It is fantastic selling scheme for Slack that it is easy to set-up and yet the history and logs are only on paid for enterprise version. 😀
Also who wouldn't want to have their business-related discussions stored on US company's servers... Bots are great though, "chuck"
Usually the problem with these things is that either they arrive too late or there are just too many similar tools. Follow FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yammer, Slack, Lync(SfB) chats, e-mail, intranet, old intranet where all files still are and try find time to do the actual work.
We have Jabber, Yammer, Colab, SFDC (with a custom "Deal Machine" front end, which robs it of useful functionality) and probably more besides.
I just use SFDC (because I have to) and Jabber for chatting to my mates.
Yammer works pretty well for us, about 150 people spread all over the place, and have been using it for years (the Microsoft acquisition was 2012ish? not long after that). Email DLs don't get used for discussion any more, all the "hey, has anyone else seen this issue before?" or "what would be the best way to do x?" type threads happens on Yammer. Then it's all there and searchable when new people join.
I like that it's more free-form and less urgent or immediate than IM or email, something I dip into a couple of times a day rather than interrupting. The concept of groups you follow is nice too, there's parts of the company that I don't work within but it can be interesting to see what other teams are discussing - I certainly wouldn't be part of their DLs back when those were the usual way.
Does seem to need a decent push to get enough people on board for it to get its own momentum. Although god knows what I'd choose for an org today - Yammer hasn't had a lot of love from Microsoft, doesn't integrate that well with other O365 stuff, but Teams is still a bit rough around the edges.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with either; [b]rather, it takes a small crowd to draw a large one, no-one uses them because no-one else uses them.[/b] We've already got Lync on every desktop, why would anyone want to use another messaging system?
Sounds remarkably like Google+. Does [i]anybody[/i] still use that, or is a howling wasteland occupied by the shuffling husks of first adopters who refuse to let it die in peace?
We have Yammer at Treblinsk Rubbish Tractor production facility No.1, I used it to question why we were being overcharged for some parts on the internal procurement system (£67 instead of 60p in the real world). Oh my, what a can of worms I opened, No.2 of state organisation worth Billions got involved and it ended up with me receiving a thinly veiled threat to keep my ignorant nose out of procurements business from the director of procurement otherwise it'd be a trip to the Gulag.
I now use it to post the occasional nice photo of a Tractor.
Our hierarchy are all regular users, probably so they can write about it in their performance appraisals and appear trendy and engaging with their staff. Lots of hashtags appear - I presume that these are utterly pointless in Yammer?
The most frustrating thing is when a senior manager sends al all user email saying 'I've just put loads on Yammer about the restructuring / paper clips / vending machines / whatever - why don't you log in and have a look?' Well here's a f***ing idea - why don't you just copy and paste into this email, instead of forcing me to log into a system that demands my full email address and password (46 characters, btw) every time I want an update about the paper clips?
Previous organisation used Yammer. It was like Facebook - used by people for sharing pictures of their cats and having pointless discussions. Good for idiots.
New organisation had Lync, then Skype, then Slack, then HipChat, which are used only by the tech teams but are far more useful than Yammer ever was. Lots of proper collaborative discussion in a quickfire way that's far more efficient than email. Good for work.
But, we do use Cisco Jabber, which is basically a rip off of MSN messenger from back in the day.
It's not, y'know, they came about around the same time. I [i]think[/i] Jabber actually predates Messenger, in any case it's certainly one of the oldest. It's the same protocol Google Talk was based on (XMPP).
The oldest I remember using was ICQ, which was 1998 or earlier (I remember had an installer named icq98.exe and I think there was 1cq.exe before it). It ended up getting sold to a Russian company, it's still very popular over there I believe. I was an early adopter - the user ID ("UIN") was a number issued sequentially, and I've never seen a lower one than mine. It made me a bit of a target for Russian hackers for a while, a low UIN is considered a bit of a status symbol in such circles it'd seem.
I remember Jabber at the employer before last, really annoying as when a message arrived it would take some but not all focus from whatever you were doing so it wouldn't be visible but you would accidentally paste and send text. Disabled it as it was getting in the way of work.
Current employer uses Skype but it's very low key, usually just short snippets like terminal commands or links to documents that an email would be a bit much for. If my boss wants to tell me anything he turns round and has a chat.
Sounds like you lot work for some shit companies.
We have Yam Jams every month and evfink.
FFS!
Yeah, the self promoters love it.
Correct
Sounds remarkably like Google+. Does anybody still use that, or is a howling wasteland occupied by the shuffling husks of first adopters who refuse to let it die in peace?
It's a howling wasteland occupied by the shuffling husks of first adopters who refuse to let it die in peace. Which is a pity, as in some ways it's better than FB or Twitter.
[url= https://twitter.com/pburtchaell/status/750494339860615169 ]Toe curling MS tweet about Yammer.[/url]. WTF is a yam jam by the way?
Yam Jams!
The CEO, various wacky ****ers and ass kissers from head office and a couple of desperate IT guys.
Last year the CEO moved head office to Germany and fired the lot of them
I signed up to Yammer at work the other month. Looked at it a couple of times and that was it, but then again I don't look at our Facebook or Twitter either. I'm also signed up to Jabber and don't use that either.
Slack at the place I work. Would be good except half of the team have trouble distinguishing between private/public channels, or notifications fail or it crashes during start up. Or it's burried below thirty thousand chrome/excel/word/outlook windows. Morons.
The company I used to work for had Yammer a few years ago. Never took off. I would get regular emails recommending people to hook up with on Yammer, but said people had left the company years before.
Chatter never took off either.
I prefer talking to people 🙂
Been through - chatter or whatever they called the Salesforce guff.
Yammer - only the marketing manager used it to tell employees the kind of crap you expect marketing to be telling prospective customers.
Teams - Tumbleweed
Slack - Here we go again.
Had a conversation with another techie and we were in agreement, profile pictures for the next one will be the Picard Facepalm one.
Yammer - only the marketing manager used it to tell employees the kind of crap you expect marketing to be telling prospective customers
Yep, work with another organisation who didn't seem to realise Yammer was closed and therefore we couldn't see anything they put on there.
It's like Facebook for cringe worthy, brown nosing, boss rimmers.
"how can we improve communication, because communication is always difficult?"
That was exactly the question we had and the answer was apparently Trello.
Why people working in the same building would need any of these IM tools is completely beyond me and I'm a total geek. Get up and talk.
I use them because I work remotely.
Rachel
I must confess I don't really understand all the love for Slack. I use it occasionally but I can't figure out what it offers that is notably better than email. Is it simply that it *isn't* email and that people can "collaborate" internally without external distractions?
Why people working in the same building would need any of these IM tools is completely beyond me and I'm a total geek. Get up and talk.
As somebody said it's way more than that, I can keep tabs on a discussion 2 or 3 other people are having that impacts me, I can catch up on bits I missed quickly.
You can ask qustions to a group and get an answer from one not having to go disturb all 3.
Is it simply that it *isn't* email and that people can "collaborate" internally without external distractions?
Collaberate internally and externally (it's invite/web based)
We have all the stuff with one of out external web devs in one place, along with our other BI guy we can all discuss stuff in somewhere people can all see. Email always drops people from the list as it moves along and before long what was a group thing becomes a 2 person chat.
At the moment I can see a stream of update and bug fix conversations going on, I can keep tabs and drop in when I need to, while staying informed without haivng to check every email.
But the keypoint of slack is it's a collabrative project tool that allows you to keep project or topic discussions with multiple people and stakeholders in one visible place, it stops some of the hidden email discussions and keeps people not sat there that minute in the loop.
Signed up to Yammer at work, just to turn off the requests to join from people who invite everyone in the organisation mail list. Not looked at it since. Not heard anything of it since.
is there a corporate chatroulette yet ?
I keep getting told off for my allstaff emails saying that I'm wearing nothing below desk level
There's a Yammer for teachers and pupils in Scotland. It currently consists of a few pupils posting crap and one increasingly irate teacher telling them off.
Email always drops people from the list as it moves along and before long what was a group thing becomes a 2 person chat.
Really? I only ever really see the opposite, a simple question snowballs into a massive chain with half the company CC:ed in.
I only ever really see the opposite, a simple question snowballs into a massive chain with half the company CC:ed in.
That is because they have cut you from the conversation
Is it Yammer in particular you guys don't like, or just these messaging/collaboration apps in general?
Part of my job is to look at how my work uses technology etc.
I was planning on giving Yammer a trial internally. We've got two offices (Fife and Glasgow) and loads of part time staff so people don't see each other a lot. 30 folk in the organisation and a couple of times a year we work with a lot of external freelance assessors. We only have email to communicate electronically.
I can see a lot of benefits for having conversations in threads/boards as opposed to emails, especially for the social side of things as well as the work.
Since we have Office 365 I was leaning towards Yammer for integration. Have used Slack previously and it worked well for a project with a small team of remote freelance workers and salaried staff at two separate organisations...
My plan wasn't just to set it up an email it out to everyone, but to do a little info session/demo at the next all staff meeting - to try and get people to use it.
Are the problems more from a lack of adoption as opposed to Yammer/Slack themselves?
Are the problems more from a lack of adoption as opposed to Yammer/Slack themselves?
I'd say so, TBH. People will only use it if people use it.
A while ago, I built a forum to try and cut down on the amount of office-wide / company-wide emails. The problem was catch-22: when people visited it there was no content, and because there was no content no-one visited.
Yammer died here for much the same reason. There's an initiative to get Slack up and running but as I said before, we already have Lync so the perception is "why would I need another messaging system?"
Slack's pretty good in that you can have channels for projects, save files to it and so on. But for it to gain traction people have to use it. If it were my pet project I'd get together a core of people who commit to using it. As I said earlier, the best way to draw a large crowd is to start with a small one.
Are the problems more from a lack of adoption as opposed to Yammer/Slack themselves?
Of course. All slack does is display text other people have typed. You have to have a reason for these things, you cannot simply install it and expect a benefit if it's not solving an actual problem.
For us, it did solve a problem, so it's gone down well.
If you want to use a collaborative tool to change your working practices then you need a proper plan to do this, with new processes and training on getting the benefits. Again you can't simply install it and then tell people to simply use it.
Yeah, I've been trialling it with a couple of small groups and it's going OK. Having an info session/demo at the end of the month and then will follow up by going round everyone and talking them through it individually or in small groups over a few days after, to try and get that initial critical mass
If you want to use a collaborative tool to change your working practices then you need a proper plan to do this, with new processes and training on getting the benefits. Again you can't simply install it and then tell people to simply use it.
This. But before you even get that far, you have to ask yourself "what is the problem we're trying to solve?" and be VERY clear on the answer before you start introducing tools to solve it.
If your answer is "communication", then a) you need to work harder to find a more specific answer and b) you're probably looking to solve a cultural, not technological, problem, so new technology is unlikely to be the solution.
Cougar - Moderator
There's an initiative to get Slack up and running but as I said before, we already have Lync so the perception is "why would I need another messaging system?"
That's the annoyance I get. People used to Lync/Skype and would prefer to just stick with that, bit it's so rubbish especially for keeping a history of a conversation. Sure there's email but as I say that's a pain to find the conversation, and then things get archived or deleted. So many times I have to resend something having reminded them that I sent it before, but they just say they can't find it. To be honest I have the same problem.
Slack etc is more like a forum* with conversations split into topics. The integration with other systems like bug tracking is also useful as is being able to post code snippets that come out nicely formatted (email is terrible for that).
* - except STW, which is more like email with just two topics (not counting classified) and it's difficult to find something older than a day 😀
There's a history feature with Skype, it's under the "clock" icon. The problem with it is that like the rest of the program it's on a per contact or contact group basis so you can look at a conversation you've had last month with Jim but if you want to see previous conversations you've had with Anne then you've got to close Jim's history first.
[quote=IHN ]If you want to use a collaborative tool to change your working practices then you need a proper plan to do this, with new processes and training on getting the benefits. Again you can't simply install it and then tell people to simply use it.
This. But before you even get that far, you have to ask yourself "what is the problem we're trying to solve?" and be VERY clear on the answer before you start introducing tools to solve it.
If your answer is "communication", then a) you need to work harder to find a more specific answer and b) you're probably looking to solve a cultural, not technological, problem, so new technology is unlikely to be the solution.
The issue is conversations disappearing/fragmenting/stalling. People forgetting to reply-all, people being on different part time schedules/leave/sick so that conversations get stalled for weeks at a time and other people don't know what's going on.
As far as cultural change goes, that's my remit as my job is Digital Transformation Officer
The problem we found with Skype is that when the person who originates a group conversation leaves, the entire thread disappears, irretrievably. we lost some massive discussion threads because people left the company.
yourguitarhero - Member
As far as cultural change goes, that's my remit as my job is Digital Transformation Officer
One for http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/stupid-job-titles 😀
^ I know right?
It's a one off contract - in, do the job, leave. Annoyingly they wouldn't take me on a freelance basis but made me become an employee so I get to go to mandatory equalities training and fill in questionnaires about stress
Would rather have 2.5x the hourly pay thanks
you have to ask yourself "what is the problem we're trying to solve?" and be VERY clear on the answer before you start introducing tools to solve it.If your answer is "communication", then a) you need to work harder to find a more specific answer and b) you're probably looking to solve a cultural, not technological, problem, so new technology is unlikely to be the solution.
Well put. If people can relate to that defined problem, they will buy into - and possibly even get excited - by that solution.
The oldest I remember using was ICQ, which was 1998 or earlier (I remember had an installer named icq98.exe and I think there was 1cq.exe before it). It ended up getting sold to a Russian company, it's still very popular over there I believe. I was an early adopter - the user ID ("UIN") was a number issued sequentially, and I've never seen a lower one than mine. It made me a bit of a target for Russian hackers for a while, a low UIN is considered a bit of a status symbol in such circles it'd seem.
How low was your UIN? I had a reasonably low one (sub 500K) but it got compromised so I lost it (luckily after everyone had switched to MSN Messenger / Skype!)
The Scottish schools yammer is impossible because it includes everyone in education.
There used to be subject/facility specific ones for staff only behind a "secure" page where assessments etc could be discussed.
Replaced by open access crap.
The problem we found with Skype is that when the person who originates a group conversation leaves, the entire thread disappears, irretrievably. we lost some massive discussion threads because people left the company.
So no-one's using the '[url= https://support.office.com/en-GB/article/What-is-persistent-chat-in-Skype-for-Business-3450f430-9818-490c-8d10-ab0f315cd413 ]Persistent Chat[/url]' feature in Lync/Skype? It would do what you want but it's definitely one of those technologies that suffers from what Cougar describes about people only using it if people use it.
Persistent Chat is ok but I think it is not available on mobile devices?