Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Adoption
Playbook
Getting started
A great network starts with a great plan. Follow these
five steps to make sure you’re ready for launch.
What are company values? How will Yammer help? What are your top 5 business
priorities?
Core values often align to excellence How will the organization know if Examples can include a focus on future
in integrity, teamwork, customer Yammer is successful? growth, on improving efficiency, on a
satisfaction, learning, and quality management effort, or on market changes
What problems will it solve?
How will it benefit employees? Write out your list of values and initiatives.
Set policies and guidance
Step 1: Develop usage policy and guidelines [See Microsoft Example]
Ensure it aligns with your company policies, code of conduct and culture.
Step 2: Determine IT standards around email archives, file retention, and external
sharing policies. These may already be in place for existing communication tools
and technologies and will adhere to Microsoft 365 policies.
More information on what is available for Yammer and data management can be found here
Pro tip:
• Keep policy and guidelines positive (not just a list of “don’ts”), and
provide plenty of examples and suggestions.
Mobile usage and
remote connectivity
There may existing mobile device policy at your organization.
Evaluate these policies to see if you need to adjust to
accommodate Yammer usage.
ASK:
1. Can you access Yammer while on your own personal devices, either
mobile or at home? What about after hours?
2. Are the specific parameters where VPN would be necessary?
3. Do employees need VPN for access to Yammer?
Pro tip:
We encourage organizations to allow users to connect at
and away from their desks. Consider the impact of your
decisions with the openness and ease of use Yammer
provides.
Keyword Monitoring
You can monitor particular keywords in Yammer to track
sensitive conversations (example: “lawsuit”). Create a
backchannel in Microsoft Teams to discuss these
conversations.
ASK:
1. Who is responsible for escalations?
2. What is the process? Who gets notified if something is said?
3. What action is taken?
4. Does this extend to external guests or networks?
Pro tip:
This process should align to your employee handbook for
inappropriate behavior.
Resources:
Yammer Keyword monitoring
Blog posts - How to set up Teams Tab/ Report Post Yammer Blog
[SAMPLE] Yammer Network Community Team
With an established cadence of communication and a place to share information, these team members can
support the community day to day, inform the stakeholders and make the best choices for the community.
Role Responsibilities
• Liaison with Community Admins weekly via Yammer
• Enlist and grow champions monthly
• Encourage executive sponsorship and involvement quarterly
Community
• Plan and prepare engagement activities ongoing
Manager
• Content owner for the community
• Analyze network usage weekly Resources:
• Showcase success stories monthly
Yammer Community Management
Community • Facilitate specific usage of Yammer monthly
Admins • Communicate with members related to use cases
• Encourage new members to use Yammer weekly
Champions
• Share YamWins to the broader community monthly
• Technical integrations and setup
Pro tip:
• Support issues
IT Administration The rollout team should create a Yammer
• User management
community to have discussions on upcoming
• Data storage
initiatives, and product launches and the impact to
• Mitigate risks your community.
HR Sponsor
• Address misconduct
Introducing
Yammer to your
organization
Inspire leadership to reach out to the Spark engagement with a Yammer Use champions to identify “wins” big
entire organization for feedback and launch event and small, then celebrate by sharing
challenges, such as one customer on internal networks
who hosted a cost-savings challenge.
Yammer for
audiences with critical info with a community and live
across web and mobile. events. Support flexible workstyles
(remote, geo)
different MARKETING
Listen and collect customer
IT
Drive IT transformation and
SALES
Share best practices and
departments
feedback. Answer inquiries change management competitive insights
about proper brand usage and awareness. sharing between
marketing materials. employees
Plan, execute and troubleshoot
4. Goals – what are 3 metrics we can 5. Experience – what happens on a 6. Roles – what different roles can
measure in the next 12 months? reoccurring basis? How are people people play?
1. onboarded?
2.
3.
7. Rules –what guidelines and 8. Governance – how do we make 9. Communication – what are the
boundaries help achieve the purpose decisions? Who gets to decide? channels for us to communicate?
and values? How frequent?
Source: https://community-canvas.org/
Identify and empower
your Yammer champions
Champions are your community of people who have bought into Millennials
using Yammer from day one. Champions also are people who They might naturally like the
would contribute to and benefit from the value created by this social capabilities of Yammer
community.
Create a Yammer Community in your network for your champions. Pilot program participants
In this group, they can share resources and best practices for getting Those that demonstrated
the most of Yammer, and for encouraging others to get as engaged. success with new technology
adoption in the past
Pro tip:
Set up a Yammer specialist community
that meets once a month to share Influencers
insights, ideas, and best practices with Regardless of title, these well
the broader network. connected veterans have that
leadership vibe that naturally
influences those around them.
Enable champions
to provide
additional training
and support
Give your champions the confidence and
knowledge to be active on Yammer from day
one with up-front training sessions and resources
for getting set up.
Do’s Don’t
Share what you are working on, what you are learning. Post solicitation
Keep your posts short and easy to scan. Share personal attacks, be careful of inside jokes, sarcasm, and
Be positive by liking, sharing, and commenting on blame. These do not translate well online.
conversations.
Use profanity.
Ask questions.
Shame or publicly embarrass individuals - including birthdays
Respond to @mention and tag others who may have insight to or performance issues.
contribute.
Talk about religion or politics should abide by our
Search before your post, someone may have already posted it. organization's handbooks and
code of conduct.
C
A B
C D
D
A B
C D
D
Manage the conversations
Use best practices for keeping conversation on track and in the best places for continued dialog.
B C
A
Do you need to move to a different community? Should you share the conversation with another Do you need to close the conversation?
community or privately?
Dashboards to support launch
There are reports available within the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal that can tie to the metrics needed to represent
consumption or adoption improvements.
Proportion of users that are active Proportion of Yammer People and content activities
Number of users posting, reading, communities that are active Member and non-member activity
and liking messages Number of messages posted, read, 7 day, 28 day, 12 month periods
Number of messages posted, read, and liked in Yammer communities CVS data exports
and liked in company Number of members, posts, Available to community members in
Number of messages posted, read, reads, and likes per Yammer Yammer
and liked per user communities
Number of users per device type
Devices used by each user
How to capture Charleston
qualitative
An employee on the
night crew flags a
non-routine problem
successes
Dallas
Success stories are often just as valuable as quantitative Other stores across the Salt Lake City
measures when demonstrating success. Throughout your country confirm
the problem
rollout, have your project team members and champions
identify examples demonstrating cross-functional
collaboration and teamwork. They can do Phoenix
this simply by surveying end-users about the personal
value they have achieved and how Yammer is helping them
meet their goals.
An executive Chicago
Using Yammer you can easily tag conversations with a acknowledges
topic (such as #Yammerwin) to follow their progression. the issue
When doing an analysis of the rollout, search for the topic
to quickly surface the conversations demonstrating
business value.
The problem
is resolved
Share stories
Capturing and sharing stories
about your Office 365 and Yammer successes is one of the best ways to demonstrate business value.
When sharing a story about your experience with Office 365, be sure to include these details:
Time. The story should begin with a time marker, so the audience knows when it happened.
Characters. The story should feature names, so the audience knows who was involved.
Events. The story should recount the events that took place.
Visuals. The audience should be able to picture what has happened.
Announce events, provide live Share corporate updates for new products
updates, and deliver recaps or new employee bios
Pro tip:
Find and nurture your “power Provide positive enforcement by
users” – those that are using praising them on Yammer
Resources: Yammer to its maximum abilities
Give leadership visibility by hosting
Empower more champions with this Share conversations to show the lunch with the executive team
Yammer Community Admin Guide and Best Practi value of participation
ces.
Appendix:
Yammer Network
Competition
Ideation campaigns,
hackathons, and many
more…
Choosing your launch event
Consider your Yammer network vision and what your company
goals are for using Yammer. How can your launch event support
these objectives and these parts of the business?
Consider your time and resources. Mix and match different types of
event activities to plan something that suits your needs and fits
into your schedule.
VA L U E
Helps to get users actively engaged on the network by
practicing their Yammer skill set. Select competitions that build
off your Yammer Tips, highlight your use cases, or support
your company’s vision.
RESOURCE:
YamJam Playbook
Executive Discussion
(a.k.a.) YamJam
D E TA I L
Engage one or more executives to participate in a one-hour,
live discussion via Yammer. Discussion topics are predefined and a
Yammer Community Manager can facilitate and moderate the
discussion.
VA L U E
Visibility of executive leadership, employee engagement
with leadership and communication of corporate strategy
and values.
RESOURCE:
YamJam Playbook
Company
Yammer Time
D E TA I L
Schedule companywide 'Yammer Time’ - a time for employees
to meet on Yammer to provide feedback on important issues or
develop ideas for an organizational initiative.
VA L U E
Employee feedback in an open environment, leading to
enhanced productivity.
RESOURCE:
How to host a Live Event in Yammer
Coordinate a live event
in Yammer with Existing
Moment
D E TA I L
If an existing event is scheduled near the launch of
Yammer, use that opportunity to host a live event to drive
video and conversations on Yammer.
VA L U E
Greater promotion of the existing event and embedding
use of Yammer into existing operations.
RESOURCE:
The event which unlocked our Yammer Success
YamCam of
the Week
D E TA I L
Record a video interview with a coworker. Include what they
enjoy most about being an employee and what they’re currently
working on. Alternatively, invite employees to post their own video
and vote on the best one.
VA L U E
Foster business collaboration, operational awareness and
community cohesion. Build greater awareness of Yammer
functionality.
RESOURCE:
Support your next campaign with video content via Yamme
r
Lunch & Learns
/ Trainings /
Open House
D E TA I L
Hold informal Yammer learning sessions in the same space
every day for several days. Share sample messages, best
practices, and encourage users to sign on and interact
through Yammer during these sessions.
VA L U E
Gain greater exposure of Yammer by reaching more
employees in the spaces they will congregate (e.g. lunch
canteen) and give them an opportunity to take it for a
test drive.
RESOURCE:
End User Training Guide
Yammer Tips
D E TA I L
Post Daily or Weekly Yammer Tips on a variety of topics:
• How to use Yammer features
• Tips & tricks
• How to use Yammer to accomplish a certain task/goal
• Highlight Yammer communities that make work/life better
VA L U E
Helps to educate users on features and functionality while
providing network activity and content during your initial
ramp-up phase.
Ask your Yammer champions to help post the topics to get
more individuals throughout your network engaged, and
showcase them as the Yammer experts throughout your
organization.
RESOURCE:
New Yammer Tips and Tricks
Philanthropic Event
D E TA I L
Use Yammer to promote a charity fundraiser or other
philanthropic activity. You can use Yammer to recruit volunteers
and organize the event, apply a related hashtag, and update
frequently with progress towards goals so that everyone is
informed.
VA L U E
Promotes sense of volunteerism across the organization
and demonstrates the wider uses of Yammer.
RESOURCE:
How one community at Microsoft is changing the world, on
e Yammer post at a time
Think Tank
D E TA I L
Create Yammer communities for various topics. Assign times for
Yammer members to enter the Yammer community to discuss a
particular subject and crowd-source ideas.
VA L U E
Encourages employee collaboration, idea generation
and greater engagement in organizational objectives.
RESOURCE:
Yammer – Our Ideation Hub
Internal
Collaboration Expo
D E TA I L
Showcase the various collaboration tools available within
the organization (e.g. Skype for Business, Outlook Groups,
Yammer) and provide guidance on which tool to use in different
circumstances. Invite project team members to share the specific
ways they managed projects and coordinated work, what they
learned, and best practices.
VA L U E
Build awareness of collaboration tools and educate employees
on how Yammer fits with these applications.
Social Media
Conference
D E TA I L
Educate employees about the benefits and differences of
using social tools like Facebook, Twitter and Yammer. You can
compare your company’s external Facebook pages and Twitter
profiles with the internal communication and collaboration that
occurs within Yammer.
VA L U E
Build awareness of the differences between Yammer and other
social networks that employees may be more familiar with. In
addition to driving Yammer engagement, employees will learn
how to use Yammer as their social workspace.
Freebies! Treats!
D E TA I L
Hand out Yammer-branded or Company-branded swag as
prizes, or as delicious blue treats to bring employees together
to talk about Yammer in the break room.
VA L U E
Everyone loves something sweet, or better yet, something free!
Builds excitement and energy around the Yammer launch and
can be used to reward people for participation.
“ Streaming it Out
Loud” Displays
D E TA I L
“Streaming it Out Loud” is an application that allows you to easily
display a feed of Yammer messages on a TV or computer screen.
This is particularly useful during large internal events so that staff
can post about the event as it takes place. Place your display in a
shared space so that everyone can engage with the network.
VA L U E
Publicizes the network to employees, reminds them to
participate in the network, and highlights how many other
people are actively using the network.