Just months after unveiling the redesign of its new Yammer app, Microsoft is integrating the app into its flagship unified communication and collaboration platform Teams.
Yammer, Microsoft’s enterprise social networking platform used for communication across an organization, includes a fully interactive app called “Communities” that essentially brings Yammer conversations into Teams. It’s not available in the Microsoft app store.
The new Yammer app was first unveiled in November at Microsoft’s Ignite event.
With the Yammer app, organizations can communicate more broadly, connect with experts and answers and host company wide events, wrote the Yammer and Office 365 Groups general manager Murali Sitaram in a company blog highlighting the announcement.
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According to Sitaram, more than 44 million people use Teams every day, but that platform is generally used to communicate among smaller teams or offices.
The Yammer app allows users to share a poll or question at scale and instantly notify people of organizational news by targeting announcements to the entire organization or specific teams.
When asking questions, users can source subject matter experts within the organization and loop in specific people with at-mentions.
Managers and executives can also use the platform to host company-wide town hall video meetings with interactive conversation and Q&A sessions.
“By bringing Yammer into Teams, we want to make it easier for leaders and communicators to quickly and effectively communicate with their teams and organizations, even when they need to work apart,” Sitaram wrote. “We’ll continue to create a more seamless Yammer communities experience within Teams, including unifying notifications and search and bringing the Yammer app to Teams mobile.
Users can install the Yammer app, named “Communities,” from the Teams App store. It can then be pinned to the Teams app bar. IT admins can choose to deploy and pin the app for all users or specific departments and people. Individuals users can still install and pin the app themselves.
The app is currently only available to desktop and web clients only, with mobile availability coming soon, Murali wrote.
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