Intel Unite vs. Microsoft Viva Engage

It's a fantastic tool [Intel Unite] in meeting rooms where staff frequently change and/or bring their own devices to connect. No more wires or dongles, just a wifi connection needed and that's it to stream to the screen. It'll even display on the screen exactly what end-users need to do to connect, which makes getting connected for less tech-savvy users very easy. If you have an IT or AV department that isn't great, this probably isn't a great option to roll-your-own, but they do sell dedicated Intel Unite PCs with everything pre-done on them.

Incentivized

Yammer provides a social network experience for the enterprise, providing a "Facebook for work". Its mobile app provides an excellent user experience, showing the full mix of communications happening across topics and teams. The web app, while it hasn't evolved much in the last few years, provides a good experience consuming news. Personally, I use Yammer every morning to see what's happening across my company and comment, like, and share to interact across silos. As long as the size of the network inside of Yammer is managed - likely partitioning a large organization into business units, etc., - then Yammer provides an excellent platform for social news and "bottom up" collaboration across teams. Its free-form posting style, including articles and polls for interactive content, helps break down silos across the organization. Contrasted with the boring world of email, Yammer is a tantalizing world of pictures, GIFs, and videos. At LiveTiles, we share company and team news via Yammer, enabling others to see the progress and milestones - from a new office to a new customer - without the heavy burden of a company newsletter or similarly curated content. Even though we have fully adopted Teams for day-to-day, intra-team communication, Yammer is still the gold standard for inter-team communication.

Incentivized

• No dongles needed any longer for connections, it's all through a local wifi (or the corporate one depending on how you set it up). You can stream from mobile devices too.
• Simple set-up - laptops connect very easily, mobiles connect quickly with an app.

Incentivized

• No one likes getting a long thread of reply-alls. With Yammer announcements and updates can be shared — without cluttering your inbox.
• Yammer's mobile apps are great for our on-the-go sales team to stay in touch with our office staff.
• Yammer's social aspect makes it incredibly easy to use, even for our less tech savvy teammates. If you've used Facebook, learning Yammer will be a cinch.

Incentivized

• The initial setup was a bit of a pain - when we started they required specific hardware to make it work (Intel vPro), which wasn't on the PC used for presentations at the time and we had to change hardware out.
• Software versions are difficult to find on the Intel website - it's a bit of a jumble and not clear as to what needs to be installed and where.

Incentivized

• While Yammer has been an easy transition from SharePoint, it's still relatively new and unknown. Some employees claim that feel like the product was just another "add on" to the entire Microsoft Office experience.
• When introducing new employees to Yammer, they are not as receptive because of how widely used SharePoint is across businesses and industries.
• Functionality is simple, but still vastly different from SharePoint, thus creating a learning curve.

Incentivized

Microsoft is dedicated to continual improvement on Yammer. They realize the value that Yammer brings to the table with their clients. In the short time that we have had Yammer implemented, we are just now beginning to see the strong impact it has on becoming more effective and efficient around collaboration.

Overall easy to use and intuitive, although limited in the possibility to personalize layout and look & feel of a site. Some functionalities are not easy to use, like document editing, but some others are quick and effective (posts and tagging above all). Performance and responsiveness of the Yammer site is typically acceptable, in my experience.

Very available

It's a simple product but it does provide value.

We have never had to use the support for Yammer. The tool works well and we have not come across any bugs. User Interface is simple and easy to use, similar to other forum type products, thereby removing the need for any extensive training. Team members are invited in and immediately are able to start using the tool.

Incentivized

The training that Microsoft provides is very generic training for Yammer. I like the fact the training is short and easy to understand

We organically implemented the product

GoToMeeting and Webex both require either a connection to the display screen or a PC mounted to the display to connect through. [Intel] Unite handles both of those areas, though it doesn't function as a remote meeting platform to bring people together from different locations. It's just for local display.

Incentivized

I like how Yammer has functions that are fun and interactive, which can give you much more to do than using Teams or even Microsoft Forms. Yammer helps people feel included and gives people a better sense of how their friends and co-workers are feeling on certain issues. Yammer is a lot more like a social media platform than a work tool even!

Incentivized

• For us, this has been a creature comfort primarily as it has allowed us to simplify connections in meeting rooms for infrequent staff.
• We had a lot of theft of dongles from meeting rooms due to presenters snatching them when they packed up for the day. [Intel] Unite let us allow presenters to connect wirelessly to the display screens, and no more dongles to hand out in the first place!

Incentivized

• Nothing negative. But what we tend to forget is that Yammer is just a product, not a vision for change. The true and deep implementation and adoption of an enterprise network needs work and commitment, just like everything else. The true benefits will only emerge over time.

Incentivized