Yammer vs Teams: complementary or competitors?

While Yammer, created in 2008, entered the Microsoft fold in 2012, the appearance of Teams in in 2017 has sort of reshuffled the deck. Until then, users had a primarily office use of the Office suite. And suddenly, we switch to a collaborative vision of work, which accelerates further with the health crisis, forcing the planet to remote collaboration. Those who already had a real use of Yammer (and who were not necessarily very numerous, in proportion to Office 365 users), wonder if it is not a bit duplicative. And Teams users have a hard time understanding why they should use Yammer as well. But on closer inspection, each of these two products has its own specificities and "rules of the game" to know in order to optimize their use.

What is Yammer not?

Yammer is not a project management tool, nor an instant messaging or collaboration platform. Yet, Yammer has features that could give the opposite impression: connection with Sharepoint, user groups, integrated chat...

So what is Yammer? A social network, but confined to its own organization, with a few options to open up to the outside world. When it was created, Yammer used almost all of Facebook's codes: ergonomics, vocabulary and basic features. Since then, Facebook has evolved a lot and the two networks have slowly become more distinct. But Yammer still retains its social dimension.

However, when it comes to being a collaborative work tool, Teams far surpasses it.

Why continue to expand the use of Yammer?

So why continue to use Yammer, since the advent of Teams? Well, because certain uses flourish much better there. See also the 7 keys to engaging your collaborators via a Yammer community.

The creation of communities: the notions of "group" are replaced by Yammer communities that users can join freely when they are interested in the exchanges that take place there. They can share links, documents, lives-streams (yes, just like on Facebook). The exchanges are rich and the communities are real places to share knowledge on subjects that users can explore in depth.

The mode of communication: here we do not "chat", we "post". Posting allows for a wide variety of content. For example photos, gifs, videos and attachments, it is therefore an ideal way to spread announcements, new initiatives and reinforce the company culture.

Event hosting: An event discovery page has been added to each community so that members can see what's new, what's being discussed, and stay informed of upcoming events.

Knowledge dissemination: Yammer's algorithm allows for filtering of publications and organization of conversations into questions and answers, which facilitates rich exchanges and highlights the most unifying topics.

Should you choose between Teams or Yammer?

It doesn't make sense to pit Yammer against Teams, especially if you're in a large organization with many locations. Yammer is a great tool for cementing corporate culture, even between colleagues who have never met in real life. This can be done through formal communities working on cross-functional topics, but also through informal discussions that allow more personal things to be shared. It's like your virtual cafeteria.

Teams works more like a meeting room. Discussions have less depth, but are more operational. Teams is designed to organize conversations around defined topics, and is the ideal place to quickly discuss the progress of a project, send an item to the team and collaborate on documents simultaneously. So it's the perfect place to move a project forward on a daily basis.

The two tools Yammer and Teams complement each other very well: on the one hand, Teams allows for daily teamwork - even (and especially) when working rem otely, as was the case during the health crisis - and on the other hand, Yammer allows for a wide audience to be reached on cross-functional subjects, over a long period of time, with a high potential for expertise. They both clearly have their place in the Office365 suite, and respond to the different uses of employees. The best proof of their joint usefulness is perhaps that it has been possible for a few months now to integrate Yammer communities... into Teams!