X
Business

Yammer takes on social enterprise competition with more app integration

Yammer gets a facelift to improve the overall user interface while making users and shared content more discoverable.
Written by Rachel King, Contributor
zdnet-yammer-update-2

Yammer is giving itself a major refresh on Tuesday with the unveiling of several major new upgrades dedicated to the user interface and experience.

Overall, the goals of the latest changes are designed to make it easier to find and discover relevant users and conversations as well as shared content. The major targets of the revamp on the enterprise social network are the main homepage, inbox, and navigation menus.

An example of making content more discoverable can be seen on the homepage, which now include both company resources (i.e. quicker access to HR policies, employee benefits, etc.) as well as trending files, which are the most actively shared and viewed files and Yammer Pages at the time.

Yammer is also becoming more actively competitive with other enterprise platforms.

For example, taking on the likes of Google Apps, Yammer is launching its own chat feature dubbed "Online Now." It's your basic instant chat setup with a contact list and even multi-user conversations. Furthermore, users can export chat data on a one-time or recurring basis.

Furthermore, Yammer is boosting its apps locker with more third-party integration, including social media management system HootSuite and telepresence toolset FuzeBox.

Yammer founder and CEO David Sacks remarked in a statement that this is the "most significant release yet" for the now Microsoft-owned company.

This version of Yammer follows up a major release of new products that debuted last November to boost Yammer's productivity and collaboration resources: the Ticker, Pages and Files.

Yammer is planning to roll out these features in phases in order to collect "usability data" for feedback as it monitors the launch. However, some customers already have all summer release features, so keep your eyes peeled.

Screenshot via Yammer

Editorial standards