Comparison of Yammer vs. Microsoft Teams: Social collaboration and communication

Microsoft MVP Jasper Oosterveld discusses how to use Microsoft Teams and Yammer within your digital workplace.

Microsoft Teams has been released for a while now, and the dust has settled. Have you recovered? Oh boy, it created quite a stir in the community. From “Yammer is done!” to “Should I still use Groups?” and “Too many choices!”, many community members shared their thoughts. Looking at the fact that I have a strong opinion because of my Dutch heritage, I decided to share mine with you.

The release of Teams hasn’t come as much of a surprise to me. Slack was gaining huge popularity and starting to hurt Microsoft. I must admit, I never really got into Slack. I found it too noisy. Felt too much like IRC. An opinion not shared by some of my colleagues. Mainly developers – they love Slack. One of them even started to call me old. Ouch!

That said, I am really impressed by the release of Teams, and Microsoft is very committed to its success. You can clearly see this with the release of Apps for every device and platform. That’s unheard of with the announcement of a new service within Office 365. Next to the release of the Apps, the worldwide announcement by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was also a clear statement to the world: Watch out Slack, Teams is here to stay!

What is Yammer? How is it used in Office 365?

Yammer is an enterprise social networking tool and a part of the Microsoft 365 suite of collaboration tools. Yammer allows conversations and discussions to take place across an entire organization, breaking down barriers and allowing for network-wide conversations. Yammer gives you the ability to create polls, and share ideas.

You’ve probably been waiting for me to start talking about Yammer. Ok, let’s go: Yammer took a beating. Again. As if things weren’t going badly enough already for the once very popular Enterprise Social Network (ESN).

I am not afraid to say it. I have been a Yammer fan for many years. Why? I have seen organizations bloom using Yammer within Office 365. Yammer is easy to use due to its similarities with social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. User training is basically an informality. The breaking barriers analogy is true.

You connect with people from everywhere, no matter their role or department. This doesn’t do anything to the fact that time has caught up with Yammer. The popularity of ESN is fading, and Yammer is having issues transforming into a collaboration service for the modern digital workplace. However, Yammer is built on the Office 365 group framework, making it easy to integrate with other apps like SharePoint and OneDrive

The cons of using Yammer

While Yammer excels at social collaboration, it isn’t the best tool for the job for real-time coordination and communication. Unfortunately the tool also doesn’t;t come equipped with analytics, so measurement of adoption, usage, and internal communications effectiveness can be more challenging than it needs to be.

How does Microsoft Teams work within Office 365?

We’re all familiar with Teams, as it’s been out for a few years and is the home of collaboration in the Office 365 ecosystem. Microsoft Teams is a powerful collaboration tool in the armory of so many digital workplaces these days. Teams integrates with other Office 365 apps like OneDrive, Planner, and Stream. Microsoft Teams is built on the Groups Framework, and that’s fantastic news. After creating your first Team, an Office 365 Group is created.

Allowing your entire company to easily share files, attend online meetings, collaborate on documents, and manage tasks all within the Teams app. This makes it very powerful for your average project-based work. Additionally, Teams comes with a wide range of third-party apps to make work even more efficient for IT admins and end users.

Differences: Yammer vs Teams

Although both Yammer and Teams are used as collaboration platforms for internal communication, they’re ultimately designed to serve different purposes.

Features differences :

Microsoft Teams is designed for real-time collaboration and communication, providing chat, video calls, and internal and external sharing. Yammer, however, is designed for collaboration across the entire organization. Think of it like a company-wide announcements board, basically your own internal Facebook. It’s a great tool for breaking down walls and encouraging interactions across the entire organization.

Use Cases:

Teams is best for teams working on projects, allowing flexible creation of collaboration spaces, and allowing external users to join conversations if the need arises. It’s a chat tool for your own team, with lots of nifty features built in to make the employee experience a breeze. Yammer is great for really large organizations with many users who need to make company announcements that can be referred to or commented on asynchronously.

Do you have to choose a communication tool?

At the end of the day, it all comes down to your team’s needs. Take the time to evaluate both tools, and see which one works best for your organization. And remember, communication and collaboration are constantly evolving, so don’t be afraid to revisit your choice and make changes as needed. It’s likely you’re going to want Teams for its robust chat abilities, and Yammer for telling everyone when the next company lunch is! It’s up to you how it works.

The future of Yammer vs teams

When it comes to the future of Yammer and Microsoft Teams, it’s clear that both tools will continue to play important roles within the Office 365 ecosystem.

For Yammer, the future looks promising. Microsoft has integrated Yammer with Office 365 groups allowing teams to use Yammer for more structured conversations and collaboration, rather than just informal conversations. Additionally, new features such as the Yammer Communities app , allowing users to create and manage groups with specific audiences for whatever they like.

In terms of Microsoft Teams, the future looks even brighter. Microsoft has been expanding Teams capabilities, with the introduction of new features like live events, breakout rooms, and the ability to use Teams as a phone system. They are also focusing on expanding the platform’s capability by making it more accessible to non-office users and adding new apps and teams integrations to make it the best tool for your digital workplace. Furthermore, Microsoft is working on an AI-based feature, that could enable teams to automatically schedule and book virtual meeting rooms, this feature could change the way meetings are done in the future.

You really can’t go wrong using Microsoft Teams and Yammer for your entire company. It’s easy to join conversations in both apps while maintaining the feel of agile collaboration with smaller groups too. Both Yammer and Teams strive to improve communication and make collaboration easier and simpler, so you can get back to doing what you do best.