Until (not very long ago), when someone among the people dealing with Office 365 talked about Yammer, there was at most a pity smile. To be honest, I was one of them myself for a long time. But it turns out that there are some clearly particular situations when this solution is ideal for use. In my previous post “Modern IT Department” I wrote about Office 365 as a platform that can really bring great added value. Especially for a company that starts its business and the money must be spent in a way that is reasonable and shows good judgment.

Let’s talk about Yammer

I think that the simplest term will be: “Facebook for companies”. A good start will be a look at the official site. Yammer gives us the opportunity to build community and internal forums in the company. I will give you a simple example. Well, because of the unfortunate widespread disease in my company was a lot of discussion about the organization of online meetings. And while inside the company all the meetings are in Teams, it was obvious with outsiders that it wasn’t.
It turned out that many people do not know about the possibility of inviting people from outside. And there are no restrictions on the (raised, flat supporting surface) or licensing. In a quite simple way, we created a thread in which one could get answers to all problems related to external communication. It was a hot topic.

How to start?

In fact, the matter is quite simple. Go to the Yammer site in an organization and you can start publishing. At the beginning you will see the group “All company”. This is the default group for everyone in our company. Of course, nothing prevents you from creating more, dedicated to different goals of the group. It is also worth noting that in July Yammer will undergo a facelift and get a fresh look. It will be much better with the “modern experience” at SharePoint or OneDrive. For this purpose, Microsoft uses Fluent Design System. They created it from scratch. If you are interested in enabling it, you can do it now. In the administrator options find the option: “Bring the New Yammer (Preview) to your Organization”, as in the picture below.

How to get the team involved in using Yammer?

The answer to this question will determine the success or failure of this project. Because, as you will see, implementing and running the application is not a difficult matter. But convincing people to use it is something completely different. And whether you can convince your colleagues to use the application will determine the success of the project.

How to convince the team to Yammer?

1. Start from the Yammer Adoption website. Do not try to pry the open door. There you will find a lot of useful information on how to start an implementation project.
2. Download Look Book. Nothing discourages people like the default pictures. Each company has some photos that bring back good memories. Uploading photos from a joint trip to beer will be a good idea.
3. Plan your implementation. Yammer is not something complicated but left alone will die a natural death.
4. Present the organization’s solution. If most people are not aware of the existence of such a project, how should it be used? The IT department is not a whole company :).
5. Sell ​​the solution to key users. This is the most important thing. In every company there are people who like innovative solutions and can engage, and sometimes force others to project. If we can reach these people, they will sell the topic to the rest of the company.
6. Long live this project. In addition to key users, the other key element is the delivery of content. If a new entry appears once a month, nothing will happen. Providing content that is important and useful to users is key. For example, the description of the new option in PowerPoint, which helps improve the way of conducting presentations, was a hit 🙂

It’s powerful tool. Many of us work from home because of quarantine and especially those days you can really benefit when you use it.

Do you have any question? Please leave it in the comments!