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Seeking recommended steps to delete "All Company"
I have a scenario where an existing dated "All Company" community exists in Viva Engage from Yammer days and dating back to 4 or so years ago. The contents of this community (including posts, members, etc) are no longer relevant to the organisation as it has evolved a lot since then. The organisation now wants to adopt Viva Engage as an ESN but with a "fresh start". So they are keen to delete all existing communities, including the All Company one. I would like to understand if there is a best practice way to deleting an "All Company" community in Viva Engage?
This help article (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/engage/manage-viva-engage-groups/all-company-community) seems to indicate that the "All Company" community can be treated like any other regular community: "You can delete All Company in Microsoft Entra ID, which takes it through a soft-delete and then a hard-delete process."
However, people in this discussion thread - as recent as Oct 2024, have reported having difficulties: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/viva_engage_administration/delete-default-all-company/4186461
The thread indicates that if someone deletes the All Company - the community continues to show as existing for users - leading to an experience where people click on the community only to find it is deleted.
I am wondering if there is a recommended way to delete and re-creating the All Company community? For example should we delete the relevant M365 group from Entra? If yes - when we recreate the community - do we do it from Engage and then go to Entra to set some additional properties to indicate it is the new "All Company"?
Hi Parul
While the "All Company" system community can be treated in many ways like any other community, a few things make it unique.
- It adds/removes users automatically, unlike other communities which require users to join on their own or a dynamic group needs to be used to auto add users based on user property rules
- Once deleted, no other community can replace it or be designated as "All Company" with the same behavior
- It is the only default community in Engage
Based on my own experience and research, there is not an option to recreate the "All Company" community with a new community after the default is deleted.
It's possible there is a way to mass delete all posts in the "All Company" community with a script but I'm not a script expert so the idea would need testing. You could also reach out to Microsoft in case they have a trick up their sleeve.
In general, I would not recommend deleting the default "All Company" community or its associated M365 group due to the risk of losing functionality or disconnecting the group from the community.
-Rob
Hi Parul
While the "All Company" system community can be treated in many ways like any other community, a few things make it unique.
- It adds/removes users automatically, unlike other communities which require users to join on their own or a dynamic group needs to be used to auto add users based on user property rules
- Once deleted, no other community can replace it or be designated as "All Company" with the same behavior
- It is the only default community in Engage
Based on my own experience and research, there is not an option to recreate the "All Company" community with a new community after the default is deleted.
It's possible there is a way to mass delete all posts in the "All Company" community with a script but I'm not a script expert so the idea would need testing. You could also reach out to Microsoft in case they have a trick up their sleeve.
In general, I would not recommend deleting the default "All Company" community or its associated M365 group due to the risk of losing functionality or disconnecting the group from the community.
-Rob
