Likelihood to Recommend Sametime is well suited for very quick conversations, where you know the person is an active Sametime user. It also serves as an easy way to reach out to someone you may not know when looking for an answer to a quick question, as they are likely to be a Sametime user. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to use Sametime for Audio or Video chat. The quality and reliability are horrendous.
Read full review Yammer is great when you have a company culture that encourages friendly collaboration and communication. It can be a great supplement (but certainly not a substitute) for bonding and sharing ideas and thoughts. Certain channels can be really successful, too, like a channel where people can post dog pictures or something fun like that!
Read full review Pros Sametime's web-based interfaces are "zero load", requiring no plug-ins to be installed to join a meeting, launch a meeting, or use chat in a browser. A plugin is required only if you want to share your screen. Integration with IBM Notes is very tight. Sametime's chat status can change according to your Notes calendar. You can easily see if someone who just emailed you is available to chat. Your chat History is right inside Notes as well. IBM's mobile apps are top notch. We automated the apps for our users thanks to IBM's work with third party MDMs. This made it very simple for us to deploy the Sametime mobile apps -- Chat and Meetings -- and get new capabilities such as Audio & Video mobilized quickly. No down time, ever. The rock solid WebSphere back-end of Sametime means the environment is always up. Period. Read full review Providing a platform for social news in the company where "bottom up" topics can percolate freely across department Social networking across the company where folks can divide their work into topics instead of teams Basic collaboration within a group including document sharing with ability to pin documents to a team Read full review Cons Not convenient for a large group meeting. Very basic tool for internal communication only not available for third party communication Very basic and limited mobile app features. High speed connection is needed to connect to Sametime Read full review Although the social enterprise network works very well, there is room for some slight improvement - such as the ability to attract users. By being part of the Microsoft Office Suite, it is offered as an "add-on" and many overlook it and see it as unnecessary at first. It would be smart for Microsoft to sell it as its own product so it could gather more popularity as a "social network". Giving an option to filter results could be better as well as giving an option to turn off the "recent activity" bar on the home page. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Sametime is now an embedded experience for our users. They know it, they like it, they use it, and they expect it to be wherever they are. Because it is pretty easy to use and NEVER goes down, users know they can rely on it and won't be frustrated by it. Sametime is right up with there with Microsoft Office in terms of user adoption and appreciation.
Read full review Microsoft is dedicated to continual improvement on Yammer. They realize the value that Yammer brings to the table with their clients. In the short time that we have had Yammer implemented, we are just now beginning to see the strong impact it has on becoming more effective and efficient around collaboration.
Read full review Usability Just about everything works the way you expect it would and it's relatively easy for users to figure out. Sametime was one of those things that we started with only a few people as a "test" and before the test period was done we discovered a few hundred people had figured out how to log in and most got it working all on their own. Many of our users want to use Sametime and do so regularly; we do not have to create policies enforcing its usage. Users find it practical to use Sametime to do things like chat, transfer files, share their screen, and so forth.
Read full review Overall easy to use and intuitive, although limited in the possibility to personalize layout and look & feel of a site. Some functionalities are not easy to use, like document editing, but some others are quick and effective (posts and tagging above all). Performance and responsiveness of the Yammer site is typically acceptable, in my experience.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Typically if Sametime is not available, it's because Windows Updates were done on the servers and they were not rebooted. However, that's not a problem with Sametime -- in fact, if you have Linux you could probably run Sametime for years without any hiccups whatsoever. We have no internal Linux expertise.
Read full review Very available
Read full review Performance Generally very good. Occasionally AV or screen-sharing will stutter and every now and then I hear of it dropping out altogether, but in all cases it was easy to re-establish
Read full review It's a simple product but it does provide value.
Read full review Support Rating I have not needed to use the Sametime support team. Our local support team was able to configure it for me.
Read full review We have never had to use the support for Yammer. The tool works well and we have not come across any bugs. User Interface is simple and easy to use, similar to other forum type products, thereby removing the need for any extensive training. Team members are invited in and immediately are able to start using the tool.
Read full review Online Training The training that Microsoft provides is very generic training for Yammer. I like the fact the training is short and easy to understand
Read full review Implementation Rating We organically implemented the product
Read full review Alternatives Considered We use
Jabber globally in our company and Symphony (no relevant app in able list) in some of the teams as well. All these are instant messenger tools, bu
t Sametime is the easiest one to be used and its chat history is easy to be searched. Sametime can be used to contact almost all internal staff as it’s included in default computer package. Symphony is used to chat with front end business while
Jabber is used for call.
Read full review Our team briefly used Salesforce.com's Chatter product before switching over to Yammer in 2012. While Chatter is essentially the same product as Yammer, it left much to be desired. Chatter's design was (and remains) clunky and difficult to navigate. Yammer is a simple, easy-to-use product that offers similar functionality as Salesforce's Chatter.
Read full review Scalability Sametime is rock solid. It runs on WebSphere, DB2 and other related IBM technologies. This does mean the back-end is highly complex and very difficult to learn and get comfortable with, however.
Read full review Return on Investment Sametime keeps many of our team members in contact throughout the day which leads to increased productivity which makes everyone happy. We use the team chat room feature every day. This allows a team to stay focused on the task without any extra messages that are not on topic. The split between IBM Sametime, Slack and Google Hangouts has caused some issues when team members are not checking for messages on a certain app. Read full review My company is pleased with the positive impact Yammer has created departmentally and on an individual basis with work flow efficiency. Adversely, most old and new employees are more familiar with SharePoint, causing the company to pay for training for all current and incoming employees. As Yammer becomes more widely used, the need for training may diminish, which is where we will see our return on investment, as the product clearly provides a more effective form of file sharing and communication between employees and their department. Read full review ScreenShots