I did not really find many valuable features. It was a tool to develop communities wherein we could carry out some good discussions within defined groups.
Otherwise, it was meant to act as more of a social media communication tool. It never achieved good adoption globally. Most of the functionality lay dormant for most of my tenure there.
It was reasonably good at creating online communities of interest. There were some super users who enjoyed having that space to share details of various projects. However, it was mostly slow, clunky, and frustrating to use.
The user experience could be improved. It needs more speed and interaction to drive its utility when streaming videos or performing uploads.
I used this solution at Kantar, the market research arm of WPP, for three and a half years.
There were no stability issues other than the generally slow speed of the tool.
There were no scalability issues.
I never used technical support.
I did not use a previous solution. I think that Facebook's Workplace or StaffConnect would have done the job in a more engaging and user-friendly manner. They would have driven more interaction between staff members.
The initial setup was pretty simple using a cloud-based interface. Administrator privileges were determined to manage, add, delete, and to do some monitoring.
Initially, Kantar was able to negotiate an incredible rate of £0.73 per user/per month prior to their acquisition by Microsoft. The price then escalated to £3.00 per user/ per month!!
We evaluated Jive. Based on the difference in price, we decided not to proceed.
Research the market. There are more interesting products out there that have better UX and are more interactive and engaging.
I’ve been to a few companies recently that have been using Yammer as a business tool. If you’ve got offices that are spread out, or if your workforce aren’t usually in the office, then it provides an easy way for people to be able to share things – like comments, documents, or images. And you can form groups so discussions, that are only relevant to a small group of people, stay within that small group or team.
Yammer started life in 2008 and was bought by Microsoft in 2012. It’s described as an enterprise social network. That means it’s not a public social network like Facebook, it’s for internal communication between members of an organization or group.
It’s free, it’s very easy to use (if you’ve ever used Facebook), and it provides a private and secure place for discussion. The simplest way to use Yammer is from your browser (Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc), and you can download the app for your smartphone or tablet.
It’s easy to set up and use, but I thought I’d put together some instructions for new users, so they know how to get on and start using it.
To sign up, go to
www.yammer.com. You’ll see a large box in the middle of the page:
Type in your company e-mail address – you can’t use your personal e-mail address because it won’t work.
Complete your Yammer profile and add a photo. New people in your organization may not be familiar with who you are and your particular skill set.
You can join groups and follow topics that are relevant to you. If Yammer gets very busy with people posting, you won’t want to be informed every time there’s a new post. So, click on the three dots in the upper right-hand corner. In the drop-down menu, select ‘Edit Profile’. Then select ‘Notifications’ from the list on the left, and then choose how often you want to receive notifications. ‘Save’ your choice. There’s a ‘Back Home’ box top-left to get back.
You can also follow other people – that way you get to see what they’re posting.
When you come to use Yammer on subsequent occasions, you simply click on ‘Log In’ on the right of the top menu bar.
Now you can start to use Yammer.
You can post messages – these can be comments, questions, updates. You can post links to articles or blogs elsewhere on the Web.
You can follow people, which means that you want to view messages from them in ‘My Feed’. It’s not like a friend request. They don’t have to agree. They don’t have to follow you back.
You can read what other people are posting and get a feel of what’s going on across the organization.
You can ‘Like’ other people’s posts.
You can find out more about people in your organization by reading their profile.
You could start your own group or join existing groups.
You can upload pictures. You can organize events/meetings. You can survey what people think about things
You can use topics so that all the posts are around a specific topic. To add a topic to a post, click ‘add topic’ while writing the message or you can use a hashtag. You can also add topics to a published message by clicking ‘more’. Hashtags (#) are used to identify what posts are about and to make finding information easier.
You can search for information in the search box near the top of the page. This will find whether anyone else has posted about a particular topic.
And you can send a direct message in three ways. Use the @ sign followed by the user’s names. As you start to type the name, a drop-down menu will give you suggestions. You can send a private message:
And you can send a message through ‘Online Now’:
Recipients are notified that they have a message.
Unbelievably, Yammer refers to all communications inside Yammer as “Yams”. Yams are sorted into various feeds. A feed, if you’re new to social media, is a way of keeping you up-to-date with content that other people are posting.
I think many organizations would benefit from an internal social media tool. There are alternatives to Yammer available, but I think it can be very useful within an organization to help with communication. And it can be fun!
