Microsoft is making progress in the long awaited alignment between Yammer and Office 365. We don’t yet have the ability to use a SharePoint document library in a Yammer Group, but you can create and save Office documents into the Yammer Files tool. The file types are consistent (e.g., Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.), but the place where the files are stored are different – for now. Ultimately the files tool should just be the SharePoint document library that’s associated with the Office 365 group of which Yammer is a part as well.

The next scheduled change, however, is the removal of the Notes function in Yammer, which enabled the writing and sharing of browser-based rich text “documents” in a Yammer Group. This function is going away (being deprecated), and current Notes will be converted into Word Online documents in late January. There are some steps required to have your Notes automatically migrated into Files, so check out what you have to do at Office Support (see Converting Yammer notes into Word Online documents).

Essentially:
– Ensure your notes are published; if not, they will not be converted. Drafts will be deleted.
– If you want to keep past versions, do so by saving the file to your computer. Versions will not be automatically converted nor retained. Previous versions will be deleted.
– If you aren’t using the Files tool in Yammer, save your Notes manually. They will not be converted.

These foundational changes will make the replacement of the Yammer Files tool with a SharePoint document library easy-peasy (well, easy-peasy’er).