hari.mallampati: Yammer integration in MSCRM 2011

Intro about Yammer in MSCRM 2011:

RefLink: http://crmbusiness.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/what-is-yammer-and-how-should-you-use-it/

Highlights:

What is Yammer and how should you use it

The quick answer is Yammer is social networking for your company, a bit like a Facebook and twitter for a company. Only company domain users can access the company Yammer site.

Yammer is designed for private communication for members of an organisation/company

The purpose of Yammer is to enable and improve efficiency regarding company communication, collaboration, file sharing, knowledge sharing and team efficiency.

Yammer in MSCRM 2011:

RefLink: http://blog.sonomapartners.com/2013/03/previewing-yammer-for-dynamics-mscrm-2011-online.html

Highlights:

A handful of features trickled out for CRM Online after the December Update or Polaris release. Both the iPad Sales Experience and now an integration with Yammer were released in what we’re calling “Polaris Plus”. These two new features, along with the Polaris release, are available for CRM Online only. These components should be available for On Premise deployments when Orion is released later in 2013.

First off, you must have a Yammer Enterprise account to be able to enable the Yammer integration with CRM. I can see this requirement going away in the future, but for now, the Enterprise account needs to be obtained first which comes with a $3 per user per month price tag.

Another important thing to note is that if you enable the Yammer integration, then Activity Feeds for user posts go away. Activity Feeds are still used for system posts, but for user posts, Yammer will replace the Activity Feeds that used to display. Also, once you enable Yammer, you cannot disable it and go back to using Activity Feeds for user posts. Therefore, be absolutely sure you want to update your organization to integrate with Yammer before you do so.

One limitation is that there currently is no migration plan to move the old Activity Feed User Posts to Yammer User Posts. User posts in Activity Feeds will still be in the CRM database, but will not display in the CRM UI.

When individual users hit a Yammer page for the first time in CRM, they’ll be prompted to log in. The Yammer email address used to log in must match their CRM User’s email address

Some of the features that you can perform with Yammer within CRM are:

· Like and reply to messages

· See where the message was created from

· Click on the thread to view within Yammer.com

· Preview docs, download docs, and even add comments to certain documents (such as Word) that other users will see when they preview the document.

· Follow / Unfollow specific records (e.g., Opportunities) from CRM – This will automatically follow and unfollow the record in Yammer

· Post to specific Yammer Groups or Users

· Mention Users in posts using @

MS Dynamics CRM 2011 Activity Feeds and Yammer: http://gotcrm.blogspot.in/2012/06/ms-dynamics-crm-2011-activity-feeds-and.html

Highlights:

Activity feed vs Yammer

Feature	CRM 2011 Activity Feed	Yammer
Social Networking	Users are CRM 2011 users. Can mention a user to get them into a conversation. Can create a conversation thread. Personalization is available using picture upload feature.	Yammer provides User profiles, and a searchable member directory. The Org Chart gives you a peek at the company structure. Gamification is in play, with recognition badges for employees and leaderboard stats for thing like replies and liked messages. Users can create Polls, organize Events and ask question over the network. For conversations that are confidential, Private Messages enable a private dialog with one of more coworkers.
Team Collaboration	There is no concept of teams or groups for the Activity Feed itself. Access to records in the feed is controlled by CRM security. Activity feeds are at the organization level.	Groups can be leveraged to collaborate on files in the context of projects, get feedback and track versions. The concept of Pages is used to display team goals, compile notes, and draft documents together online. Broadcast announcements to your group, see popular files or Pages and enable sharing between related groups.
Content Collaboration	Cannot share files or attach files in a conversation. CRM records can be mentioned. No search available as of UR9.	Files, Versioning and Pages help teams work together seamlessly. In addition, one of the great features is a full text search, which provides categorized results immediately as search terms are entered. Files can be emailed directly from the team workspace.
Mobile Access	Access to Activity Feeds through CRM Mobile app	Yammer has native apps for the following: iPhone and iPad Windows Phone Andriod phone and tablet Blackberry In addition, there is a windows desktop application available.
External Integration	Possible using SDK - need to write code to use the CRM webservice.	Yammer is tightly intergrated with multiple productivity applications. Dynamics CRM is one of them, with updates on accounts, opportunities, campaigns, leads, and more funneled to the Ticker. These records are then surfaced in Universal Search results. There is a whole bunch of them listed here, from Sharepoint to TripIt.