Yammer – What is it?

Microsoft have announced that all Microsoft Office 365 tenants with less than 150 users will have Yammer automatically turned on in their Office 365 tenant. So along with your standard suite of Microsoft Office products (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, & Excel) you will increasingly see Yammer icons appearing on your screens. So what is Yammer and how can it be used?

Yammer is an enterprise grade Social Networking platform for businesses, and works similarly to Facebook in allowing online conversations between single users and groups.  Yammer can be setup so everyone across your business can access from multiple devices (PC, Mac, iPhone, Smartphones & Tablets) and communicate instantly with groups or other users, this leverages the increasingly integrative cloud capabilities within the core Office 365 product range, cloud applications such as Yammer are fully included in most subscriptions.

Why use Yammer?

Yammer is an integrated communications tool with instant messaging, message posting, group discussions & collaboration that allows security, permissions, & licences. It is controlled by the central admin panel for Office 365, which means you determine who in your organization can use the platform and which groups they can be a member. Unlike Facebook which is a public domain application, Yammer is run as an enterprise grade platform covered by the Office 365 Trust Center with significant privacy & security advantages over public applications.

Yammer is following the huge social shift in communication to online, particularly in the younger generation who have become digital natives with social networking as their preferred method of sharing & nonverbal communication. Many see the Yammer social network for businesses as a way to get work done smarter and faster designed for a generation addicted to social networking. Microsoft say it is a way of “bringing teams together” in a single communication hub reducing email trails, encouraging real time collaboration & feedback.

Users with a license that includes Yammer can start accessing Yammer from Office 365 via the Yammer tile in the Office 365 app launcher or start a Yammer conversation from other Office 365 apps. Existing Yammer users, who are also Office 365 users, can start signing in with their Office 365 credentials, unifying their sign-in experiences

How does Yammer work?

Assuming you have Office 365 you, or your administrator should be able to setup Yammer for your business reasonably easily.

  • User Profiles – The Profile is the starting point for each user with settings for basic personal details, contact information, organisational information, password management, and notification settings.
  • Groups – Groups can be set up internally for employees to share information, set by the group administrator this could be by department, by project, or all company. Users can be invited to join multiple groups & new groups can set setup reasonably easily
  • Internal Networks – Yammer can be set up for both internal & external network communication. The internal (or Verified) network is the main domain that each email is setup against, if all employees have the same domain they can access the full range of Yammer services between internal users.
  • External Networks -Yammer allows you to also join external networks that have members outside your organisation (different domain names), they can either be public or privately invited (you request to join), there is a great search function that allows you find external networks which you may like to join (e.g. industry groups or subject support groups)
  • Notifications – in settings you can change the notification settings for each group or network, so for an internal group you may wish to see every contribution as it is made and get an daily email summary, while for an external industry network you may wish to get a daily summary as the end of each day. These can be changed by the individual user and generally depends on the traffic & importance the group or network to the user.

Once your User Profiles, Networks, and Groups have been setup it is time to use the application for communication;

  • Inbox – just like email or on Facebook the inbox shows all activity or posts to have occurred in your internal groups or networks in a conversational flow with images and comments.
  • External Networks – you need to change into an external network to check activity or make a post.
  • Online Now – Yammer has a presence function to identify when other people on your internal network are online and able to chat (each profile online shows a green dot).
  • Update, Poll or Praise – these are types of comments anyone can make to the group to engage members or participate in conversations.
  • Files – Yammer allows files to be uploaded and shared across groups, versions maintained, and stored.
  • Search – The search function in Yammer is powerful using both #hashtags and conversational search it allows users to search group history of conversations, files, & topics, ultimately building a knowledge base within each group.
  • Icons – once you have Yammer working you will have Yammer icon on your PC Taskbar that shows when you have a message in your group.
  • Apps – there are number of Apps that facilitate Yammer on smartphones, iPhone, & Tablets – they all provide notification & user access for contributing on the go. There is an App store for other apps to facilitate specific areas such as awards, suggestion boxes, and milestone reminders for projects.

Do you want to know more about Yammer?

Yammer maybe a great addition for your business & with no additional licence cost as part of many Office 365 subscriptions. Office 365 is increasing the preferred IT platform option for most businesses, we can help with the user setup, data migration, & ongoing administration of the your Office 365 environment, as well as making sure you get the most from the other value added Office 365 services such as OneDrive, Skype for Business, & SharePoint.

Computer Troubleshooters can help you setup Yammer as part of your Office 365 solution and ensure you understand the limitations and recommendations we have around the implementation of these services. Call Computer Troubleshooters today to see how we can get you started with Office 365 and at the same time get you started with Yammer.