It is, apparently, the new big thing round here to help collaborative networking and knowledge sharing or some such bollocks. Smashing.
Of course, there's already the corporate intranet, email, SharePoint, Skype, phones on every desk and, especially as everyone in the entire firm is no more than five minutes walk away from everyone else, just, you know, talking.
Grr.
ya-what?
Slack is where it's at.
We had chatter at my old place, same deal and part of CRM.
Yammer "it's like FaceBook for work"
Yermaw - "It's like Facebook for insulting Weegies"
Yammers are from Tipton
Do yo work for severn?
just looking at it here.......
Work got bought by SAP and I've since had several Yammer requests.
Prior to that was Chatter (Salesforce?)
One did not partake.
Actually getting on well with slack as you can see the discussion and keep tabs without being involved and the bit where somebody doesn't cc an email, we have it working with 6 groups of remote people, much more powerful and collaborative than email for a lot of stuff.
Even Microsoft employees hate yammer.
Yammer does look suspiciously facebook-esque in appearance. Slack is great, I like it for talking for people who are even just a couple of desks away, it allows people to reply when they're ready. If I'm in the middle of working through some complex issue then I don't want people trying to ask me questions breaking my flow, with Slack I can see a question has been asked and I can view/respond when I'm ready.
I like it for talking for people who are even just a couple of desks away, it allows people to reply when they're ready. If I'm in the middle of working through some complex issue then I don't want people trying to ask me questions breaking my flow, with Slack I can see a question has been asked and I can view/respond when I'm ready.
It's almost like getting a letter, or a fax, or even an email.
Isn't technology marvellous. 🙂
Facebook at work exists by the way, we have it here, but we are a 'fashion' brand, so need to keep up wiv da kidz.
Yammer is utter trash though.
It's almost like getting a letter, or a fax, or even an email.Isn't technology marvellous
Almost but very different given the group visibility
I previously worked at Salesforce so had to use chatter. It was ok but yammer at my current employer is just utter tat.
The people who use it want to be seen to use it. The people who actually get work done and are effective avoid it like SARS.
Large Engineering Consultancy here using Yammer. It can be useful but its the being encouraged to embrace it wholeheartedly that I don't like.
We rolled out Yammer to great fanfare a couple of years back. I think in total there's been three posts on it. Similarly, one department went "hey, Slack" and it's equally dead.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with either; rather, it takes a small crowd to draw a large one, no-one uses them because no-one else uses them. We've already got Lync on every desktop, why would anyone want to use another messaging system?
Slack is where it's at.
Or Spark...
Jive here, rather than Yammer.
IRC, obviously... 🙄
Rachel
We've already got Lync on every desktop, why would anyone want to use another messaging system?
Having used both they are completely different systems, slack is best for project discussions and communication especially the history and logs
We've already got Lync on every desktop, why would anyone want to use another messaging system?
Indeed, assuming that Lync allows group conversations that aren't just meetings, more like department/team "rooms" for discussion. I think Slack is pretty great for unstructured organisations, like open source projects where anyone can just jump in and join the chat. Much like a more accessible IRC I guess, more about the group and less about the one to one (although that's very much still there)
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with either
I think you're right, but the problem is every company asks itself "how can we improve communication, because communication is always difficult", which is a valid question. However, the answer they nearly always come to is "let's install whatever the latest jazzy communetworkollaboration tool is". That'll limp along for about a year, when they'll ask themselves ""how can we improve communication, because communication is always difficult" and the cycle begins again.
The problem with communication is never (well, hardly ever) the toolset, it's much more complicated and subtle. However, complicated and subtle problems are by their nature difficult to solve, and whacking in a new tool is simple.
Yammer's alright when it remembers my ****ing login.
I use it as part of a remote-working organisation, so it's nice to engage a bit with colleagues without having to "friend" them on FB.
[quote=allthegear ]IRC, obviously...
Rachel
is this you?
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Yammer's great if you want to put self congratulatory posts about your position following the restructure, or brown-nose those who have.
I prefer to do my brown-nosing face to face (cheek to cheek?), so I don't see the point in Yammer.
Yeah, using it here too, its almost a disciplinary offence not to 🙁
Its awful. No editing of posts, I noted (unless I missed something)
Slack here. Works very well for us because we are a team but spread out over many clients, so we often don't see each other face to face for months.
got it at work (local authority) used by the want wits of the management team to patronise the staff and pat themselves/each other on the back .....
[i]Slack here. Works very well for us because we are a team but spread out over many clients, so we often don't see each other face to face for months. [/I]
Except it's yet another form of communication (and unlike email) no one can ever find what it was they (half) remembered.
Just more 'noise' IMO.
We had Yammer here for about a year. Nobody but a select few people who don't actually do any proper work anyway used it and towards the end of last year it was turned off for "an indefinite time". Ie, its been a total waste of money and we've got rid.
Having used both they are completely different systems, slack is best for project discussions and communication especially the history and logs
I didn't explain myself very well I don't think - I'm not saying that other systems are without merit, rather that people's perception will be that it's "just another" messaging system and they already have one that works.
Lync (or Skype for Business as it is now) is okay for instant messaging and meetings, but rubbish for threaded conversations.
Slack/Yammer/Hipchat and now Microsoft Teams, have more FB/twitter or IRC style features and you can have topics for discussion that teams can chat in about particular projects or features, plus support for pasting code snippets with nice formatting and other media, integration with issue tracking systems, source control, etc.
Very handy for software teams.
No one I work with though wants to use this kind of stuff and we rely on psychic communication (or god forbid, actually talking to each other). That and Skype and some want to use it for voice, and I don't do voice (or phones).
Email is the worst form of communication in a company. They get filed away, forgotten, archived or deleted and trying to search for a conversation you had months ago is a nightmare. Many email clients are poor at threading the whole conversation and get screwed up by different ways people reply or subject changes mid conversation. Unless you are very organised enough to file things into folders, but then some email systems will stick the non inbox folders locally on your PC instead of on server and PC dies... bye bye emails.
Yammer - this years "collaboration medium".
Except all the actual day to day collaboration is done by, you know, sitting next to the people you're collaborating with.
I just realised I'm the IRC guy.
Except it's yet another form of communication (and unlike email) no one can ever find what it was they (half) remembered.
Depends what it's for.
We use it in the same way you'd chat over lunch. Actual project work goes via email.
We have both. Neither get used, though I see the new Head of Staff Engagement has just joined Yammer (last post, two weeks ago)
Yeah Yammer has gone down about as well as 'Teams' here.
MS could make life a lot easier if they could just stop spouting nonsensical vague buzzwords and actualy explain in simple terms what their various platforms and products do.
Doesn't it drive employee engagement through virtual collaboration spaces?
Or was that the last one?
It's like STW, but for work, think of it that way.
Look at my new bike = look at my new promotion
Does anyone know how to ...... = what tyres for ...........
If your company values words like "diversity" over "actually doing some f****** work with the people you have" then expect a lot of that.
And there will be a circle of big hitters, except they will probably end up being promoted to a position of incompetence due to their loudness.
Hey!
The company I'm with are on Twitter, Farcebook, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and for internal comms, use Skype and last year introduced Yammer.
All of these are perfect if you don't have any client deadlines or actual fee earning work.
They're all just for external advertising/PR though.The company I'm with are on Twitter, Farcebook, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube
and phone, e-mail, I'm ommitting face to face as we have bloomin key cards which block you form getting anywhere other than your office so actually talking to people off-project can be a PITA.and for internal comms, use Skype
and last year introduced Yammer.
I can see the point of Yammer, if it was more like linkedin and less like a forum or facebook.
What I need is a way of quickly searching for some obscure piece of engineering to see if anyone else has done it before in the company. So if it had everyone's CV on it that would be usefull.
What yammer gives me is a way of shouting my niche question at all 20,000 employees (or at best, a group thereof) who after the 3rd person has done this, disable notifications leaving only the people who don't actually do any work, and the self promoters.
Jam bo - oh it so is. Connected to 3 Slack accounts right now via IRC.
(Though, to be fair, I can't be bothered to set up an IRC client and just use irccloud.com)
Rachel
I hang around on our team slack endlessly wasting time chatting about stuff other than what I'm meant to be doing. In my yearly assessment I got praised for 'helping build the team'.
Lolz 🙂
I'm 99% sure it was Yammer we were encouraged to try in 2015, probably as part of some social media training I had to do to be allowed to look after our department's twitter account. Anyway, most people set themselves a profile up, it got used for novelty for about a week, but no real purpose, and that was the end of that. Most of the posts I saw from people in other departments were just self congratulatory crap and brown nosing.
But, we do use Cisco Jabber, which is basically a rip off of MSN messenger from back in the day. It shows everyone's status, though not always accurately, and as I work remotely I use it a lot, it's ideal for me for when I just need basic info and don't want a string of emails or can't get through on the phone.
They had it at my last place. Utter shit. Nobody used it once the novelty had worn off.
It was known as Spammer because of the begging emails that IT would send out pleading for people to use it.