How to use Yammer effectively

Yammer is a group communication tool from Microsoft which one can use to set up a social network for any company. In this guide, I will share some beginners tips to guide you to set up and then use Yammer.

We will cover the following sections of Yammer on this topic.

Where to signup
Getting Started
Essential Features
- Groups & Messages
- Following & Attachments
- Search and Profile Setup

1] Where to Sign-up for Yammer

Yammer is free to use, and all you need is domain email id. While anyone can signup, I would suggest you to ask someone on admin level to create a company profile by visiting yammer.com.

2] Getting Started with Yammer

The first thing you need to do is create a relevant group as per the companies plan to use Yammer. Once that is done, you can start inviting company employes to Yammer to their respective groups. Post this; you will need to train everyone on how to use Yammer, which should be straight forward. Now let's talk about some of the basic features of Yammer everyone should know.

3] Essential Features in Yammer everyone should know

Once you are done with basic sign-up, have a look at the following topics to learn basics of Yammer.

Groups
Messages
Following
Attachments
Search
Profile Setup.

For more read our post on Yammer Features.

1] Yammer Groups

It is best to create the required groups and add people to it. That will help everyone to discover conversations categorically.

To create a group, click on Create a Grop link on the left.
You can choose to create an Internal Group or External Group
Then add people, and decide if it is accessible to all members of the company or only to people in the group.

When you create an external group, it means members from other companies can also collaborate here.

2] Messages

To post a message, type your message, then click “Post.”
Any message which is not restricted to a group or set of users will be visible to all the followers.
If you want to send a message to a person, there are two ways.
- @address the person. However, this is still public, and anybody on the network will be able to see it.
- Direct Message the person. It will always be private.

While @ mentions can be posted anywhere, to send a private message, you need to find the person using search and then click on Send message button to send a message. You can also add more people to the private message conversation.

3] Following

There are two things you can follow. People and Hast Tags.

Find the person in the member directory, and click on the follow button.
When you find a tag, click on it, and it will list all the conversation with that tag. Then click on the follow button.

4] Attachments

To attach a file to your message, click Yammer icon underneath your message box, and choose the file you would like to attach.

If you want to maintain a central place to keep all your files, then click on the configuration icon on top-left and then click on Files. Here you can click on Upload File button to upload supported files.

5] Search

Using Yammer's search, you can find messages, people, groups, and tags. The search results page also features an advanced search function. You can choose to search for within a group and between date ranges.

6] Profile Setup

Make sure to suggest everyone set up their profile and add a picture to it. You can add your department, email id, location, expertise, contact number, messenger details, Facebook, Linked In profile, and more. The same page allows you to change password, all your activities, connected applications, and notifications.

Notifications are an essential part. If you are receiving too many emails and notifications for everything, you can go to notifications and untick whatever is not required.

Read next: Yammer Tips and Tricks.

These pointers should be enough for you to get started with Yammer. If you still have any question, let us know in the comments.