Around the world, teamwork is on the rise. According to Microsoft, employees now work on nearly double the number of teams than they did just five years ago. As a result, people are becoming more and more reliant on their peers to help get things done. But a “one size fits all” approach does not work when it comes to group collaboration-different tools appeal to different groups and address unique needs. Already in use by 85% of the Fortune 500 as part of Office 365, Yammer is the social network built for work. Yammer connects teams across your organization, enabling the open exchange of ideas that results in better decisions, faster.
Two days ago, Microsoft announced that Yammer is integrating with Office 35 Groups, bringing together the power of open collaboration with the productivity tools millions rely on every day. With this integration, Yammer users can easily turn ideas into action with access to SharePoint sites and document repositories, a shared OneNote notebook, and lightweight task management with Planner. These new experiences and more will be rolling out in phases over the next few months.
Create and Share Content with Office Online and SharePoint
You can now take advantage of the powerful content creation and management capabilities of Office Online and SharePoint from within Yammer.
Individuals and teams can create and co-author Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents on the web. You can also quickly share files in Yammer by uploading documents from a personal OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint site using the new Yammer file picker. No matter how you choose to share a file, all links and attachments render in rich preview.
Additionally, teams working within Yammer can now take advantage of a SharePoint document library, making it easy to manage files, apply workflow, review version history and comply with document retention policies. Each team also gets a SharePoint site, which gives members the ability to create structured content like wikis and blogs.
Share files from your personal OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or group SharePoint document library.
Attachments and links render in rich preview.
Take note with OneNote
Yammer also gives your team access to a shared notebook in OneNote to help ideas take shape. OneNote gives team members a great way to jot down notes, keep meeting minutes, and brainstorm the next big thing.
Stay Organized with Planner
To help you stay on top of key deliverables, Yammer now provides your team with quick access to Planner’s simple-to-use task management capabilities. Planner lets teams create new plans, assign tasks and track progress throughout the life of a project.
Share to Yammer by email
Because Office 365 Groups are part of your company’s global address list (GAL), it’s a
(cinch) to share content to Yammer by email. Whenever you receive an email that would benefit from open discussion and sharing, you can forward it to Yammer by typing the name of your group in the recipient list.
Easily Manage Yammer from Office 365
Yammer is now connected to the Office 365 Groups service, so all group properties, including name, description, profile picture, membership and public/private setting, are available in both Yammer and Azure AD, where Office 365 groups are stored. For example, whenever users or admins add and remove group members in Yammer, these changes are reflected across Office 365, and permissions are updated accordingly. Admins can also centrally manage groups in the Office 365 admin center and apply PowerShell scripts to them to simplify bulk updates.
Earlier this year, Microsoft integrated with the Office 365 reporting dashboard and rolled out Yammer usage reports to help admins monitor Yammer usage across your network. To provide greater transparency, Microsoft will soon give admins the ability to export and share this usage data via Power BI content. Once Microsoft rolls out Yammer group usage reports in the coming weeks, admins will also be able to drill down into group-level analytics and make this data available to others within your organization.
Since Yammer was turned on for all eligible Office 365 customers earlier this year, Vorsite has seen huge growth in usage. The vast majority of Yammer customers now use it as part of an Office 365 subscription. With Office 365 applications such as SharePoint and OneNote becoming an integral part of the Yammer experience, users will need an Office 365 subscription that includes these services. As such, the Yammer Enterprise subscription will no longer be available for purchase on a standalone basis; customers can transition to an Office 365 plan such as K1 or E1.
If you want to learn more about Yammer and Office 365 Groups or are interested in these services, contact us at sales@vorsite.com or (206) 781-1797.
