Microsoft Yammer:
the corporate social network

What is Microsoft Yammer

Yammer, now known as Microsoft Viva Engage, is based on the concept of creating a digital social platform for business customers where they can share company knowledge, ask questions about common procedures or the company environment, and share projects that employees are working on and those that are in the planning stages with their coworkers.

Microsoft Yammer is a virtual meeting room or corporate bulletin board where you can interact with your company's employees, ask and answer questions in real time, and avoid checking endless emails.

This social network for businesses was created to make collaboration, communication, and information sharing easier within the organization.

You won't need to send a thousand emails and wait for a response to speed up communication and get updates on work progress on a specific project.

You only need to look at the company wall or see if any of your coworkers are online to get an answer in a matter of minutes.

Not only does this app help you be more productive at work, but it also improves communication.

Microsoft encourages its employees to be more innovative and proactive by enabling them to develop new ideas. Reading updates or topics from various departments can aid in the employee's transversal training and consolidation of the department to which they belong.

Department leaders and managers can monitor their Yammer groups and respond to employee doubts and questions. Employees will feel heard, and corporate well-being will increase with productivity.

A news feed, similar to Facebook, displays the most recent posts written by colleagues from various departments within the company.

Employees and teams can be assigned to groups that track specific intra-company activities and topics. There's no shortage of comments, gifs, jokes, and questions for quick social feedback.

Furthermore, a simple and intuitive instant messaging tool would allow them to communicate directly with coworkers and always stay in sync.

The benefits of Microsoft Yammer

• Reduce emails: The average user spends 13 hours per week on email. Yammer drastically lowers this estimate by allowing users to share information in more intuitive and engaging ways.
  
  
• Helps you get quick answers: Any doubts you have during your workday can be resolved with a few mouse clicks. The most knowledgeable people will provide the answers.
  
  
• Create an informal training channel: create interest-based work channels and upload the resources needed to access them from any device anytime.
  
  
• Simplify live events: Anyone, from executives to front-line employees, can host live events. Meetings and questions can be conducted on any screen or device for any business topic.
  
  
• Allow employees to display internal results: Sharing and publishing employee results has increased engagement by as much as 84 percent.
  
  
• Posting worker milestones in Yammer posts can inspire other teams to achieve success.
  
  
• Important data is unlocked: Images or videos of security training can be quickly shared throughout your organization. Yammer ensures that information reaches managers and employees who can use it.
  
  
• Employees can use Yammer to provide feedback, solve problems, break up silences, and raise their hands to be heard by leadership and other members.
  
  
• Microsoft 365 integration: Yammer posts relevant to you are delivered directly to your Outlook inbox. Content from Microsoft Teams and SharePoint can also be imported into Yammer.
  
  
• Greater control: Yammer uses artificial intelligence and "report this post" features to alert HR and administrators of potentially harmful conversations.

10 Tips about how to use Microsoft Yammer

1. Create posts

2. Ask questions

3. Search for information

4. Like and comment on posts

5. Use polls

6. Praise the team members

7. View profiles

8. Use the Yammer Communities app

9. Follow the topics

10. Use apps

Below, you will find the summary table of our 10 tips for making the most of Microsoft Yammer's features in the workplace:

Tips for using Microsoft Yammer features

Yammer is integrated into Microsoft 365

The most important feature of Yammer is its deep integration with Microsoft 365 and its tools, such as Teams, SharePoint Online, and Outlook.

The streaming video below shows that Yammer focuses on communication within the digital enterprise to encourage dialogue between colleagues, managers, and employees. Its dynamics are more socially oriented than those of the teams mentioned above.

Yammer login

Any Microsoft 365 business plan includes Yammer (except Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise).

To use Yammer, go to your company's intranet and look for it in the application bar. Once you've chosen, you can begin browsing the platform and engaging in social interactions.

A powerful corporate social network

Yammer now has new integrations with Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook, providing an intelligent experience across all devices.

It can broadcast live and on-demand events with simplified webcam and desktop sharing options. Unlike many competing applications, Microsoft Yammer was built by incorporating features designed to meet specific needs in response to some of the most frequently received user feedback.

The chat feed is customized based on artificial intelligence to highlight the most important topics, interface customizations based on the company brand, optimized discussion organization, and rapid sharing of video messages via the mobile app.

Features for collaborating with Yammer

The functions of a social network are combined with those of a microblogging platform and a collaboration platform for sharing ideas and projects.

However, Yammer has a unique feature: you can only connect with users who share your company's domain's email address (or multiple domains). Then, using Microsoft's cloud services, you create a corporate social network to manage confidential documents and new projects.

Introducing a corporate social network initiative requires a strategy to encourage the paradigm shift. The new corporate tools must be included in an adoption plan that considers the culture and objectives of the company.

The challenges Yammer faces to improve collaboration in your digital workplace are:

• Collaboration and team growth.
• Approach to communication.
• Embrace a culture of knowledge sharing.
• Work like a network.
• Having a shared vision.
• Work towards common goals.
• Assist with cultural change.
• Promote transparency and honesty.
  

Conclusion

Yammer has a high potential, and the companies that introduced it have significantly improved collaboration, communication, internal relationships, dynamics.

The positive effects are:

• quick problem resolution thanks to communication
• sharing and inter-company growth of ideas useful for productivity and business development
• the birth of new talents
• greater employee satisfaction
• ease of connection and communication between distant physical places and teamwork
• greater sense of involvement and alignment with company objectives.

Furthermore, as Microsoft has always stated, updates will never stop.

These benefits have been brought to light as a result of the latter:

• Yammer is a part of Office 365's overall governance strategy.
• In SharePoint, a complete Yammer web part is possible.
• For a digitized, complete, and up-to-date browsing experience, you can use Yammer or the Microsoft Teams collaboration platform.

So, do you see the value Yammer brings to businesses?

Give your business a chance to thrive.