Microsoft Yammer:
the corporate social network
What is Yammer? Why do businesses use it so much?
The Microsoft 365 platform, now Viva Engage, is a tool for increasing employee engagement and strengthening the business community.
Sharing, discussions, and comparisons within a dedicated virtual space stimulate organizational growth and evolution.
Find out how to implement it in your company and reap the benefits.
What you will find in this article
- What is Microsoft Yammer
- How it is integrated with Office 365
- Use Yammer as a powerful corporate social network
- Use Yammer as a business collaboration tool
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.
What is intranet.ai?
intranet.ai is the ready-to-use corporate intranet, designed to reduce costs and implementation times, thus creating a collaborative and modern digital work environment:
- Initial price of 3,650 €/year for a complete intranet
- 50+ applications, including advanced search, document management system, push notifications via Teams, personal profile, and FAQ pages
- 100% integrated with SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365
10 Tips about how to use Microsoft Yammer
Microsoft Yammer is intuitive, but these tips can help you navigate like a pro. So, instead of trial and error, follow these guidelines for a better user experience.
1. Create posts
You are already familiar with this. On Facebook and Twitter, we publish posts to share ideas and express ourselves. In Yammer, you can use posts to ask questions about processes or policies, recognize team members, describe new initiatives, announce product launches, convey other information, and resolve concerns your contacts may be interested in.
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
Yammer communities are a great way for people interested in a topic to share their thoughts and questions. Customer groups, CEO connections, new hires, IT, HR, innovation, and security are all suggested communities. If you don't find one, you can create one by searching in Discover Community. At the bottom left of the interface, click Create Community, give it a new name, and add the names of the members you want to invite.
What options do you have?
You can participate in live streaming events, interact with your colleagues on social media, share ads, create polls, and more among the features available.
9. Follow the topics
You don't need to keep adding bookmarks to the conversations you want to follow. Instead, add tags called topics. Click the three dots at the top of the conversation and select Add Topic. You can monitor entire conversations or just parts of them. In the Yammer Topic Center, you will find a trace of all the topics that interest you.
10. Use apps
Microsoft Yammer is perfect for mobile versions, just like a social network. Around 90% of users perform at least part of their online interactions on a mobile device. Download the mobile app from the Play Store or App Store.
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
Tip for Using Yammer | Description of the Tip |
---|---|
Creating Posts | Use posts to share ideas, ask questions, recognize team members, announce initiatives, etc. |
Asking Questions | Use Yammer to ask questions to the professional community and get various answers. |
Information Search | Use the search function to find colleagues, discussions, and important content in Yammer. |
Liking and Commenting on Posts | Encourage engagement by liking and commenting on your colleagues' posts to strengthen recognition. |
Using Polls | Create multiple-choice polls to gather community opinion and share meaningful results. |
Viewing Profiles | Explore user profiles to learn more about their skills, titles, and roles. |
Using Yammer Communities App | Join Yammer communities to discuss specific topics and collaborate with like-minded individuals. |
Following Topics | Add tags called topics to follow specific conversations that interest you, without the need for bookmarks. |
Using Apps |
Download the Yammer mobile app for user-friendly use on mobile devices, like a social network. |
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.