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 conversations 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 for what you are looking for in the network. Here is the list of Yammer Features that will help you use Yammer effectively.
Yammer Features
Yammer offers an interface that is common all over social networks like Facebook and Twitter. It uses @ to tag a person and hashtags that 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 the team, to improve decision-making.
It is not strict as Project management software that gives members the freedom to communicate freely with each other, and supports emojis, GIFs, and more os social network aspects. One of the recent updates has rolled out the 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 it’s 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. That’s where Microsoft Teams come handy.
What is 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 that 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.
Read next: Yammer Tips and Tricks for the power user.
