2013-11-06

The Yammer App for SharePoint (Online) 2013

In this post I want to discuss the Yammer app for SharePoint (Online) 2013. The app has been available for a while (since June) but I never really got around to try it out! Since my previous two posts about the Yammer and SharePoint integration (click here and here), I am really interested in this integration and the possibilities it offers for the business. Let’s take a closer look how the app works.

Installation process

I start by installing the Yammer App. I have to browse to the SharePoint Store:

The app is free and the only thing I have to do is click on Add it:
The installation process only takes a couple of minutes. After its done, I click on the Yammer tile:
The App has three feed options: Group, Home and Comment. Before we can choose a feed, I have to sign in:
I need to sign in once and approve the trust between my Yammer account and the SharePoint site:
The trust is enabled and I can choose a feed type:

Group feed

I have to select a Yammer network and an Group ID. The pop-up gives you a description how to obtain the ID. Got the ID? The feed appears:

This feed can be used when a team or department has a related Yammer group. For example, the Contoso Sales team discusses sales updates in Yammer and also have a SharePoint team site to store their documents. You can add the Yammer App in the SharePoint Sales team site. The users have the option to add new messages from Yammer:

The message appears very quickly in the Yammer SharePoint App:

Every user can also add messages, no surprise, from the app to Yammer.

Home Feed

To change the feed type an user with full control or contribute permissions can click on the wheel icon on the top right corner of the web part. This is something I will discuss further in this post but for now I will focus at the feed itself. I have to select one of the Yammer networks related to my account to view the home feed of that network:

Comment feed

The comment feed is comparable to the new Post feature. I can create a Yammer page to talk about any SharePoint object such as documents, pictures, sites or pages. For example:
 
After entering the link to the time-off policy document, Yammers creates a comment page:
The Post feature is really aimed, for now at least, at documents. By using the comment feed you can also discuss other interesting and valuable SharePoint objects.

Issues

Although I really like the Yammer App and the features it offers, I have a couple issues with it.

Firefox
My Firefox browser didn’t like the Yammer web part at all! It’s really unstable because it didn’t show the sign in button:

Videos
I posted a link to a video in Yammer and a preview is generated. This preview disappears in the feed of the App.

Permissions to change the feed

I found it very unusual that every SharePoint user with contribute permissions is also able to change the feed of the web part. I can imagine that every site owner wants to display one feed and not letting users with contribute permissions change this themselves.

About the author 

Jasper Oosterveld

My name is Jasper Oosterveld and I live in Amsterdam with my wife Katie, our daughter Flora and our dog Millie. I have been working with SharePoint since 2007 as a SharePoint Consultant. In my role as SharePoint Consultant I support customers with the process of implementing SharePoint. Collaborating in the SharePoint and Office 365 community is a passion of mine. I speak regularly at SharePoint and Office 365 community events such as DIWUG, Office 365 User Group, SharePoint and Office 365 Saturday, SharePoint Connections and the European SharePoint Conference.