Embed Yammer group with external users in SharePoint Online

Question

The case is that we have a SharePoint Online site which allows external access by invitation only. In Yammer we have created a group for external users and have successfully added external users. From Yammer you can embed the code and paste it to a script editor web part, which works properly.

The embedded link

The default embed-code

<div id="embedded-feed" style="height:800px;width:400px;"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://s0.assets-yammer.com/assets/platform_embed.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
yam.connect.embedFeed({
  container: "#embedded-feed",
  network: "externalcompany.com",  // source network contoso.com
  feedType: "group",
  feedId: "1234567"
});
</script>

The Yammer feed (IT Pro Network as example)

Now, with external users they are a part of their own Yammer network with the URL https://www.yammer.com/externalcompany.com and not the company that hosts the group https://www.yammer.com/contoso.com This make the embedded script fail. So I need to add a variable in the network section of the embedded code. Something like . . .

yam.connect.embedFeed({
  container: "#embedded-feed",
  network: company, // instead of network: "externalcompany.com"
  feedType: "group",
  feedId: "1234567"
});

Is there a way to grab the external user network from their company e-mail address (or something) and assign it to the company variable?

Answer 1

Even if you could somehow reliably grab the current user's home network, this approach will not work. The embed is going to look for a group on the specified network with the specified ID, and that group does not exist on those other networks. You need to specify the network that hosts the group in your embed code.

If the external users are part of the yammer group in question, it should just work for those users by specifying the host network.

A couple of suggestions:

• Try ensuring that your users are logged in to your network in the Yammer web UI and see if you get different results.
• Try Fiddling the web traffic to see if you can glean any details about the errors thrown in the API calls.

The Yammer APIs are notoriously brittle, and often fall apart when exposed to non-trivial applications. External networks are one area where I've experienced pain in the past.

Good luck!