Yammer Reviews

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.

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!

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What needs improvement?

For how long have I used the solution?

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

How are customer service and technical support?

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

How was the initial setup?

What about the implementation team?

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

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

What other advice do I have?

I’m very keen on the idea of the enterprise social network Yammer and what it could mean for internal business communication.

I visualise a time when our interstate frontline staff are discussing the pros and cons of a new business initiative with our senior managers at Head Office. When the CEO spots a game-changing idea from a new employee during his daily check of the site. When our sales teams are reporting back from the field, creating excitement about wins as they happen.

But enterprise social tools like Yammer are not like our traditional internal communication tools:

- We don’t control the message.

- We can’t force people to get involved - and success relies on interaction.

- We can’t guarantee success.

It’s actually pretty scary. I know of plenty of organisations that have experimented with Yammer and it failed. People didn’t see the value, they didn’t find the time and it fizzled out.

At this moment in time, the success of Yammer within my own organisation is at make or break point. Over one-sixth of our workforce signed up within the first few weeks of my soft launch, simply via word of mouth. I invited those people I could rely on to join first. That worked well. A key group of about half a dozen people from across the business were very keen and began posting updates, asking questions, replying to threads and creating groups.

Next, with a good proportion of staff onboard I sent an email to our Senior Management Team, outlining the benefits and asking for their commitment to the network – just five minutes a day, twice a week to begin with.

I also spoke face-to-face with a number of staff: if they were working on an interesting project I suggested a Yammer post. If I was writing an intranet news story on behalf of a business unit, I suggested that they could also promote their work in a status update.

I’ve nudged conversations along, introduced talking points, asked questions and tried to encourage the lurkers.

Now, we’re six weeks in. The initial excitement has died off. There are other business priorities. Less people are joining. Those who signed-up haven’t revisited the site. The goodwill of our Senior Managers is there, but they just haven’t found the time.

So, I’m asking myself some key questions and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts:

- do we just ‘experiment’ with enterprise social tools such as Yammer, or do we strategise the roll-out as we do with all other internal comms channels?

- by creating a strategy for success, can we ever guarantee a social tool like Yammer is a success?

- what does success look like on these tools anyway?

- finally, what can we learn about our employee engagement if there is low interaction through Yammer. How can we use this to influence the rest of our internal communications strategy?

These are the questions I’ll be working through over the coming months…..I’ll keep you updated.

There are several discussions on SharePoint’s social strategy going on at the moment. I had some great discussions with my MVP mate Adis during Summit last week. Since #SPC12 almost every SharePoint addicted developer, it-pro, power user has reviewed Yammer.

If you don’t know what Yammer is, here a short introduction.

Yammer is an enterprise social network, which allows you and your coworkers to communicate in a modern way as on Facebook. The huge difference between Facebook and Yammer is, Yammer is private. That means only people from your organization or the people you’ve invited to join your network can see and take part of the conversation which is going on in your Yammer network.

With the common understanding of Yammer, you should be able to follow up the ongoing discussions. Adis wrote a great post, summarizing his thoughts on SharePoint and Yammer integration and the upcoming social future. I totally agree with Adis, there are a lot of things missing at the moment. But here my thoughts on Yammer vs. SPSocial

Leak of integration

In my eyes there is still too much missing, of course you can integrate yammer into your SharePoint, but key features are missing such as SSO, seamless look ‘n feel integration. Prebuild views on Yammer depending on the current SharePoint context or the mobile story. Microsoft shipped mobile Apps for SharePoint 2013 OnDemand and OnPrem. AFAIK are these apps currently available in preview, but each of them is based on SPSocial.

SharePoint Newsfeed

The Newsfeed in SharePoint 2013 is one of the best dashboards I’ve ever seen in the product. In my eyes it’s boosting the productivity because you can get an overview within no time. You got all the information you’re interested in, documents, people, sites, tags you’re following. That’s exactly what I’m looking for when I should move on to Yammer. Because I don’t like to decrease the productivity just because I use Yammer.

OnPrem story

Adis mentioned the OnPrem story also in his post. For a lot of German customers its necessary that all information is stored OnPrem. I ran into various situations where management raised the red flag because they are not going to move business critical data into the cloud. Unfortunately these kinds of customers don’t hear our arguments for moving into the cloud.

User adoption

While #SPC12 we launched our corporate Yammer, in order to structure the entire conversation from our company. The adoption within the first four weeks was really good. A lot of employees joined the Yammer network in order to see what Yammer actually is. They followed the invitations from other employees. There was no official announcement form the company, some key users started inviting their co-workers and within 2 weeks almost 85% of the company were registered to the corporate Yammer network. People started creating their own groups depending on the divisions they’re working for or the topics they’re currently on. In summary I’d say the adoption within the first month was great. We’d good conversation on Yammer about problems within different teams, which was a little bit surprising to me, normally most of the employees aren’t participating to new technologies that much. But Yammer had a better start. Unfortunately the good start doesn’t mean a good every-day usage. Right now 4 months after launching Yammer, only a few (mostly technical enthusiasts) keep on using Yammer every day. The crowd hasn’t signed on for the last 2 months… They are again writing emails, doing Lync chats or discuss important things on the floor.

And this is exactly the worst point for a new platform, we did this learning curve with the adoption of SharePoint as centralized communication and collaboration platform a decade ago, users are falling back to their old-fashioned habits, without teaching them actively (let’s say 1hr per week) the adoption of a new social network will not work. (At least for the company I currently work for) This drives me crazy, it’s not Yammers fault, it’s a human fault. But Yammer will be faced with this problem. Enabling SharePoint’s OOB Social features within this company is easier, because they use SharePoint for everything.

Summary

The ‘user adoption’ is unfortunately the biggest problem for Yammer, I like the idea of Yammer, but until Yammer isn’t fluently integrated into SharePoint / SharePoint Online, it’s a hard way for us – SharePoint enthusiasts – to move customers, friends, co-workers on the Yammer train.

Disclosure: The company I work for is a Microsoft Partner - https://www.experts-inside.com