Yammer launches integration tools to drive collaboration

While Chatter focuses on 'silos' of CRM, sales and marketing-based interactions, the aim of Yammer’s new products is to help developers integrate its enterprise social media software with a whole range of business applications such as CRM, HR finance, supply chain and document management.

David Sacks, Yammer’s chief executive, said: "Enterprise social networking has moved beyond early adopters and is becoming part of the fabric of how we work. Yammer is adding a social layer to the applications that employees use every day in a way that breaks down silos, fostering productivity, collaboration and improved decision-making."

As a result, it has released three new integration tools. An ‘Activity Stream’ tab has now been added to the vendor’s website so that users can see aggregated information about their co-workers’ activity, including what groups they have joined or what topics they follow. The aim is to make it easier for them to discover and collaborate with such individuals as required.

An Activity Stream application programming interface has also been released to enable developers to include business applications-based information in the above mix, while an ‘Embed’ tool enables Yammer feeds to be integrated into any business application that supports HTML or JavaScript. This means that users can view and participate in Yammer-based discussions without having to leave the package they are currently in.

Yammer currently integrates with Microsoft’s Sharepoint 2007 and 2010, Active Directory and Single Sign On products in the same way.

Finally, the vendor has come up with a draft specification for its own Enterprise Extensions to Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol in order to support business-specific objects such as employee, customer, office and document. The spec is currently available for comment on its website and is expected to be finalised in early June.