Yammer - a new level of corporate communication

Yammer service was already mentioned on Habré , but for some reason it is more perceived by users as a Twitter clone. I completely disagree with this and try to prove it, and maybe someone will decide to register an account and implement this creation in their company.

Everything in this world is relative, and in order to understand all the advantages of Yammer you need to consider the current situation in companies. Take, for example, a large company that develops sites (for me it is closer). Take into account the following personnel: director, project managers, designers and programmers. Any director interested in what's going on in his company, and for this it usually tratortures its managers, who in turn learn from the developers what stage the company’s projects are at, distracting them from their work. Also, programmers have to distract designers in order to find out what and how with the layout of the next design. Some companies have weekly / daily reports on the work done (nonsense, but he himself once worked in such a business), and usually nobody likes it (you have to strain, invent something, remember)! I do not claim to be so everywhere, but I have often come across similar ones.

And now what if we add to this all the bored web dvdannosti? What if we combine the electric mail, messenger, project reports and reports into one system with a nice interface, all the necessary functions and arrange this “miracle” in the form of microblogs (apparently because of this it is compared with Twitter) ... Apparently, the creators reasoned Yammer and made a “coup” at least in his company!

Let's start in order.

To register, a mailbox on your domain will be enough, while all employees of the company must have mail on this domain too (this is where the company’s identification goes). Registration is quite simple and you do not have to do any mega manipulations. After registration, you fill out information about yourself: name, position, photo, additional contacts and all in that spirit.

After registration, you invite colleagues by mail (they themselves can register in principle), and you can indicate to whom you report and who reports to you.

Communication in the system is the same as on Twitter. You write a message, they read it and can answer if necessary. You can also follow certain people. The only difference from Twitter is that you can attach any file (not just a picture) to the message and the number of characters in the message is unlimited!

Groups. A very convenient feature, by the way. Groups are open to all, and closed from curious managers and other departments. It is very convenient if you want to make a separate closed communication channel inside a certain department for any discussions or events.

Now you can go directly to how I see the company's relationship through Yammer.
Let's start with the lower level of organization - programming departments and designers. For each department, you can create a closed group to discuss projects, substantive conversations, preliminary assessments of the team, as well as just to simply share experiences or report on the completion of work on some part of the project. Also, each employee writes what he is working on now, how soon before graduation and can post sketches or developments for everyone to see.
In this case, managers are easier - there is no need to pull anyone, because and so it is clear who is working on what and at what stage, which excludes the phrase "Petrov, you read Habr there or are working on the site ?!" from everyday life. Again, managers write about the processes in the company, which eliminates the need to report to the director, who already sees and reads everything, and if necessary, can make a comment, amend or collect a consultation in his office with a message like “All managers by 12 o’clock to me into the office. " This can be written in a separate group of managers and you do not need to ring each one, copy the same message to everyone on ICQ (and you still need to find them all in the contact list) or strain your beautiful secretary, who is not up to it - she still has varnish on nails are not dry.

We don’t forget about human communication either - who prevents to write “Who is around the corner for lunch in a cafe?”. One message, but everyone sees it, and whoever wants to in a cafe just unsubscribe.

It should be noted that the service has three levels of administration.
Free - allows you to add a company logo on all pages and change the color of the header.
$ 3 per month - different statistics and the ability to invite individuals with mail on other domains.
$ 5 per month is the only plus that I saw this opportunity to combine domains into one company ... Sometimes it will be necessary, but I think the hospital will have enough tariff for $ 3.
The downside is payment only with credit cards (even for a free tariff, you need to enter all the data), and as you know, in Russia credit card payments via the Internet are not common and it seems that not all banks offer it (VTB24 definitely supports this).

From all the above, we can conclude: if desired, communication within the company can be made interesting, fast and convenient!

PS I forgot to say - there are clients written in AIR, for Mozilla and for the iPhone with BlackBerry, which simplifies the process.

UPD Moved the topic to the blog "My Business", if you think that you need something else - write!