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PeerSpot user
Partner - Digital People Practice at Digital Works Group
Real User
A tool to develop online communities. The user experience could be improved.

What is most valuable?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What needs improvement?

The user experience could be improved. It needs more speed and interaction to drive its utility when streaming videos or performing uploads.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used this solution at Kantar, the market research arm of WPP, for three and a half years.

Buyer's Guide
Yammer
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Yammer. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There were no stability issues other than the generally slow speed of the tool.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no scalability issues.

How are customer service and support?

I never used technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty simple using a cloud-based interface. Administrator privileges were determined to manage, add, delete, and to do some monitoring.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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!!

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Jive. Based on the difference in price, we decided not to proceed.

What other advice do I have?

Research the market. There are more interesting products out there that have better UX and are more interactive and engaging.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user9720 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner with 51-200 employees
Consultant
Lync and Yammer

Over the past couple of years I’ve been working with SharePoint at various sites, and more recently with Lync and Yammer. Now these are two products that mainframers may not be that familiar with and I thought people might be interested to know more.

Microsoft Lync was called Microsoft Office Communicator. It’s an Instant Messaging client – like MSN Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger – that can be used either with Microsoft Lync Server or Lync Online, which is available with Microsoft Office 365. In fact it is an up-to-date version of Windows Messenger which was used with Microsoft Exchange Server.

As well as running on PCs, Lync 2010 has Windows Phone, Android, and iOS apps. Lync provides instant messaging, Voice Over IP, and video conferencing facilities, and uses Microsoft Outlook contacts stored in a Microsoft Exchange Server. Office can show whether other people are working on the same document, and Lync allows file sharing.

What makes it so useful is those really unimportant e-mails that you don’t need an audit trail for can be replaced by Instant Messaging conversations. That cuts down on the number of e-mails that need to be backed up each evening and eventually stored on the off-chance they’re important. And, of course, you can type or you can talk. And you can set up meetings with people in offices around the country and video conference – assuming your organization has the bandwidth to do so.

Lync and Sharepoint integrate to an extent – they’re both from Microsoft. For example, there’s an “online presence indicator next to an individual’s name wherever their name appears in a site collection in SharePoint”. “Assist in providing colleague suggestions for use in My Sites, My Profiles, and People Search”. And “through Lync, provide access to SharePoint people and skills search including names and skills and a link to the user’s My Site”. Thank you to J D Wade, who’s blog at http://wadingthrough.com/2012/04/04/lync-and-sharepoint-integration-more-than-presence-information/ was the source for these examples.

Yammer is described as an enterprise social network service. It was launched in 2008, but, more importantly, Microsoft bought it last year. Yammer acts like a corporate Facebook service. It allows people to send message to other individuals or to groups. Only people with the same domain name in their e-mail address can access the corporate Yammer network. As well as access from a PC, there’s Android Windows Phone and iPhone apps available.

Chris Wright, in his blog at http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/five-yammer-features-that-sharepoint-users-are-going-to-love-020339.php, lists features of Yammer that SharePoint users will like. Chris says “SharePoint has never really had its own ‘messaging’ system, so the Yammer Inbox fills a real gap”. Chris adds: “Yammer polls are a nice quick way to ask a question of people in your community, and will add a lot to the sense of community SharePoint is trying to foster”. Looking ahead, Chris says that documents held in a Yammer feed can be edited in Office web apps. He says: “This is a great example of a few of the features SharePoint is bringing to the table to improve Yammer (rather than the other way round)”.

We know that Microsoft plans to integrate Yammer with SharePoint and Office 365. It appears that Yammer will eventually replace SharePoint’s newsfeed. It seems there’s a plan to share documents with Yammer using SharePoint. And Yammer users will be able to upload and store documents using SkyDrive Pro. A file preview and edit capability with Yammer will work in conjunction with Office Web Apps. There’s even talk about translation capabilities being added to Yammer. Eventually Yammer and Lync (and Exchange) will be integrated. 

From what I've seen, the integration of Yammer with Office 365 is excellent. You can see your Yammer feed at the same time as, for example, your Outlook e-mails.

The integration of Yammer builds on Open Graph – an open API protocol for following objects external to a social network site used by Facebook. IBMers are perhaps more familiar with OpenSocial 2.0 for IBM Connections. Both provide a way for people to follow things.

What makes Yammer and SharePoint integration so interesting is that staff can use a the type of social media they’re familiar with from home in a business situation. If I can see you’re meeting client A tomorrow, I might ask you to check how he thinks project X is going. Or I might even just want to say hello to someone who is an occasional customer. Yammer is a business tool that is fun and easy to use – certainly compared to the more heavyweight Web parts etc of SharePoint.

The fact that Instant Messaging and social media can be included in a business environment shows that these tools are maturing. And, like BYOD, it shows end users are driving the environment they want to experience at work. I wonder how long it will be, with IBM’s pushing of social media tools, before something like this is available to everyone on z/OS.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Yammer
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Yammer. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user9720 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner with 51-200 employees
Consultant
Alternatives to Yammer exist, but it can be very useful within an organization to help with communication

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:

  • Click ‘Inbox’ in the left column.
  • Click ‘Create Message’ on the right sidebar.
  • Select ‘Send Private Message’.
  • In the ‘Add Participants’ field, start to type the person’s user name. A drop-down list of matching user names appears.
  • Select the name of the name of the person you want to send the message to.
  • Write your message, and then ‘Send’.

And you can send a message through ‘Online Now’:

  • Click ‘Online Now’ in the bottom-right corner.
  • Start writing the person’s name. A drop-down list of matching user names appears.
  • Use the up and down arrows, and ‘Enter’ to select a name. A message box opens.
  • Write your message, and then ‘Send’.

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!

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
Empowering environment, which needs a strategy. A sponsor, time and tenacity to transform the way we work successfully.

What is most valuable?

It is not about features, it is about empowerment. What I like is the easiness of engaging conversation with colleagues and management to help each other. I particularly like the simplicity to do this with customers and partners on external network in one click.

How has it helped my organization?

People share expertise and find solution faster while they are feeling to be part of the same team even if they work in different geo

What needs improvement?

Manageability and customization

For how long have I used the solution?

1 year

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Governance issues

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Light bug and one outage.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Good through YCN, but sometimes I got frustrated by translation issue

Technical Support:

Didn't need it yet.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes, SharePoint. No engagement were done, it was to complex not enough user friendly, to focus on documents and not on people

How was the initial setup?

Very simple

What about the implementation team?

Internal. Our IT especially because it is connected to our O365 environment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I would say you need a person full time for initialization and governance and training for a month. But we didn't do it that way. It was the job from someone 2h per day during 2 months. We found somebody motivated and with a good spirit who was able to understand people jobs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

SharePoint 2013

What other advice do I have?

Talk to business to understand how it can help them, get an executive sponsor (the higher is the better), be open for discussion as there will be a lot of skepticism and opponents essentially around two subjects: "Email is prime and I don't want a new channel of information" and "I'm not used to social spirit and tools." What is key: find what use they will love.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
IT Consultant with 201-500 employees
Real User
You can create groups that are public or private for specific users. I would like to see it integrate with Microsoft's Lync for video conferencing,

What is most valuable?

My organization makes more use of Office 365 Groups rather than Yammer.

Yammer is a good collaboration tool for the entire organization. You can create groups that are public or private for specific users.

What needs improvement?

There is a need for full integration with the other features of Office 365.

Office 365 uses Outlook for the messaging box but Yammer has it own messaging box. Searching in Yammer is restricted to its own messaging box. The Outlook box can still be accessed offline.

I would like to see Microsoft's Lync integrated with Yammer for video conferencing.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There were no stability issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no scalability issues.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Office 365 Groups is well-integrated with the other features of Office 365, especially SharePoint.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was straightforward.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Yammer to new users.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user651843 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Communications Manager at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Vendor
People from around the world can share posts, create polls, and make group announcements. I want more control over the all network feed.

What is most valuable?

The ability for people from anywhere around the world, from any team, to connect and share their posts in groups, create polls, make group announcements, and provide feedback and recognition posts.

How has it helped my organization?

  • In its simplicity, it has given our people across our organization and around the world a voice
  • Helped people to network, ask questions, and get answers
  • Helped people to share activity and best practices
  • Segments liked-minded people together
  • Creates engagement
  • Allows people to give feedback and improve our culture

What needs improvement?

It's constantly evolving and Microsoft allows users to suggest ideas to improve.

There's always going to be room for improvement, because it's not the answer for everything. But it is a start.

For me, it's about:

  • Having more control over the all network feed
  • Improving how people filter the good stuff from all the noise
  • Allowing you to make certain important posts sticky at the top
  • Improving the removal process of people who are no longer with your business
  • Better integration with Microsoft products in the cloud

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Yammer for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are not problems with stability. It's all Microsoft stuff, so it’s pretty well managed.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have had no scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

I haven't used support yet, but plan to soon.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't have a previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

It was a really simple setup. You can either join Yammer Freemium or purchase an Enterprise Office 365 licenses, which includes Yammer. I'd recommend this approach.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Go for a corporate/enterprise license to give you full admin control of Yammer, rather than the limited free version.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn’t look at alternatives, simply because this social network came with the license. Therefore, it was a one-time price.

What other advice do I have?

First consider whether you plan to purchase a license. If not, then I'd look into other software to suit your needs. If, however, you are investing in Microsoft software for your business, then Yammer is a great product.

Really understand what you need in terms of socially connecting your people and teams. If your teams are spread across a country or around the world, this is a great way of connecting everyone together.

Make sure you invest a bit of time to train, guide, and build up a solid and competent community manager network.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
IT Business Analyst for Sales Enablement with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Secure collaboration environment for crowdsourcing knowledge

What is most valuable?

  • Inline video
  • Mobile apps
  • Secure collaboration environment for crowdsourcing knowledge
  • Translation tool

How has it helped my organization?

We have been able to have multi-country project teams where members can interact in their own language.

What needs improvement?

Ability to edit posts and also rich text would be good. Currently, unlike other social tools like Facebook at Work and Chatter, Yammer does not have the ability to edit posts. Also, the only rich text (bold/italics/bullets) that are supported are in the Announcements.

I know that Microsoft are currently testing the editing feature and it is due to be released in the next couple of months. This is the most requested feature which we receive from our users.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for eighteen months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Occasionally we have some stability issues. But that is to be expected in a rapidly developing platform and the A-B testing does give some stability issues sometimes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

How is customer service and technical support?

Technical support is very good and responsive. We have premier support.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was straightforward but inconsistent. Now that it is fully integrated with Office 365, the consistency is there.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Jive and Facebook Business.

What other advice do I have?

Go for it, especially if you are a Microsoft shop.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1208139 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a non-tech company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
A solution that isn't flexible, doesn't offer integrations and isn't useful for certain businesses
Pros and Cons
  • "The design of the solution is its most valuable feature."
  • "Yammer should be able to integrate with Microsoft products, such as Outlook."

What is our primary use case?

I primarily use the solution for business related chatting. We use it mainly to publish and to have social communications on the business side. On a business level, it's used for the internal team to publish their opinions or their ideas, and share them to the group.

How has it helped my organization?


What is most valuable?

The design of the solution is its most valuable feature.

What needs improvement?

Yammer shall not stay an independent non integrated service and shall not duplicate what team and outlook services do - it can be the heart of outlook conversations / publishing

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for a couple of years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

What other advice do I have?

I've found Team or Skype for Business are more useful than Yammer.

I'd rate the solution three out of ten.

I did not find Yammer too useful for my type of business. You cannot sell a Ferrari to someone who does not drive very fast, for example, as they would give Ferrari a low rating because they aren't using as it's meant to be used. For my type of business, I need something to be more flexible on integration. I'm not on the marketing side and do not need to publish something on Yammer for everyone to see, or for everyone to share their opinion on. 

If Yammer were to have more integration, the product might be more useful for me. I'd probably rate it at a nine or ten in that case. However, for me, in terms of helping my type of business, it's not ideal and I'm rating it rather low.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user