative solutions for these scenarios in the communication below. This applies to Engage on web, Engage on Teams and Engage on outlook. 

When this will happen:

General availability (Worldwide): The feature will be retired by June 30th, 2025.

How this will affect your organization:

Viva Engage will no longer support private content mode, present within the classic Yammer admin center. Verified admins will no longer be able to enable or disable this feature.

There are alternative methods that can fulfill the needs previously met by private content mode:  

• Viewing private community content without being a member: Users with the Global Administrator or Groups Administrator role can search for private communities within Engage and join these communities without requiring explicit approvals. Learn more about other Entra ID roles here.
• Viewing community admins and members for private communities without being a member: Since Engage Communities are backed by Microsoft 365 groups, the list of group owners and group members are visible within Entra ID for all users. Learn more about group management here.
• Handling legal/audit cases in Engage: Compliance administrators, eDiscovery managers, and eDiscovery administrators can access, search, and export private community and private message content on Viva Engage. Learn more about our eDiscovery standard solution here.
• Enable Supervisor mode when calling Yammer REST APIs: If you rely on the Yammer REST APIs to programmatically fetch private community content, you may continue to do so by enabling supervisor mode, as documented here.

Admins are also able to perform network data exports which can be manipulated to handle other advanced use cases. 

What you need to do to prepare:

After June 30th, private content mode will automatically be disabled for all tenants, and if needed you would have the ability to enable it by calling the REST API as highlighted above. 

There will be no exceptions to the retirement which will be done on June 30th, 2025. We recommend you communicate clearly and early to admins of this impending change and coordinate an effort to understand the alternative solutions proposed above.