Office 365 | Focus on Yammer

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome everyone to our webinar today. My name is Ziad Paracha and I will be talking about our continuous webinar series for Office 365 with our focus today on Yammer. So, before we get started, let’s look at what our agenda looks like for today. We’re gonna talk about what Yammer actually can do for you in your organization, as well as, you know, kind of review some of the strategies for rollout that, you know, using some use case scenarios and where, you know, Yammer can kind of fit into your organization, then we’ll, you know, finish off with a demo.

So, to begin, work has actually changed the way we work, the way, you know, we organize our teams, have all changed traditionally. In fact, of the top of, you know, fortune 500 companies, life expectancy, you know, half a decade ago used to be around, you know, 75 years, whereas now, you know, recently it’s 15 years or less, and declining even further. That means that if you’re not really…if you’re still in the traditional form of information, where information kind of moves slowly and you have more of a control in terms of the chain of command. Information gets out towards from the sea level, organization all the way to the remote workers or workers down here, information moved very slowly. Whereas now it’s more of a responsive network environment that allows you to be able to interact fairly quickly. And information, therefore, travels fairly quickly. And you’re easier to learn and quickly adapt to those kind of environments.

The network organizations at this time, of course, have the potential to use, so if there’s an idea, be able to, you know, in a highly structured environment, that idea has to kind of go through a whole bunch of different people before it actually gets, you know, implemented. And there’s a whole bunch of, you know, different interaction, and approvals that have to go through. Whereas now, the idea is actually the center and, you know, more structured organizations are actually becoming irrelevant because they’re not quickly adapting to this changing marketplace where people are actually inputting, you know, spontaneously towards the idea before it gets, you know, approved.

Now, how can Yammer really get introduced into this kind of space? If you look at the social network, it’s integrated within Office 365. So Yammer actually comes part of your licenses for Office 365 and you’re able to do a whole bunch of different things. So there’s no extra cost to have this corporate social network. And the way people really like to call this is Yammer is actually the Facebook of the organization. And, of course, it’s a little more professional in the way that, you know, it’s more confidential, it’s still within the organization. And now you can actually share with a familiar social network that is pretty easy to kind of spur discussions and get things done. So, you are able to organize and collaborate more effectively with Yammer in the way that you can create groups and projects, or create topics and you can have it more of an internal or an external, have different access restrictions. You can easily create groups or join an existing team or group as well.

And what’s really awesome about this is that you could actually, you know, share documents that are important, and it would result in easy access of those files, as you continue on with the conversation. And you can open the document right within Yammer as well. Now, there are obviously user knowledge across the organization, you need to be able to, you know, provide some sort of an incentive or at least share the benefits of Yammer to be able to, you know, make sure that organizations can easily adapt onto this. And I’ll kind of show you how different teams can potentially use…or different departments can potentially use Yammer for their business needs as well. So, you know, again, you can search different things and connect to different groups and people, therefore, it’s easier to collaborate and efficiently, you know, get work done.

There’s no, you know, rework or duplicate document that has to be created because all the files are already staying or being shared in Yammer as well. The benefits, of course, is there’s gonna be increased innovation and increased creativity. People are able to share their ideas and brainstorm quicker than, you know, for example, in email, where you have to kind of go back and forth, and it gets quite repetitive. That also reduces like I mentioned, the rework, duplication of that, and essentially moves projects quickly because you’re able to get faster information, you’re able to get the knowledge and faster and therefore have quicker decisions being made.

So a typical thread, so for, you know, you could share it to all company, that would be the group and everyone in that organization can comment. What’s really cool in this slide, is that it shows you the different locations that people can actually respond, I mean, you could respond from anywhere in the world. And that’s, I guess, the key point here is that, you know, you don’t have to go through a chain of command. Everyone can kind of, you know, VPs can be in on this, and project managers can be in on this, and a whole bunch of different people who need to be involved in that discussion can be in that same thread, right? And so it makes it a lot easier to, you know, end up solving your problems at the end of the day.

Now, what’s really important when you set up your Yammer is that only 20% is actually the technology. So I’ve seen organizations say, “Well, you know, Yammer doesn’t work for us.” And really is because you’re focusing more on the technology and relying on that, whereas you should be focusing more on the culture. So, you know, setting up your logo, for instance, having a policy, you know, running welcome messages or onboarding, some of that stuff, that’s all kind of technology focused. Whereas what you really want to focus on is the community management, how, you know, changing a culture, to be able to involve yourself in that quick responsive kind of marketplace, and that’s I think where a lot of companies actually fail to understand how Yammer can help.

So like I mentioned, there are some use cases. So let’s say, for example, you are in the HR department, well, you can reduce costs on initial training cycles for new employees because Yammer can actually do some of that onboarding, as well as, you know, share. You know, if you enrolled the new employee, for example, into a Yammer group that has all the company or at least their teams, they can actually get caught up on all of their…the required documents that they need, for example, or access to some resources that are alerting the organization that they can tap into as well. So, for example, in sales, you know, you can maximize sales team effectiveness because of the account insight. So for example, you can have, you know, more enhanced information on Yammer that would be able to help, you know, sales teams, for example, effectively do their job, and so on, so forth.

There’s lots of different cases that people can use to get kind of that work done. So what I think is really important before we go into the demo is to really essentially draft your vision. And I cannot stress this enough because many organizations don’t know why they want Yammer. So if you want to roll out Yammer, for example, this will just be a sample of some of the things that Yammer can do for you, for instance, help teams collaborate more effectively and new team members ramp up quickly, right? That could be a good kind of vision for your organization to utilize Yammer, amongst other things. And you can use that to reduce the email volume by communication via Yammer other than Outlook or any other form of email, right? And so what it really provides for the end users of course is, you know, it provides the social workplace and collaboration for people to actually go through and create and manage different kinds of groups through IT and hold up the need for going through IT. Right?

So I would focus on what’s in it for the organization, what your vision is to get that, and then roll out from there to towards having that culture, right. So let’s dive into that demo here for us today. And then we can kinda look into what Yammer can really do for you at that time. So give me one second. So if you go into your office portal, you’ll see kind of Yammer being a part of your licensing. If you don’t have licensing, you can reach out to me and I can kinda help out in getting that for you. And if you don’t see Yammer as any of these new icons that are there, it’s right here. But if you don’t see it there, you can actually click all your apps, and you’ll be able to see it. So, I’ve already preloaded Yammer here for you. And this is kind of the interface.

Now, what’s cool here to understand is that if you look at all the apps and applications, you can actually, you know, work seamlessly into the integrated workforce here, and go back and forth, bounce back and forth between all of this kind of applications and services as well. So just as a quick kind of run through as to what Yammer looks like, this is your home icon where you can kind of see all sorts of different groups, that are teams that are created, for example, sales and marketing, you have the production line, you have employee advocacy, finance, right. And you can have all sorts of these groups that are created, as well as all companies. So every single person that works in that company is already, you know, part of this group on Yammer.

And of course, you can view all your groups and create new groups as well. Then you have the next icon here, the mail, right? If you click on that, you can see all sorts of your messages in the inbox. So, any unread messages that, you know, are concerning you, for example, there’s eight new messages in one of the groups. You can look at… So for example, you know, Patti Fernandez kind of praised me, I can take a look at where that kind of is, and just click on it and it’ll take me to that conversation that was there. Now, keep in mind here as well, one of the features here is you can actually create that culture by praising one another, right? And I can kind of show you how you do that as well and create those sort of messages to kind of, you know, instill a more positive culture where people are appreciating one another’s efforts, and success.

Now, you can go into various teams, for example, the production line, for example, you can see all the new conversations there as well, all sorts of conversations that have happened in the past, as well as all the files that have been shared as well. So these are conversations. And then if you look at the files tab here, you can actually see all the files that have been shared as well. So there’s inventory, there’s all these different files in different types. You can have jpg, you can have docs, you can have Excel, you can have a whole bunch of different files there as well. So within this production line, for instance, I can actually upload or create a new folder, for instance, or a new document from Yammer within itself, right, and upload documents as well and be shared here. What’s really cool here as well is you can see who last updated that document and when that update was.

So you can keep track of all the different versions that have kind of come through or all the edits that have happened without having multiple versions here, essentially creates more confusion. There’s also a really powerful search bar here that can actually search various things for you. For instance, if you want to look at, for example, inventory, right? It will search up all the things that are inventory. If you notice that production line had that inventory image, I can actually preview download, or it could go to that file right away, right? You can also take a look at other things that are here as well, and it’s really powerful, you can search it within all your groups and be able to find that information much much quickly…quicker.

And then, of course, you’ve got the notification tab, which kind of looks through all the things again, that have happened within your groups that you’ve created, that you’ve been a part of. And you could see all sorts of different notifications that are there. Now, what’s really cool here is it looks very, very similar to how, you know, Facebook actually is or other kind of user interfaces very, very friendly, right, and it’s easier to kind of get used to this kind of environment. Now, of course, you can also create new groups here as well. There’s a plus sign right here that says, “Create a new group.” And you can create a new group and add whoever you want internal or external, make it private or public, and so on and so forth.

Now, the sales and marketing one, let’s take a look at that. So update, you can have an update status kind of thing, where you can actually link different teams, for example, sales and marketing can be here. But you can also tag different people, right? So for example, Isaiah, I want him to be part of this. And I can actually add different teams as well, more than one team here as well. Now, an update is more of just like a post, it’s an update post, that you’re kind of putting on the wall and everyone that’s a part of this or has been tagged in here, can be a part of that. You can also do a poll. So for example, we can say, “Hey, you know, should we do this or should we do…” something like that. We can have a question for the entire company, for example, a poll, you know, what should we get…or get for lunch, Tuesday, right? As a corporate lunch, wherever, you can have different answers, right? You can have pizza, right? And you can change as you need, right?

And of course, people can then answer those kind of questions. And you’d be able to see who’s responded what and be able to go with that. So I can say, for example, pizza, that’s what I want, we update that, and I took my vote. And of course, anyone else who would vote can tell us what that looks like. So as well as praise. So that’s what I was showing you guys earlier. So you can praise one another, you can also change the icons here to be able to kind of, you know, something is up with the diamond. Who do you want to praise again, Isaiah? You know, great sale or whatever, great? And you post that. And of course, everyone in that kind of group can be able to see all the work that Isiah has done there as well.

You can also do an announcement. So general announcements. So these could be company updates, this could be things that are regarding that particular group that you want to kind of get across to everyone instead of saying email that kind of sense to everyone, you can have a… And everyone has to reply all, you can have an update or announcement right there. And, you know, it’s easy for everyone to kind of get updated on new things that are happening. Now, you’ll notice on the bottom here, there’s actually gifts that you can have as well. There’s, you know, you can select files from SharePoint, you can have files coming from Yammer, or you can upload your own files as well. And all of these things you can do, you can add on to any of these kind of status updates, right?

Now, if you look over here, you can actually see all the members, so there’s 11 members that are joining this group, you can add more members as needed. So for example, you can go here, you can actually change the settings. So this is the marketing manager, you can actually make that I’m in, or remove them from the group as well, if they’re no longer required in that group or project, you could do that. So, another is, you see here, this is an admin person already and be able to… So because I am in that group, I can actually change that setting and not everyone can change that setting as well. But of course, that all depends on how you are going to be administrating that as well.

You can invite other people, right? So from there, you could have…the name right here, you can invite other people that you want on the team, right? And that would usually typically search, you know, people that are in your group or in that email, you can search by name, or you can just send the…write the email. And then they can be part of this team as well, right? So pretty cool kind of ways that you could do that, of course, you can change up the interface as well. So for example, and you can have…you have these on apps as well, right? So you have this on your phone, you can have this on the internet, or you can even use that as an app that you download into your desktop screen as well.

Okay, so here’s, for example, you can change the image or colors, right, you can make it a little bit more aesthetically appealing. And all that is kind of up to you. You can upload new pictures, as you please, and save changes and so on. Now, here’s where I was telling you about the conversation. So whoever can kind of see that, you could have that as a public. So people can actually join those kind of networks and see all those conversations. Or you can have a private access where only members that are actually part of that group can see that.

All right. You also create private messages from here as well. So let’s say I wanna send a private message or post in a particular group, I could select the group here, for example, all company and post the status or I can send a private message to whoever I want to, for example, Miriam, and I can send her a quick message right up from there. And she will be able to update that. And then again, you can upload files and other things as well if you want to send a private message, right? So really, really cool things here that you can use, we can just kind of get out of that here. Now, if you wanna, for example, and, of course, your conversations and private messages get tracked here. So it’s easier to kind of go into that conversation, be able to view all the messages that are there as well.

Well, let’s go really quickly into the view all groups, you can see all these kind of teams that have been created. You could discover more groups that have been created that you are not a part of, as well as create a group yourself for anything that you’d like. So it could be an internal group or only your company is allowed to be a part of, or it could be an external group, right? Where you can collaborate with other people from other companies or your projects or anything like that, right? Simply put in a group name, add a couple of members to it and choose your restriction, whether it’s public or private. Click group, create group, and now you’ve got a team to work with. So, fairly easy to kind of work with. Again, here is, for example, my settings from our personal user settings. And I could do, you know, a whole bunch of different things from here as well, like create a network from there instead of having to go from here, look at all the apps or files that have been uploaded, all the people that I’m involved with, and so on and so forth, right?

So if you look at here, it actually still in Yammer, you can see all the recently access files, images, videos, right, anything else that I have actually looked into, which as you can see, I’ve not looked at anything. But if I was to, then I would be able to see that here. And all the different things in all the groups that I am part of. So for example, marketing campaigns, if I click that, right, there are no documents in this one. But let’s look at all company, for example, you can look at…apparently, there’s no files that have been uploaded, right? And you can take a look at all the files that you’ve uploaded here. And of course, upload a file as needed as well, right?

Fantastic. Now, of course, these projects and teams can be kind of integrated with, for example, in Microsoft Teams or SharePoint, and you can kind of back all of these files up from here as well to a cloud storage space. And all that is available for you to do as well.

If there are any questions at this time, I would kind of invite you to, you know, write it down and I could answer it at this time. That kind of concludes my presentation for today and what I wanted to show you. If there are anyone who wants to contact me regarding any sort of training or in-depth training on Yammer or how you can kind of deploy, you know, Yammer at your organization, and what are best practices, feel free to reach out to me or connect with me here. And I can do that as well. So if there are any questions, let me know. I’d love to be able to answer that at this time.

I guess there isn’t. Thank you so very much for everyone for joining. If there is, again, any sort of questions that come about, feel free to reach out to me and I would love to be able to help you guys out in doing that. Thank you so very much and have a great rest of your day. Bye.