While many analysts see Microsoft’s purchase of LinkedIn as a bet on hyper-focused social networking, the company is still fine-tuning its previous pitch into business-oriented socializing with Yammer. For the past few years, Microsoft has been slowly but consistently integrating its Yammer service into Office 365, so much so that the two are now sharing the Azure Active Directory sign-in backbone.
Beyond aligning systems integration such as launching the Yammer experience from within several places throughout Office 365, the Office team is also making sure the semi-social business network is up to the same compliance standards as Office 365.
The Office team is also releasing monthly updates to the Yammer experience alongside its Office 365 counterpart and this month’s improvements include enhanced security and compliance additions and greater collaborative productivity options. The new additions come by way of improvements to Office 365 Video and Delve.
While seemingly minor in their listings, July’s additions are pretty detailed and Angus Florance of the Yammer team takes some time with Microsoft’s Mechanics video team to walk through them. In addition to tweaking the collaborative experience in Yammer, Florance also speaks to the boost office admins get when leveraging controls for merging networks and tracking employee usage.
If you are an Office 365 administrator, there are now more controls. The previous global switch to either enable or disable Yammer is now more granular. You can enforce Office 365 sign-on and control access to Yammer services by user. There are also new controls to merge Yammer networks and new reports to track usage.”
The 12-minute video is information-dense and useful to anyone using Office 365 and Yammer or considering deployment of the two in the future. We suggest giving the video a watch and heading over to the Office Blogs for more details on how Yammer and Office 365 are becoming a more cohesive experience for businesses.
