Likelihood to Recommend 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 I think it is well-suited for populations who value social media and being connected in this manner at work. If the population does not value this type of open interaction, it will be underutilized. Many of our baby-boomer generation staff have a hard time seeing the relevancy of a site such as this.
Read full review Pros 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 I think it helps people crowd source an organization for information and resources that may not be easily found. The subjects feature is a great place to develop communities of practice where links, files and communication can be shared. As long as the search engine is optimized / working effectively, it can be a powerful way to access sites and resources across the organization. Read full review Cons 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 The profile finder is glitchy and rarely comes up with solid results. The site sometimes has glitches, such as subject pages not loading and complete content not appearing on the screen until you refresh or give it an abnormal amount of time to load. The "USAID Search" option should appear first for the search results. It is not intuitive that it is the last search option to select. Often users don't even clearly recognize that they need to select types of search results. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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 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 Very available
Read full review Performance It's a simple product but it does provide value.
Read full review Support Rating 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 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 Return on Investment 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 I feel that it has connected colleagues who would have never met in our global organization. I has created a division in the organization between the users and those who oppose its existence. It has been a great place for communication-oriented departments to get their messages out, advertise events, etc. Read full review ScreenShots