Viva Engage Yammer Story & Storylines – made simple

Viva Engage is Yammer, and Yammer is Viva Engage. There is no difference in back-end services, content, governance, licensing, etc. Viva Engage is neatly integrated within Microsoft Teams, enabling a flow of work rather than jumping out and across disconnected applications, of which Yammer is.

You can access your Viva Engage Yammer activities from the left on Teams merged with Teams notifications. The right rail comes to life with your Viva Engage Yammer Communities.

Viva Engage has enhanced the Yammer features with Stories and Storylines and more to be announced. Yammer standalone now also has the same enhancements.

In essence, Viva Engage Yammer Stories and Storylines are similar to Facebook or TikTok with a slightly different layout.

See above image for my simple Viva Engage Yammer comparison with Facebook.

Try not to over think it. Most reading this have used Facebook or TikTok and in most instances no one explained how to post from your own device to social media. However, here’s a bit more context on what happens post-post …

Anyone in your organization can visit your Viva Engage Yammer Storyline and Follow you. And, when you Follow someone, their posts and stories will be prioritized in your Feed and Carousels. You can also receive Notifications when they post.

The content you create is visible to everyone in your organization. Followers will see your content higher in their feeds, your posts and stories can be suggested to anyone based on numerous signals, including who follows you, whom you Follow, and who engages with your content. Similar to subtleties of Facebook and TikTok.

Content does not disappear from your Viva Engage Yammer Storyline it remains until you might choose to delete it from a folder, tucked away in your OneDrive.

This is where a Viva Engage Yammer Story differs from a Facebook Story, as a Facebook Story disappears within 24 hours.

I never create a Facebook Story as I want my posts to appear the following year on the same day in my Facebook Memories when my memory fades.

Here are tips to help decide when to create a Viva Engage Yammer Story which is about You, or make a Community post:

If you want to regularly collaborate with people you “WORK” with on project management, strategy, customers, or third parties and have associated meetings with documentation (uploaded to SharePoint or from your OneDrive), post in an appropriate Teams Channel. Use @mention colleagues so they know you are trying to reach them, and use Announcements to amplify your message.

There is no right or wrong way here other than too many places to now share content. However, this is just a steer, and organizations must create an appropriate collaboration framework and taxonomy. This requires change management communication guidance to help employees decide which feature to use and when. I will share more on this in my online workshop on January 31.

Register here and get ready to elevate employee engagement.

Note: Viva Engage Yammer topics surface in Viva Topics and will be even more useful going forward with employee engagement and knowledge management; more on this in my next blog.

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