Microsoft Is Killing Yammer Enterprise in January 2017, Will Start Integrating Office 365 Groups First (venturebeat.com)

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Microsoft Is Killing Yammer Enterprise in January 2017, Will Start Integrating Office 365 Groups First (venturebeat.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday September 27, 2016 @04:10AM from the end-of-things dept.

Microsoft today provided new information about how it will be integrating Office 365 Groups into its Yammer enterprise-focused social network. The Yammer Enterprise service tier will be going away on January 1, 2017. But Yammer itself will remain available, and there are many levels of integration with the Office 365 services, reports VentureBeat. From the report: It will be possible for people to make Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents using Office Online within Yammer, and it will be easy to go from Yammer to a shared OneNote notebook or the Microsoft Planner project management tool. Team members will be able to select existing files from OneDrive and SharePoint and share them with colleagues in Yammer, too. And Yammer teams will get their own SharePoint sites, enabling them to build wikis and blogs. Microsoft will be rolling out the integration in phases, with the first phase beginning later this year, the Yammer team said in a blog post. The first Yammer customers to get it are those whose users log in with their Office 365 identity. And Microsoft will initially be targeting organizations with a single Yammer network connected to one Office 365 tenant.

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Microsoft is killing... what? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 04:20 · Score: 1

First time I hear about this product.
1. Re: Microsoft is killing... what? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 04:36 · Score: 0
  
  Me too. I would never do business using some company's cloud server though. That's a serious security risk. Maybe if the "cloud" software was hosted on a bunch of servers owned by my company. Getting everything you write scanned or potentially stolen by outside interests is an unacceptable compromise.
2. Re: Microsoft is killing... what? by jellomizer · 2016-09-27 04:51 · Score: 1
  
  The cloud is fine if you are a small company where you don't want to use your resources servers for your organization. However after you get to a particular size, the cloud advantage goes away. But we no longer get that option.
  
  --
  If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
3. Re:Microsoft is killing... what? by The-Ixian · 2016-09-27 05:07 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It is a good solution for companies who don't want to rely on a public social networking site.
  I have worked for a few large companies who have run a Yammer site. It is basically just an internal company Facebook.
  It can be used for good purposes. Stuff that doesn't necessarily fall into "official" company communiques or which might fall outside company org structure.
  For example, charitable events that company employees participate in might have a Yammer group... stuff like that.
  The fact that it incorporates into AD and as well as other MS Office tools and products makes it attractive for organizations already in the MS ecosystem.
  
  --
  My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
4. Re: Microsoft is killing... what? by geeper · 2016-09-27 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  That's a pretty narrow view and blanket statement. There are lots of reasons to use the cloud (or hybrid setup) at larger companies, both financial and operational. Sure, it's not for everyone but it fits the bill for a lot of companies, regardless of size. I think it's funny when folks say they are concerned about cloud infrastructure security (you didn't say this but others have). If you know all the steps major cloud vendors have to go through to get certified for hosting various data, you wouldn't say that regular Joe IT can secure their own network better (we can't all be experts even though most think they are).
  
  --
  Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
5. Re:Microsoft is killing... what? by JaredOfEuropa · 2016-09-27 06:21 · Score: 2
  
  It's very well suited for certain work-related stuff as well. Virtual town hall sessions. Community-based support, especially for services where a lot of new things are happening (so users will want to subscribe to the group and remain informed). Virtual, cross-departmental team spaces. Communities of Practice. I've been involved in setting up Yammer and coaching community managers at my last client, and we've experimented with a great many use cases. Most successful cases were in the category of fast-paced, low threshold, opt-in, geographically spread out communities sharing information of temporary value. The low-threshold aspect is a definite plus in some cases, especially people new to the company find Yammer a lot less scary to contribute to than, say, message boards.
  
  The challenges: you need active community management to keep people engaged, and when I was using it there were little or no curation tools, poor search, poor statistics to help community managers (there was a paid 3rd party option which was ridiculously overpriced), and no way to extract valuable information for storage in longer-term media (Wikis, Sharepoint or whatever)
  
  Yammer can add real business value (in addition to the not to be underestimated value of the watercooler effect, i.e. non-business related groups) but it is not free either; don't expect anything to happen if you just roll out the tool and walk away.
  
  --
  If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
6. Re:Microsoft is killing... what? by The-Ixian · 2016-09-27 06:26 · Score: 1
  
  Sure, it is like a lot of other products out there. But it has the added advantage of being a part of the O365 bundle... so you get it with no extra cost. Unlike a 3rd party solution.
  It also does what it purports to do. So really, what more do you want?
  As for SharePoint.... I am not the biggest fan of it either, but mostly from an administrative point of view (it is not the easiest thing to incorporate, administer or migrate...). However, from a user point of view, I can see the appeal and I use it all the time. It is a central repository of information. We use it for company calendars, announcements, staff headshots and indexed library of policies, howtos and other documentation. It works well for those things.
  
  --
  My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
7. Re: Microsoft is killing... what? by KingMotley · 2016-09-27 06:39 · Score: 1
  
  My name isn't Joe, and I could secure our own network better. The awesome thing about the cloud is when someone higher up asks me to do something really stupid, I can just say no, we can't do that -- which keeps the network secure.
8. Re:Microsoft is killing... what? by davester666 · 2016-09-27 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  And last thing I want to hear about: "enterprise-focused social network"
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
9. Re:Microsoft is killing... what? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 07:38 · Score: 0
  
  Umm...why exactly do enterprises need social networks?
  Captcha: concept
10. Re:Microsoft is killing... what? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 11:02 · Score: 0
  
  First time I hear about this product.
  I heard about this at a previous job, where my employer used it as their corporate bulletin board
People still use Yammer? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 04:23 · Score: 0

I remember looking at it about 8 years ago (or more). Meh...
Full Definition of yammer by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 04:32 · Score: 0

yammered, yammering
intransitive verb
1
a : to utter repeated cries of distress or sorrow b : whimper
2
: to utter persistent complaints : whine
3
: to talk persistently or volubly and often loudly
1. Re:Full Definition of yammer by Opportunist · 2016-09-27 10:05 · Score: 1
  
  MS does have a really great record of choosing product names, don't they?
  Makes "Zune" really stand out as the only one where the product was indeed worse than its name. That's not saying much, though.
  
  --
  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yay! Sharepoint! by Pascoea · 2016-09-27 04:33 · Score: 4, Funny

And Yammer teams will get their own SharePoint sites
"I can't wait to use Sharepoint more" -No one, ever.
1. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 05:10 · Score: 0
  
  The 1st taste is free...
2. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 05:30 · Score: 0
  
  Ah Sharepoint.... What goes in never comes out and ... words fail me.
  The only time I've used a decent sharepoint server it had been set up by an ex Lotus Notes consultant.
  At my current gig, the admins are forever reorging it when important docs go missing. The side effect is that stuff we could find the day before is not longer there.
  Thus, it is avoided like the plague and only used for box ticking excercises.
3. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by bigman2003 · 2016-09-27 05:33 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I'm a Microsoft flag waver- for the last 20 years. It's been core to my career.
  I absolutely hate Sharepoint, and I hate the way they are integrating it into everything.
  Recently I had someone come to me saying that they kept sending out files, and nobody outside of our organization could access them.
  Their files were saved to Sharepoint (the default, not their intention) and when they 'attached' the file to an email, Outlook went ahead and sent a link, rather than attaching the file. The link went to our internal Sharepoint, which people on the outside could not access.
  I understand all the reasoning for this to happen. But the problem was that this was just a naive user clicking 'Sure, save it there, that is cool' then being stuck in this problem. I told them to save the file elsewhere...but now they had two versions of the file and confusion ensued.
  Please, please, please don't make 'further integration with Microsoft products' the default!
  And no...nobody has ever wanted to use Sharepoint more. I've been around it for a long time, and I don't understand what the heck it is supposed to be. Ignoring all Sharepoint is a valuable skill.
  
  --
  No reason to lie.
4. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 06:07 · Score: 0
  
  further integration with non-microsoft microsoft products that are further integrated into microsoft products of other nature maybe.
  seriously, you have 5 years left if ms doesn't change course.
  seriously, they bought nokia smartphones just to stop selling them. billions lost.
  they bought linkedin - for less money than what ARM was sold for. think about that. I had many discussions with people about linkedin purchase at 50 bucks per non paying user, where they reasoned that ms bought it because it was the smart thing to do despite ms doing non smart buys for the past decade. seriously some people think that integrating linkedin into ms services will bring some kind of magic value thats more than fifty bucks per user. I got a magic way for ms to make fifty bucks per user: sell a decent windows for a change.
5. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by JaredOfEuropa · 2016-09-27 06:24 · Score: 1
  
  The first taste won't exactly make you come back for more, trust me.
  
  --
  If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
6. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by JaredOfEuropa · 2016-09-27 06:36 · Score: 1
  
  The integration is the selling point (for the decision makers, anyway). It's what differentiates it from other standalone solutions for what SP is trying to be. And that's the funny thing: SP is trying to be a lot of things. Document management: does a sucky job and misses basic features that our 15 year old software did have. Wikis: dear god, you're better off with MediaWiki and a couple of good plugins. Message boards: sort of work, but again misses a lot of basic stuff (such as rules-based community management): they are a nightmare to maintain. Team Wikis: this part actually does work... once your users understand the idiotic menus. A lot of them came begging for a Confluence team space instead.
  
  You can make SP work reasonably well (I've seen it), but it takes a lot of work. And it takes some serious iron to run compared to the competition. My advice to anyone considering using SP in medium / large organisations: don't. Go with separate solutions that cost less, are cheaper to run, are a hell of a lot better, and way easier to use. Forget about the integration... or pay a couple of consultants to build a bespoke interface in places where it makes sense. Sounds expensive, but in the long run it'll cost peanuts compared to SP.
  
  --
  If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
7. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by swb · 2016-09-27 06:52 · Score: 2
  
  My guess is that MS really wants to kill of basic (SMB) file sharing. The protocol is open enough that world+dog has already implemented in everything, so every file server upgrade faces the prospect of losing out to something else -- shit appliances all the way up to big ticket EMC devices.
  Trying to move everyone to Sharepoint has so many layers of lock in I get dizzy just thinking about them. The endless licensing sales for server, SQL and 3 different kinds of CALs. Relentless sunk costs of developer time and migration. Files sequestered away in a database unmigratable to competing file sharing platforms.
  It's a perpetual motion machine of IT spending, right up to and including Office365 hosted migrations once the painful costs of adopting and infrastructure become realized.
  I've never understood the attraction to it. I work at an IT consulting firm that sells Sharepoint services and our site is a complete joke, used mostly as a way to host OneNote notebooks.
8. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by The-Ixian · 2016-09-27 07:00 · Score: 1
  
  That just sounds like poor administration.... which is understandable... SharePoint is not the easiest thing to administer.
  My favorite story about SP is when I worked for a very large company. We had all over our team documentation on SP. This was the proscribed practice for all the teams in our department.
  Among these documents were our DR procedures.
  HOWEVER.... SP was not considered an integral (tier 1) service.... and hence would not be "failed over" as part of a DR shift to a backup data center. So.... there goes all the DR procedures....
  The solution? To all team members: Make sure you keep local copies of all SP team documents.
  Love it
  
  --
  My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
9. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by The-Ixian · 2016-09-27 07:04 · Score: 1
  
  oops, I meant prescribed, not proscribed....
  
  --
  My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
10. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by PCM2 · 2016-09-27 08:16 · Score: 1
  
  Their files were saved to Sharepoint (the default, not their intention) and when they 'attached' the file to an email, Outlook went ahead and sent a link, rather than attaching the file. The link went to our internal Sharepoint, which people on the outside could not access.
  The default in Outlook 2016 is to also send links when you attach files that are in your OneDrive folders. That is, to you it seems like you're navigating through the filesystem and attaching a file, but Outlook "helpfully" sees that it's synced to OneDrive and sends a link to the website instead. There's a little box or something you have to check if you want the classic behavior, but you have to set it every time you send an email. I couldn't find any global setting to disable the linking.
  
  --
  Breakfast served all day!
11. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by PCM2 · 2016-09-27 08:19 · Score: 1
  
  From what I can tell (haven't actually tried it), it looks like it would take months to get a stock SharePoint install hammered into some form that would actually be useful for your organization. Out of the box it's practically useless. You'll be paying those couple of consultants whether you go with Microsoft or not.
  
  --
  Breakfast served all day!
12. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by Grishnakh · 2016-09-27 08:19 · Score: 2
  
  I got a magic way for ms to make fifty bucks per user: sell a decent windows for a change.
  Why should they bother? They already get $100 (or so I read somewhere) per user by having a shitty Windows pre-loaded on every computer sold. People aren't going to pay more for a non-shitty Windows (assuming such a thing is possible, which I doubt). And MS can make even more money per use by baking adware and spyware into Windows, without affecting the up-front price. It's an excellent sales strategy. And if people don't like shitty Windows, what are they going to do, buy a Mac? hahaha
13. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by thegarbz · 2016-09-27 08:38 · Score: 1
  
  and I don't understand what the heck it is supposed to be
  Sharepoint is supposed to be everything based on the marketing and the typical way it's setup in most companies.
  That's also why it's so popular. Jack of all trades and master of none, actually not even novice at most really all things considered. But if you wanted 1 vendor and 1 platform to try and do bloody everything then Sharepoint is a skill that will put bread on the table.
14. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by Opportunist · 2016-09-27 10:07 · Score: 1
  
  I'm a Microsoft flag waver- for the last 20 years. It's been core to my career.
  20 years is really a long time in antivirus development and security consulting...
  
  --
  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
15. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 11:00 · Score: 0
  
  And if people don't like shitty Windows, what are they going to do, buy a Mac? hahaha
  Lately they've been buying chromebooks and making do with a huge smartphone.
16. Re:Yay! Sharepoint! by Grishnakh · 2016-09-27 11:40 · Score: 1
  
  I've actually never seen anyone with a chromebook. People do use smartphones, but not for real work.
YammerTime. . . by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 04:35 · Score: 0

as all we are, is dust in the wind.
1. Re:YammerTime. . . by The-Ixian · 2016-09-27 04:57 · Score: 1
  
  Dust... wind....dude!
  
  --
  My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
That's not news by OneHundredAndTen · 2016-09-27 06:53 · Score: 1

That's what Microsoft always does: buy a company, and destroy it.
And.. by M0j0_j0j0 · 2016-09-27 07:24 · Score: 1

This is the main reason why I hate cloud products, Simon says, and we are all fucked up, can't count the number of times I have had to relearn Office 365 crap , for something as simple as get a fucking invoice. Google is even worse, they are like, tomorrow, no more feature for you, need support? Ask the community, good luck!
Training by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 07:58 · Score: 0

As a long-time SharePoint user and SharePoint Solution Builder, I'm a big fan. Importantly I recognise what it can and can't do. What it can do it does well - the problem is people insist on making SharePoint do what it is not good at.
In my experience, the sharing problem is a usually training issue. With the right config in the back end sharing a file is easy and efficient.
Like any system, it has it's subtleties and has a learning curve. There's always the people who say "Our file share has been fine for the last 20 years, we should keep on using it... blah blah, complain complain.". Once people see the value around version control, understand tagging, and can get out of the "folder" mindset - they become converts.
1. Re:Training by rgbscan · 2016-09-27 09:43 · Score: 1
  
  I'd love if someone could explain to me how this is supposed to work. I work on a software development team at a company of 50k employees. While we are developing and documenting the software planning, the doco lives on our team sharepoint site - where it is constantly updated. Once we come up with a final design, we have to upload our (hopefully) final doco to a department architect sharepoint site where it is reviewed and approved, or sent back for revision. There's almost always something they nitpick, so I have to revise the doc that lives on the team sharepoint site and then upload a copy of that back to the architect sharepoint. Then we upload it to yet another sharepoint for the overall project and present it to the project team and business line who requested the IT project, invariably resulting in changes to the doc, necessitating changes in all three places. Doco is continually out of sync, since I can't just have one doc and symlinks or somesuch to the three sites. It's a nightmare and the stupidest thing I've ever seen for doco management. Yet it all needs to be there. The project requires all artifacts related to the project to be documented within the project SP for completeness, the auditors require all code changes to live in the architect sharepoint for overall system documentation, and we need to keep our internal team sp updated, because if someone ever has to maintain this code, the team already has access to the team sp - and wouldn't have to wait for access to, or dig to find, the other sites.
  And the best part is that none of this is searchable! Even if I know the internal project ID number, there's no overarching way to search for it, since each project runs it's own siloed SP site not linked to anything else. And at the architect IT site, you're only allowed to see what you uploaded yourself. God I hate sharepoint. It's a plague unto IT.
All work and no play -- Office 365 by Prien715 · 2016-09-27 08:02 · Score: 1

Microsoft Haiku (ish):
No vacation
Work every weekend
Office 365
And I understand that they're ripping off "Whole Foods 365" brand, but I like drinking orange juice every day. Office work 365 days a year? No thanks -- but it is the society we are becoming.

--
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
1. Re:All work and no play -- Office 365 by Opportunist · 2016-09-27 10:09 · Score: 1
  
  Office 365 doesn't sound like a product but rather like a reason to get a union going.
  
  --
  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Microsoft something something by Anonymous Coward · 2016-09-27 11:02 · Score: 0

Never heard of yammer, and I have no idea what sharepoint is.
I guess I won't bother looking it up, since it's something Microsoft will probably just rebrand before eventually shutting it down.