Microsoft updates Yammer for iOS, Android with new mobile collaboration features

Microsoft's Yammer enterprise social-networking team is among the fastest of the fast-track teams at the company, delivering "weekly enhancements" to the Yammer mobile applications for iOS and Android.

On iOS, the Yammer team introduced "Handoff," a feature designed to allow users to swipe screens to transition across Apple phones, tablets and PCs running iOS and Mac OS X Yosemite.

On Android, Microsoft announced Yammer support for Android Wear. Users can "like" team messages or reply using voice commands on Android wearable watches/devices. "Liking" posts directly from the redesigned Yammer notifications for iOS and Android, both, is now possible.

The team cited other enhancements for the two platforms, such as notifications roll-up by threads and the ability to flesh the LED on Android phones to announce incoming Yammer notifications.

Yes, Windows and Windows Phone fans: There were no announcements this week of new Yammer features for Windows on phones, tablets or PCs. But a Microsoft spokesperson said news about Yammer on Windows 10 would be coming "soon."

In related news this week, Microsoft officials also announced that the company has hired a former Adobe vice president to work on the Applications and Services Group (ASG) at Microsoft to help make-over the UI across many of Microsoft's cross-platform software products and services.

Newly-minted ASG Corporate Vice President Michael Gough, who led a number of design initiatives at Adobe, will be spearheading work to create a unified design language/style to Office 365, Skype, Bing, Yammer, Exchange, MSN and other products and services. He will report to Corporate Vice President Julie Larson-Green.