5 Ways New Yammer-Office Online Integration Boosts Document Collaboration

Social networking in the enterprise is great—people generating ideas, engaging stakeholders, sharing relevant content, efficiently integrating everything into a single document that includes everyone’s contributions … Wait—you mean it’s difficult to integrate all that enterprise social goodness into a file such as a Word doc? Microsoft apparently agrees, as its Yammer team has recently announced several enhancements to the platform that make it easier to incorporate document collaboration into team work.

“Whether it’s drafting a proposal, updating the quarterly budget, or putting the finishing touches on a presentation, creating great content requires teams to stay on the same page,” said Juliet Wei, senior product marketing manager for the Yammer team, in a blog post. “That’s why the Yammer team has been hard at work building deeper integration with Office Online, bringing the familiar interface and rich capabilities of our Office applications right into Yammer.”

Here are five things you need to know about the new integration:

1. The document preview and edit experience for files uploaded into Yammer are now powered by Office Online.

2. Document collaboration has been extended to external participants, making it possible to share and work on files with customers, partners and vendors using Yammer’s external messaging.

3. The reliability and performance of the document collaboration experience in Yammer has been improved, leveraging the work the Yammer team has put into integrating the platform into Office 365.

4. The new document collaboration capabilities will be available for all Yammer networks. This will, according to Wei, enable “every user to preview and edit Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files straight from their Yammer group or conversation.”

5. The document conversation feature, which embedded Yammer conversations inside files stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online, is being rolled back. Wei noted that there was “very low engagement” with this feature, and that “the ability to work on files in the context of … existing Yammer groups and conversations provides a more engaging and relevant experience.” She added that the Yammer team will continue to explore ways for users to start conversations from files.

How are you using Yammer in the workplace? Will the capabilities the come from deeper integration with Office Online change that? Please let us know in the comments section below.