Richard Humphreys |
In a new blog post, Microsoft’s product marketing manager for the Yammer team, Connie Woo, has announced the integration of Yammer with Office 365 Groups – the group membership service that provides a single identity for teams in Office 365.
This means that now when you create a new group in Yammer it will automatically be part of the Office 365 Groups service, giving the group a OneNote notebook, a Planner for task management, a SharePoint Online team site and document library. With the integration, you and the members of your group can readily access these shared resources directly from Yammer.
“Yammer empowers people to work out loud and connect with others across their organisation to share ideas and get things done,” Woo says. “In Yammer, groups provide the structure for people to gather in open spaces to share best practices, develop into communities of interest and ignite new initiatives.”
“Around the world, teamwork is on the rise. Our research suggests employees now work on nearly double the number of teams than they did just five years ago,” explains an article posted by Microsoft’s Yammer team. “This means, more than ever, people are reliant on their peers to help get things done. But a ‘one size fits all’ approach does not work when it comes to group collaboration—different tools appeal to different groups and address unique needs. Already in use by 85 percent of the Fortune 500 as part of Office 365, Yammer is the social network built for work. Yammer connects teams across your organisation, enabling the open exchange of ideas that results in better decisions, faster.”
This integration between Yammer and Office 365 Groups affects customers who have enforced Office 365 identity in their networks, and have only one Yammer network associated with their Office 365 tenant. The full rollout of Office 365 Groups will take place in phases, which will connect Office 365 Groups with existing non-connected Yammer groups and remaining Office 365 tenants. You can also look forward to integration with Outlook Calendar as well as greater enhancements to Yammer integration with SharePoint Online and Planner.
Through Office 365 Groups integration, Office 365 administrators will soon be able to use query-based group membership in Yammer based on Azure Active Directory attributes such as role, location and manager. This will ensure that certain groups based on organizational structure dynamically include the right members.