Yammer’s Roadmap session at Ignite 2017 demonstrated that the product team had listened to their MVP’s and customers.
What I liked about the road map was:
- it finally showed that deep connectivity with the remainder of Office 365 is going to be a near term reality
- the way it was presented – there was a maturity there, it was clear that Yammer had listened
Those of you who have followed Yammer’s journey over the last couple of years will be acutely aware of it’s challenges – perception and technical. Whilst this post is not going to discuss these challenges I believe it needs to address those challenges in the next 12 months or risk a very uncertain future.
I believe that Yammer needs to do a significant amount of work to earn improvements in its perception and its technical standing within Office 365. From a technical standpoint, I think that Yammer’s current roadmap is perfect. Addressing the technical areas will earn improvements in the perception of the product.
If I was directing the product I would break the roadmap into two for delivery over the next 12 months. Given how competitive the market has become, for me the first 6 months need to get the product on a level, competitive, playing field. Thereafter, the focus shifts to feature enhancements designed to keep pace with the competition (as well as deliver some of the long requested features).
Presented below is my take on the Yammer roadmap. My MUST’s are indicated with * with the rest being COULD’s. If a COULD is not delivered in the first 6-month’s it becomes a priority MUST in the second 6-months i.e. delivered before the MUST’s of the second 6-months.
Delivered in the first 6 months
Goal – Deeper assimilation into the Office 365 ‘platform’
Drive productivity
- Deeper SharePoint integration: web part, file storage *
- In-app OneNote integration *
- Messaging enhancements: rich text, reactions
- Better mobile experiences: group resources
- Desktop app improvements: customized notifications
- More with Office 365 groups: external, All Company, and secret
- Unified Office 365 profile *
Enable successful community management
- Yammer groups data in Office 365 Usage Analytics *
- Office 365 Reports Reader Role *
- Topic management *
- Move posts between groups *
Built in enterprise-grade control, security and compliance
- Local data residency *
- eDiscovery *
- Better search and discovery through Microsoft Graph *
- GDPR compliance *
- Group naming conventions and data classification *
Organisation
- Live video broadcasting *
- Schedule post
- Official updates
- Improved polls *
Community
- Best answer
Initiative
- Archive group *
- Tab in Microsoft Teams *
Delivered in the second 6 months
Goal – Vision for strengthening connections in the outer loop
Drive productivity
- Support for Microsoft bot framework
Enable successful community management
- Built-in group insights for community management *
- Yammer usage data in Microsoft Graph reporting APIs *
- Export a list of group admins and members
- Trending content
Built in enterprise-grade control, security and compliance
- Customer Lockbox
- Session management *
- DLP *
Organisation
- Events
- New members
Community
- Open questions
- Community articles
- Intelligent routing *
- Trending topics *
- Webinars
Initiative
- Membership types *
- Milestones and goal
- Action items
- Status updates
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