The Yammer Roast

2nd of September, 2018 / / No Comments

Taking my inspiration from Comedy Central, the Yammer Roast is a forum in which we can directly address resistances around Yammer, its role, and past failures in retrospect.
Some of my clients have tried with Yammer and concluded that for various reasons it’s failed to take hold. For some the value is clear and it’s a case of putting a compelling approach and supporting rationale to sponsors and consumers who remain sceptical. For others, they are looking for a way to make it work in their current collaboration landscape.… [Keep reading] “The Yammer Roast”

Integrating Yammer data within SharePoint web-part using REST API

29th of August, 2017 / / No Comments

Background

We were developing a SharePoint application for one of our client and have some web-parts that had to retrieve data from Yammer. As we were developing on SharePoint Online (SPO) using a popular SharePoint Framework (SPFx), so for the most part of our engagement we were developing using a client-side library named React to deliver what is required from us.
In order for us to integrate client’s Yammer data into our web-parts, we were using JavaScript SDK provided by Yammer.… [Keep reading] “Integrating Yammer data within SharePoint web-part using REST API”

[Updated] Yammer group and user export via Yammer API to JSON, then converted to CSV

22nd of September, 2016 / / 3 Comments

 
Update: awesome pro-tip
Big shout out to Scott Hoag (@ciphertxt on Twitter) with this pro-tip which will save you having to read this blog post. Yes, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Part of a Yammer network merge (which I am writing a blog post about.. WIP), you would lose data, posts, files etc as that can’t come across. You can however do an export of all that data to, depending on how much there is to export, usually a large .zip file. This is where Scott showed me the light. In that export, there are also two .csv files that contain all the user info in the first, and in the second all the group info. Knowing this, run that export process and you probably don’t need to read the rest of this blog post. #FacePalm.
HOWEVER, and that is a big however for a reason. The network export process does not export what members there are in groups in that groups.csv file. So if you want to to export Yammer groups and all their members, the below blog post is one way of doing that process, just a longer way… 

Yammer network merges are not pretty. I’m not taking a stab at you (Yammer developers and Microsoft Office 365 developers), but, I’m taking a stab.
There should be an option to allow at least group and group member data to be brought across when there is a network merge. Fair enough not bringing any data across as that can certainly be a headache with the vast amount of posts, photos, files and various content that consumes a Yammer network.
However, it would be considerably much less painful for customers if at least the groups and all their members could be merged. It would also make my life a little easier not having to do it.
Let me set the stage her and paint you a word picture. I’m no developer. Putting that out there from the start. I am good at problem solving though and I’m a black belt at finding information online (surfing the interwebs). So, after some deliberation, I found the following that might help with gathering group and user data, to be used for Yammer network merges.
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Yammer Activation in All Eligible Tenants

25th of February, 2016 / / No Comments

In an effort to drive the collaboration experience and further the adoption of Yammer, Microsoft announced on the 2nd of February that Yammer now meets all of Office 365’s security and compliance requirements and Yammer will be activated across all Office 365 tenants that contain a Yammer subscription. This will be a retrospective activation as well as being enabled by default for any new tenants. The rollout will be in three stages:

  • Wave 1 has commenced as of February 1, 2016 and includes Office 365 customers with a business subscription who purchased fewer than 150 licenses that includes Yammer and who have zero or one custom domain for Yammer.
… [Keep reading] “Yammer Activation in All Eligible Tenants”

Programmatically interacting with Yammer via PowerShell – Part 2

14th of August, 2015 / / 15 Comments

In my last post I foolishly said that part 2 would be ‘coming in the next few days’. This of course didn’t happen, but I guess it’s better late than never!

In part 1 which is available here, I wrote how it was possible to post to a Yammer group via a *.ps1 using a ‘Yammer Verified Admin’ account. While this worked a treat, it soon became apparent that this approach had limited productivity rewards.… [Keep reading] “Programmatically interacting with Yammer via PowerShell – Part 2”

Programmatically interacting with Yammer via PowerShell – Part 1

26th of June, 2015 / / 5 Comments

For my latest project I was asked to automate some Yammer activity. I’m first to concede that I don’t have much of a Dev background, but I instantly fired up PowerShell ISE in tandem with Google only to find…well not a lot! After a couple of weeks fighting with a steep learning curve, I thought it best to blog my findings, it’s good to share ‘n all that!

    It’s worth mentioning at the outset, if you want to test this out you’ll need an E3 Office 365 Trial and a custom domain.
… [Keep reading] “Programmatically interacting with Yammer via PowerShell – Part 1”

Extending Yammer SSO to Support Users Without an Email Address

16th of October, 2014 / / 1 Comment

BY TONY DU, JOEL NEFF

Yammer Enterprise is offered through the Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise plan. Deployment of Yammer Single Sign-On (SSO) for Office 365 users with a valid primary email address is a relative simple and well documented process.

One of our customers had a requirement for Yammer as a social platform, however a large percentage of their workforce are not enabled for email services. In the ‘SSO Implementation FAQ‘ published by Microsoft, it suggests that it is possible to configure SSO support for user accounts that do not have an email address associated with them, however there isn’t any supporting documentation to go with it.… [Keep reading] “Extending Yammer SSO to Support Users Without an Email Address”