Import, Share, and Discuss RSS Feeds
You can now import RSS feeds into your company network, allowing colleagues to share feeds and have discussions around them. Examples of feeds you may want to import are:
- Popular industry publications (e.g. Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, TechCrunch)
- Blogs by your company and its competitors
- Twitter feeds by your company and its employees
- Google news searches of your company name
- Notifications from other tools you use, such as project management or ticketing systems
- Automated alerts sent by your servers or other systems
(RSS Creation Form)
Imported RSS feeds have profiles showing their messages, and you can “follow” them like any other user. However, because RSS feeds can be noisy, we’ve separated their messages into a new “RSS” tab on the Home page, rather than displaying them in My Feed.
(RSS Profile Page)
(RSS Feed)
When you “reply” to an RSS message, only the people in your network can see your message. Originators of the RSS feed will not receive your reply since they are outside your network.
As always, your followers will see your replies to RSS messages — even if they don’t follow the original RSS feed. This means that simply replying to an RSS message will bring it to the attention of your colleagues. Then they can decide whether to join the discussion. This is a much faster way to share links than copying and pasting.
There is a new profile tab showing which RSS feeds your colleagues are following, enabling you to quickly follow them as well.
Group Mail Lists
Do you find it hard to create or maintain email lists at your company? You can now use Yammer groups as a substitute for company mail lists. Every Yammer group has an email alias you can easily post messages to: <groupname>@yammer.com. (We know which network your group is in based on your email address.)
Group members will receive these messages by email — and can reply to them by email — if the group admin chooses this setting. Group admins can also add the emails of members who aren’t on Yammer yet so they can participate.
As always, the members of a group can change their notification settings to avoid receiving emails. Users can also choose to receive messages by SMS or IM.
Private Messages
You can now send private (a.k.a. “direct”) messages to other users by clicking the “Send Private Message” button on their profile. Or if you prefer a command-line interface, you can start your message with to:username. Private messages will appear in your Received tab and in your My Feed tab. Replies to private messages are private as well.
Favorite Messages
A new Favorites tab appears on the Home page. Just click the star icon underneath any message to designate it as a favorite, making it easy to find and reference later in this feed. When you favorite a message, the star will turn yellow. You can un-favorite the message by clicking the star again.
Acceptable Use Policy for Claimed Networks
Companies can now create their own terms for the use of Yammer by their employees. Company admins can upload the policy in Admin Tools, and can require employees to accept it during registration and/or link the policy from a persistent banner across the site.
(Persistent Banner)
Flexible Domains for Claimed Networks
Company admins now have more flexibility around who can participate in their network and how accounts are created:
- Multiple Domain Networks — Companies with multiple email domains can now share the same Yammer network. To consolidate your domains into one network, please send a request to help@yammer.com.
- Invite Guests — By default, your network is limited to employees with the same email domain. However, admins can now invite members to their network who do not share the same email domain. This enables admins to involve contractors or consultants in your network. Guest passes can be revoked by the admin at any time.
- Invite Members in Bulk — Admins can now upload a CSV file (comma separated) to set up Yammer accounts in bulk for the members of their networks. (More automated directory integration is coming soon.)
- Admin-Moderated Networks — Admins can now disable employees from joining the network without an invitation from the admin. (This must be done by sending a request to help@yammer.com)
More Stuff
- AIM Support Disabled — Integration with AIM was removed due to technical limitations. We want to ensure that all integration points we provide are equally reliable, and AIM was unable to provide this. For now, we suggest you use Gtalk or Jabber for IM integration.
- Member Profiles Include Public Group Messages — When looking a user's profile page, you will now see messages posted by that user to public groups.
