Swann Dive

As the snow fell, I knew it might impact folk’s ability to get downtown Minneapolis for our Yammer meetup. The first snow of the season can throw a “hard no” into your desire to drive anywhere. Cortana might as well said, “Estimated time to your destination is…never.” While I am sure it crossed the minds of some, the twenty-eight or so Yammer users who braved the drive found themselves alongside some of the most inquisitive and helpful group of social collaborators I know.

A diverse crowd of users, the group included mature social collaborators and some that were just getting their networks off the ground. A good mix to be sure. This meetup was structured around the simple, informal idea of crowd-sourcing the asking and answering of  Yammer questions while enjoying the very best of Chino Latino‘s fusion food menu. As guests arrived, my co-host Steve Nguyen (@espnguyen) and I pointed to the two whiteboards in the back and asked them to take a moment to jot a question down or to tell us about a Yamwin they’ve had.

Once we reached critical mass, questions and answers started flowing. While Steve and I were in our official capacity of co-hosts, we really felt the room was full of co-hosts. Great thing about Yammerites, much like a lot of the Microsoft eco-system, people were more than willing to offer insights and not afraid to ask questions.

Like they often do, questions ranged from granular security functionality to broad, baseline social networking questions like, “How do I engage my leaders in Yammer?” I always dig this question because, doing social means being social and the responses reflected that. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Find a part of the business strategy that really matters to the leader and seeing if Yammer can help in its execution.
2. Get to know the leader’s administrative assistant. They can help get you access but they have to know you first.
3. Encourage the leader to take pictures during their next site or plant visit and teach them how to upload to Yammer.

I haven’t been in a public forum on Yammer without these two questions:

1. Yammer is still not dead, right? Tough one to control my eye roll on. Some folks just want to hear the answer. The roadmap and commitment on this one is clear. Why I think this is worth mentioning: I love to ask, “where did you hear that?” without putting people on the spot, I am just always curious. Inevitably, the response is something like, “I heard it from this guy…I don’t know where he heard it.” A lesson of this Yammer meetup and meetups in general, don’t presume people know what you know and answer their questions sincerely and best you can.
2. Teams and Yammer, what to use when? One of my favorites. Steve walked us through this with the fairly well-known analogy, “Inner loops and Outer loops.” What was fascinating about the discussion on this night was since the Ignite conference, our audience of Yammer pro’s, had begun to develop stories, and company-fitting analogies of their own. These analogies were very much in the spirit of Inner loop/Outer loop, but customized to match company culture and therefore more likely to resonate with their users.

While we didn’t get to all the questions, the night came to a close after a good many chunks of Yammer wisdom were passed among the attendees. There was that familiar vibe of Yammer helps business when business engages and as our guests walked into the wintry night, they had a few more stories to share back at the office.

 

She stood watching over the IT guy’s shoulder as he made the final switch to throw them from Basic Yammer to Enterprise. As the slider choice took hold, Becky Benishek (@bbenishek) took the steps back upstairs to her office two at a time to see for herself that nothing was amiss with her thriving Yammer network. Of course nothing was. Worked as advertised.

As she came back downstairs to celebrate their launch, Dan Pankonen, the IT guy in this story, said, “That was quite the sprint. You know, you have a laptop, it does travel.” Just another friendly jab in what has been a great collaboration between Business & IT to roll out Yammer.

But I’ve started this story midway. Let me go back to the start.

Becky is the Social Media & Community Manager for a company that has been helping organizations like schools and hospitals create safer work environments for over 35 years. Crisis Prevention Institute (CPI) provides safe de-escalation training for behavior management as well as person-centered dementia care. Serious, real world stuff. The folks they train then train others. These trainers—Certified Instructors–are CPI’s customers. And from the first time she saw Yammer, she saw a clear use case for CPI’s customers. A community that could share, contribute, and continue collaborating long after their training was complete.

Tip #1: Divide the duties and trust. This is widely known but hard to practice!

With the business challenge firmly in her grasp, Becky knew that she needed a partner from IT to ensure that any tech hurdles could be addressed. Dan, the Network Systems Manager, became that partner. For Dan’s part, he has many opportunities to try out new solutions but has to make choices where he and his team spend their cycles. He recognized that Becky understood the business problem and could handle the change management while he focused on issues related to infrastructure and security.

A timely SharePoint conference provided the opportunity for Becky to get Yammer Power User certified and for them both to attend sessions on Yammer implementation and effective collaboration. They brought this back to CPI and began to take steps on their social journey, first establishing CPI’s Yammer Home Network. Around the same time, Becky built a Yammer External Network for CPI’s customers, and named it the CPI Instructor Community.

Right away, there was a challenge.

CPI’s instructors are not a 9 to 5 bunch. One of Becky’s key requirements was that she wanted instructors “to experience no waiting on nights and weekends” to become members of their Instructor Community. External Networks have a built-in manual approval which is great for business hours, but what about after hours? She needed an auto-approval process.

Tip #2: Use the “discuss, decide, support” model for effective decision-making.

Becky, Dan, and their team faced a common dilemma for IT and Business: Do we buy or build? Dan was quick to recognize that this was a one-off problem so he recommended they seek an external solution. About that time, Microsoft’s Yammer Customer Network was moving its own members to a different Yammer network (the Office 365 Network). Figuring they weren’t manually approving thousands of customers, Becky contacted some folks she knew in the network and they put her in touch with a solution provider from New Zealand.

Once they were down the “buy” path, Dan and team’s only involvement was to ensure the auto-approval app met their security standards and that it was built in such a way that CPI’s dev team could make modifications as needed. Becky finalized the sourcing and purchase, and the auto-approval process for CPI’s External Network became a successful part of their onboarding of instructors, regardless of time of day, day of week, or holiday.

Months later, the CPI Instructor Community continues its growth, and the partnership between IT and Business is equally strong and working together to make the most of their investment in solutions like Office 365.

Tip #3: Have a plan to measure and demonstrate the value of your network.

Becky added reporting and analytics to her Yammer toolbox because she knew it would be difficult to show progress without it. “But eyeballs aren’t enough,” says Becky. “You need to show the value of your network with data. I can’t make good business decisions without that.” While there a number of options available, I am grateful they chose tyGraph for their reporting and analytics needs. All of us at tyGraph are amazed at the work they do with their customers.

 

Note: Want to know more about analytics for Yammer? I was very fortunate to share the stage at Microsoft Ignite 2017 with Becky. Our session, “Mining Yammer Data for Gold” includes information about what is available for reporting and analytics for Yammer and why it matters to community managers, business stakeholders, and IT pros.

Lots to like coming out of the announcements on Office 365 Reporting last week in beautiful, warm Orlando. There is a little something for everyone with the importance of signals being recognized. What I heard: customers and partners want better data and critically, more accessible data. Here are a few key announcements from the show.

Rolled out: The Reader Role

Conventional wisdom dictates that you should limit the total number of admins in your organization. Hard to argue that. There are four types of admins for Office 365: Global Admin, Exchange Admin, Skype for Business Admin and SharePoint Admin. You’ll note that list doesn’t include your Yammer Verified Admin. While not the only one, this was one of the factors that played into the feature request for Reader role access to reports. Admins and community managers who care about what is going on, need reporting. Enter the Reader role.

The capability for Office 365 admins to grant regular ol’ users the ability to consume all the reports in the Admin Center was announced by Anne Michels (@Anne_Michels) and others from her team at the show. There was much rejoicing. Available now, all you have to do is convince your admin to give it to you. If you do, you’ll also be able to instantiate the Adoption Content Pack (ACP) just like an admin. One thing to look out for though: in our testing, if you are granted Reader role and you instantiate a Content Pack and then your role is revoked, you still have access to the ACP in Power BI. Just a data point on early testing. If that changes, I’ll report back.

Coming Soon: ACP to go GA Early Next Year

The ACP will be generally available early in the new year. The exact date was not announced. In fact, a look at the slide I saw indicated a Q1-ish, Q2 feel. But, when it does, it will have a new name: Office 365 Usage Analytics. I quibble a little bit over the analytics part as I am believer in drawing a distinction between reporting and analytics as described in this informative blog  by John White (@diverdown1964).

Coming Sooner: Teams Reports in Admin Center

If you want to talk about a Microsoft product that is hotter than flapjacks in a mining camp, pick Microsoft Teams. Two reports were announced that should show up in the Office 365 Admin Center by mid-October: Teams Activity report showing what’s popular and an Apps Usage report. This is good news but please, some signals via APIs would be nice. And some flapjacks.

Good tip: Message Center

This immediately got the Captain Obvious award but when Anne mentioned it, I made myself a note. If you want to know what is coming, keep an eye on the Message Center. That is the straight goods.

Yammer Group Statistics

The Yammer team announced group level statistics are now in the UI at the group level and will begin rolling out soon. These stats are based on Likes, Reads, and Posts and are available in three set date ranges: 7 days, 28 days, and 1 year. The key here is that the Yammer product team is listening to its user base. The level of these allow for some insights but leave room for third parties like my team at tyGraph to go deeper, if and when community managers, business stakeholders and IT professionals need it.

UPDATE: The roll out is set to begin on November 2nd. Here is the wording of the announcement as it appears in the Message Center:

“On November 2, 2017, we’ll be rolling out the group insights feature in Yammer. Group insights will provide group admins and members with a comprehensive view of group activity and engagement. This message is associated with Office 365 Roadmap ID 20504.

How does this affect me?

While not a comprehensive list of all the reporting announcements, the above indicates that understanding usage and adoption is an important business goal and should be part of an overall collaboration strategy.

What thoughts do you have on what was announced for Office 365 reporting? I’d love to hear them!

(Blog notes: I sketchnote exclusively on a Surface Pro 4. The “holding newspaper” doodle is derived from a similar work by Jessica Esch (@jesch30). 

This isn’t nearly as bad as when I asked a roomful of lawyers the correct time but it certainly feels similar. When trying to understand the definition of “Active” or “Active User” for the purposes of the Office 365 Usage Reports, it can be a little confusing. So, I do what I always do when I am confused, I draw pictures.

These definitions apply to both the Office 365 Adoption Content Pack (O365 ACP) and the Activity Reports in the Admin Center. The information I pulled is pre-Ignite 2017 so I am anxious to see if definitions change soon.

There are a few things to be aware of. For example, in Exchange, there is no calendar information but I’ve heard that is coming. Also, when looking at the SharePoint numbers, be aware that when talking about the O365 ACP, the Active User metric shows users who did file activity with a SharePoint Team site or Group site. That is a little different than what is in Admin Center. This is another area I’d look for a change once the O365 ACP is updated.

I know blue ribbons from State Fairs don’t await my illustration but I am hoping to help you grok what active user means so that you can derive more value from the usage reports. I know when we were creating our tyGraph Pulse product for O365 reporting, I was constantly referring back to the web page I referenced above. I urge you to visit the support.office.com page I reference if you want to see the source table.

If this helps you, by all means hit print and use it. All I ask is come back and check out my blog for updates. This is the first in a number of visuals I am putting together to help those who are equally wired like me visually.

I’d be interested to hear your comments about your journey with O365 Reporting. Drop me a note!

When engaging with folks about their enterprise social network (often Yammer community managers) I usually start with the same two questions. First, what problem are you looking to solve? Second, how does the answer to the first question inform your social strategy? What I hear varies but answers include questions on the engagement of users and wanting to know who is “moving the needle” or influencing their network. This post offers a way to think about network influence and what should be taken into consideration when measuring it.

Here are four factors that taken together, make up this approach:

1. User contributions to the network, usually in the form of messages.
2. Impact of those contributions on other users.
3. Breadth of contributions. Are user contributions in one group or many?
4. Reach. How many other users have been reached through a user’s contributions?

Top Contributors: Good start, Not Enough

Knowing your top contributors is a good start, but it is not enough. This can give you a good picture of who is active in your user base but it doesn’t really help you know how or even if, they are engaging others. And this is the point isn’t it? We are usually after that elusive but attainable network state where users are influencing others by engaging in constructive dialogue and working on projects together to achieve business objectives. Let’s start with contributors as one of our key factors and add to it.

Impact: Cause and Effect

Our second factor and likely the most critical is the impact of a user’s contributions or posts to the network. Are other users responding to posts? Are they hitting the “like” button? These are signs of impact. Another measure of impact is being “at mentioned” in your network. The act of someone looking for you is a good indication that they want your opinion, your thoughts, or at least your attention to a message or thread.

Breadth of contributions

The third factor for consideration is the breadth of a user’s posts. Meaning, are they posting in one specific group or many groups? The more groups a user posts in, the more likely they’ll have a higher influencer score.

Reach: Total User Interactions in Messages

The fourth and final factor for influence is to determine the total number of users a specific user has interacted with and use that as part of the equation. In other words, who else has contributed to the same threads you have? The more users, the bigger your reach.

This approach powers the Influencer Score of tyGraph for Yammer. Full disclosure, I am the Director of Product there and have had the opportunity to see this in action with my fellow tyGraphers and some awesome customers.

There are other ways to think about network influence and one of my favorites is well articulated by Christian Buckley (@buckleyplant). His ebook on Social Capital includes a discussion on influence from a different perspective.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on how to measure ESN influence. Drop me a note below. Thanks!