What is Yammer?

Many of you would have seen Yammer links in the new SharePoint site or would be getting emails in your company to join Yammer. And the first question that comes to mind is “What is Yammer?” 

Yammer is a new social tool by Microsoft. In simple words, it’s your Company’s private social network like Facebook/Google+. But the real benefits of yammer is that it allows employees to collaborate, communicate and share information across organization, irrespective of departments, grades and location.

By default, in SharePoint the Newsfeed option appears in the suite bar above the global navigation. A SharePoint farm administrator can switch on Yammer which swaps the Newsfeed link to a Yammer link. If you can not see a Yammer button in the suite bar, you do not have Yammer enabled for SharePoint.
 

• Organizations need to make the most of its employees skills and initiative thus it is important that employees have an awareness of what is happening within the company and that they have a simple way to provide ideas and other information. 
• Imagine if you are an engineer working in the American branch of an organisation you might like to know what other engineers are doing elsewhere in the organisation they might also benefit from your input. 
• Yammer gives like-minded people in an organisation a way to discover each other and share ideas and other information including business documents.
• Rather than using announcements and news to tell employees about things that have already happened within your organisation Yammer allows employees to see live information about what is currently happening and also provide direct input.