Yammer is a communication tool for organizations from Microsoft, which helps different departments, employees of the same interest, or in the same project effectively communicate with each other. Since it is a private network, any company can use it without fear of revealing all conversation in the public domain. Yammer offers six significant ways to communicate. Yammer Messages, Groups, Following Yammer users, Attachments, Feeds, Tags, and Search. The last one provides both basic and advanced features to search what you are looking for in the network. Here is the list of Yammer Features.
Yammer FeaturesYammer offers an interface which is common all over the social networks like Facebook and Twitter. It uses @ to tag a person and hashtags which we see trending on twitter.
If more people are active on Yammer, it becomes a faster approach to get your query answered compared to emails. Not only this, but a project can make use of Yammer to brainstorm ideas, exchange information, share documents, and help them, team, to improve decision making.
It is not strict as a Project management software which gives members the freedom to communicate freely with each other, supports emojis, GIF, and more os social network aspects. One of the recent updates has rolled out hosting of Live Events where one can video stream and have an interactive discussion.
Enterprise microblogging
Office 365 integration
Company directory
Create and join private or public groups
High-level security
Share files, links, and images
Message and content tagging
Profile pages
Searchable company directory
Message inbox with priority settings
Application integration
Automatic notifications
Collaborative workspace
Communication management
Compliance management
Content management
Email notifications
File transfer
Instant messaging
Mobile integration
Search functionality
Secure data storage
Task tracking
Third-party integration
To-do list
Activity dashboard
Prioritizing
Data import/export
Document distribution
Chat
Knowledgebase
Role-based permissions
Employee communities
Archiving & retention
Tagging
Version control
Preview functionality
Document management
Collaboration tools
User management
Yammer Basic Standalone is free for anybody who has a domain email address. So if you are a website or a small business with a domain email id, you can signup for Yammer, and start managing your group and private conversations. That said, it is not a project management tool but rather a business social network with some light management tools.
That said, it becomes a paid model when you see Office 365 features. However that also opens up some stable team management features as well, but then if its just about conversations stick to Yammer basic.
Why is Yammer Useful? Where to use Yammer in your organization?Yammer is extremely useful for those who are open to a company-wide social network. Each employee can participate, discuss ideas, share files, and much more. However, since it misses on any Project Management tool, we do not recommend it to be used for projects. Thats where Microsoft Teams come handy.
What about Microsoft Teams?Microsoft Teams is another similar conversation-based tool from Microsoft, but it serves a different purpose. While in Yammer you can bring in the whole company, Team is where you work with smaller groups on various projects. Teams is offered as part of Office 365 subscription along with Yammer. While Team is more about the inner Circle, and Yammer is about the outer circle.
That said, both have features which are common, but choose wisely. Put smaller groups on the Team to finish projects as Team integrates well with such tools Use Yammer for the whole organization and turn it into Twitter for the enterprise.
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