it_user651825 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Director at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
We use targeted notifications to communicate outages and maintenance windows.

What is most valuable?

  • External collaboration with partners: There is a unified way to send updates about departments and the enterprise, rather than sending separate communications.
  • Inbox and notification for updates: This helps to manage messaging to stakeholders in a centralized and contextual way, rather than silo information sharing.
  • Integration with Microsoft Office feeds: Since the enterprise works with Office, it is easy to use along with those tools.

How has it helped my organization?

We have used targeted notifications regarding the outages and maintenance windows to communicate with our stakeholders. This has helped centralized messaging for us.

What needs improvement?

Yammer can improve the effectiveness of its usage by addressing the metrics that measure user trust and perception. It measures the sentiments of posts using analytics and increases the ease of use.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used this solution for three years.

Buyer's Guide
Yammer
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Yammer. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
770,141 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There were no stability issues. The product has been fairly stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no scalability issues.

How are customer service and support?

I would give technical support a rating of 7/10.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

This is a good option for medium to large-sized business enterprises.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at the Slack solution.

What other advice do I have?

If you are a Microsoft Shop, then Yammer has the potential to tie up with SharePoint and address a lot of the enterprise needs, in terms of messaging and content management.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user167418 - PeerSpot reviewer
Human Resource/Digital Experience Applications Leader at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Allows cross-functional discussions across business groups.

What is most valuable?

  • IM
  • Groups
  • Mobile applications
  • Integration with Office
  • Notifications

How has it helped my organization?

The product has allowed cross-functional discussions across every business group throughout the company. There was very little communication across business units prior to deployment. It is easy to find experts in a particular subject matter with a simple post to a group or to the company-wide group.

What needs improvement?

  • Asynchronous, persistent chats
  • Search capability
  • Tighter integration with Outlook (i.e., be able to post directly to Yammer groups from Outlook)

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Chatter from Salesforce. We switched because the company was deploying Office 365 and it made more sense strategically to fully leverage Yammer instead. There were a smaller number of users on Chatter versus Yammer.

How was the initial setup?

The user account setup is not automatic as a person activates Office 365. I was not involved in the setup of the environment.

What other advice do I have?

This is an excellent choice if you have made the investment into Office 365. Announcement of teams should offer even better functionality. If you are not an Office 365 shop, then there are probably better options (i.e., Slack, Facebook for Work).

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Yammer
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Yammer. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
770,141 professionals have used our research since 2012.
PeerSpot user
Business Analyst at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Vendor
You can choose not to follow conversations once your inputs have been received.

What is most valuable?

  • Announcements
  • Notes
  • @mentioning
  • How not to follow conversations once your inputs have been received

How has it helped my organization?

From the point of view of knowledge sharing, we created a group per project. While we had SharePoint for storing documentation, we were able to link to these and give them content in Yammer.

What needs improvement?

  • @mentioning and the fact that you can't then tidy up the name.
  • Linking differing groups, without introducing hierarchy.
  • I did a lot of UAT and security both internally to organisations and being a cloud SaaS caused issues. Therefore, I’d like to see more support documentation with regard to this.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used it for about three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Yammer was embedded in SharePoint. We experienced outages almost every Thursday; assuming this is a scheduled software update.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support wasn't great. Our touch points in Microsoft Ireland were not knowledgeable enough on the product; issue experienced while going from Freemiun to Enterprise.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not previously use a different solution; first time using social enterprise.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was very straightforward. It was prior to O365 integration. Simply access the Yammer URL, and set up your credentials. The company provisioning was carried out by Microsoft but I believe this was straightforward.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing this product, I don't believe we evaluated other options, but this was not my call.

What other advice do I have?

Take the time to decide why your organisational culture will benefit from social enterprise. Let your workforce know that it is coming, communicate your organisational vision for it, and have a launch plan, training, champions and encouragement.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Architect at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
Not as feature-rich as Jive, but strikingly intuitive ease of use and a much lower cost.

Valuable Features:

Yammer provides a simple to use, intuitive platform for enterprise collaboration within the social networking information model. Like other products in this space, Yammer takes a crowd-sourcing approach to knowledge management in the enterprise by allowing users to leverage powerful tagging and content collaboration tools to communicate and capture information and expertise.

Room for Improvement:

Yammer is not as feature rich as the most mature offering in this space, Jive, however it makes up for this with strikingly intuitive ease of use and a much lower cost.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user133521 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user133521Sr. Technical Manager at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Vendor

Looks like Yammer initially was built with a focus on Consumers whereas Jive on contrary was built with focus on Enterprises. Later radically both products are concentrating on Enterprise Social Collaboration and Networking space. Yammer with its freemium type attracts Collaborations to take place immediately unlike Jive though both support SAAS based model as well apart from cloud options. But one thing is not clear why Yammer is available on cloud option only? Can't it support stand-alone or on-premise option?

See all 3 comments
Responsable des Systèmes d'Information at AEBDM
Real User
Good for communication and setting up meetings, but it needs better Microsoft cloud integration
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of this solution is the communication events."
  • "This solution would be improved if it was well integrated with other communication applications."

What is our primary use case?

We are system integrators, and we use this solution in our group for social networking.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of this solution is the communication events. We can set up meetings and events. 

What needs improvement?

I would like to see secure communication channels for our group.

This solution needs to be integrated with the Microsoft Cloud.

This solution would be improved if it was well integrated with other communication applications.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using this solution for between three and five years.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have a lot of applications for communication, including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram. In the future, I think that we need to have only one application for communication.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Director at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Consultant
It breaks down the silos of communication in organizations.

What is most valuable?

Collaboration and the integration with O365. There are so many features, everything you could ever want, which is great for team collaboration.

How has it helped my organization?

It breaks down the silos of communication in organizations.

What needs improvement?

It just needs a more defined roadmap. Yammer is part of O365 and the whole platform is ever evolving, and new features show up sometimes unannounced, and you don't find out until one of your end users mentions it.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution for over five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did not have any issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We definitely did not have any issues with scalability.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't use any other solutions previously, other than Facebook or Twitter.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is extremely easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Pricing is part of the O365 subscription.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other solutions.

What other advice do I have?

You need an upper-level management buy-in and a good communication plan for end users to make this successful.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Engineer at a tech services company
Real User
Simple setup but it adds to the complexity of using existing tools
Pros and Cons
  • "The initial setup was simple and straightforward."
  • "The product seems to just add to the complexity of using existing tools."

What is our primary use case?

I just wanted to try out the program to know what it was and how it works and if it could enhance our office communications.  

What needs improvement?

I do not see the point of the product, and I do not like it to be honest. For example, one thing which I do not like overall with Microsoft products is that they are constantly changing them. The issue with that is that most of the updates and features which they are pressing users to adopt are not good or just not wanted or needed by the customers using the products.  

As an example, we did an email migration. Some of our users had contacts that were linked with the Outlook linking feature. This is a newer feature in Outlook, and nobody wanted it in the first place. It just made things confusing by adding unwanted information automatically, and a new feature does not need to be confusing. It shoul be tested first, it should be optional, and the current software trend is to do public beta testing. One person in our company had something like 30 linked contacts — emails and full phone numbers which were not his actually his own contacts. In the migration, these contacts all showed up as his.  

Microsoft has too many updates and they are updates that are not wanted. I could understand if updates were discussed or features are wanted, but Microsoft just throws things out there. In this case, they actually rolled back the feature some time after releasiung it. That should not be necessary and it just makes for further confusion. I think I am actually saying nothing new here, but lately almost every update which is coming out has some bugs or stops something else from working. Sometimes it is a driver problem, sometimes it is something else. But the frequency of the rollouts just increases the frequency of the bugs. It is not the best plan for software management.  

I would say the whole experience was negative, so that is why we stopped using it.  

For how long have I used the solution?

We used the product recently for a short period of time less than a year ago.  

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did not use it long enough to really do testing and evaluation of the stability.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is enterprise software and was meant to be scalable. We never got to the point of rolling it out for the company.  

How are customer service and technical support?

I have contacted technical support and it was okay but not very helpful. Many times the support people can not actually do anything. If I call about a problem with a feature or a bug, they can not fix it over the phone. So yeah, maybe they are trying their best and they are polite, but if you call about an actual problem rather than how to use a feature, they can not really be of much help. The support guys were great, but the issue is that they are not magicians.  

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straight-forward. We were able to set it up on and we did it by ourselves.  

What other advice do I have?

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Microsoft Yammer as a four-out-of-ten. It was probably not useless, but it was of no help for our company and our situation.   

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user8940 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Consultant
It certainly appears to be the best of this growing group of internal micro-blogging tool

As one of Yammer's first paying customers (albeit not in HE) I have quite a lot of experience with it. In general, it certainly appears to be the best of this growing group of internal micro-blogging tools. It's free for any size of network (as long as you don't need the additional security features).

I saw our network grow very, very fast organically – but there comes a point where it has to 'cross the chasm' in order to become a valuable business tool for everybody. And that's where the rubber hits the road, because – just like any other tool, system or process – it then needs management support, proper communication, use cases, and people who look after the community that it creates.

So, my take would be: trial it (it won't cost you anything), but don't expect it to have any meaningful impact without further thinking, resource and investment behind it.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user5070 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user5070Architect at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor

We piloted Yammer at my company for three months and had a very difficult time getting people to use the tool. Many people logged in once, then never came back. Since then, we implemented Jive and the result has been much better. Yammer relies completely on users self-organizing to create an emergent information structure. Jive allows that, but also has some top-down capabilities to allow community managers to design overview pages and high level structure. Every company is different, but this approach is working much better with my organization.

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Updated: April 2024
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