What is Yammer and is it still relevant?
Yammer was acquired by Microsoft all the way back in 2012 with the intention of it becoming a Facebook or Twitter style corporate social network. It’s a less formal way to communicate and has often been used for informal Q&A’s or gathering feedback.
Unfortunately for Yammer, it wasn’t well integrated with the other Microsoft 365 tools and therefore didn’t take off in the way that Microsoft had planned. And with Microsoft’s recent focus on Teams, you’d be forgiven for thinking Yammer was on the road to retirement…
However, there’s been some big improvements made to Yammer over recent years, helping to establish it as a worthy part of your communications toolset!
Yammer is now much better integrated with the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite of applications. You can connect Yammer to a 365 group, giving you all the assets you get in a group (SharePoint, Planner, OneNote etc.) with the flexibility of Yammer communication. When a group in Yammer is connected to a 365 group, you’ll see this Microsoft 365 Resources section on the right hand side:
It also integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Teams, allowing you to add a community or topic feed as an app into any channel.
In SharePoint, you can embed a Yammer conversation into any page as a webpart, allowing you to have informal conversations on your intranet – a much better alternative to the classic “Discussion Boards” of SharePoint past!
You can also create and host live events up to 20,000 attendees, so it’s a great tool for large virtual events, helping you to bring a community together with informal conversations around the event.
So do you actually need Yammer?
Unlike other tools in the 365 suite, such as Outlook and SharePoint, Yammer isn’t typically an essential tool for company collaboration. However, as an informal and social communication tool, it can still be very valuable for many organisations. This is especially true in larger organisations who may not have an informal way for staff and leadership to communicate.
Some use cases may include a Human Resources forum for asking and answering questions about annual leave or benefits. It may also be a community driven forum such as SharePoint Tips & Tricks where staff can share their experiences and comment on others.