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Document collaboration in Yammer just got better with Office Online!

Today’s post was written by Juliet Wei, senior product marketing manager for the Yammer team.

Whether it’s drafting a proposal, updating the quarterly budget, or putting the finishing touches on a presentation, creating great content requires teams to stay on the same page. That’s why the Yammer team has been hard at work building deeper integration with Office Online, bringing the familiar interface and rich capabilities of our Office applications right into Yammer. Today, we’re excited to announce several enhancements to the Yammer files experience, making it easier than ever to incorporate document collaboration into teamwork.

First, the document preview and edit experience for files uploaded into Yammer are now powered by Office Online. When you click the Edit File link in Yammer, a new browser tab opens up with a full-screen view of the document. Make changes and comments directly in the document using Office Online. When you’re done, simply close the tab. Your changes are automatically saved in Yammer, where you have the ability to review the version history of each file and mark documents “Official.” In the near future, you’ll also be able to co-author documents in real-time and translate documents in Yammer into 30+ languages using the Bing Translator.

Preview files in Yammer using Office Online.

Preview files in Yammer using Office Online.

Document collaboration in Yammer just got better with Office Online 2

Click the Edit File link to launch the immersive Office Online experience.

Document collaboration in Yammer just got better with Office Online 3

Changes made in Office Online and file version history are automatically saved to Yammer.

Next, because we know teamwork often spans across companies, we’re extending document collaboration to external participants. This makes it possible to share and work on files with customers, partners and vendors using Yammer’s external messaging. PDF file previews are supported too.

Finally, we’re boosting the reliability and performance of the document collaboration experience in Yammer, reaping the benefits of the foundational work we’ve been doing to integrate Yammer into Office 365.

Our latest innovations bring documents to life by making it easy for teams to engage with and capture the thought process behind each piece of content. And because Yammer is open by default, others at your company can discover, use and build on that knowledge—ensuring that your team’s work lives on.

Best of all, we’re turning on these latest document collaboration capabilities for all Yammer networks—new and existing, free and paid—enabling every user to preview and edit Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files straight from their Yammer group or conversation.

So go ahead—create to your heart’s content. With Office Online and Yammer, collaborating on documents has never been simpler or more engaging.

Frequently asked questions

Q. When will Office Online integration with Yammer be available?

A. Office Online file preview has already shipped to all Yammer users. We are planning to ship the Office Online File Edit feature to all Yammer single-users later this month. Our aim is to enable real-time co-authoring and document translation during the first half of 2016. To learn more about how to use Office Online for document collaboration in Yammer, check out this article.

Q. Do I need to do anything to enable document collaboration in my Yammer network?

A. There is no action required to enable Office Online capabilities within Yammer. We will have a planned service outage starting Friday, July 24, 2015 from 5:00 p.m. PDT to Sunday, July 26, 2015 at 11:59 p.m. PDT to migrate existing files in Yammer to Azure Storage Service. During this time, file editing functionality in Yammer will not be available, although other Yammer functionality, including file preview and upload, will not be affected. Once Yammer file migration occurs, we will be able to turn on Office Online single-user file edit as well as any future innovations for all Yammer users.

Q. How does this fit in with Yammer’s existing document collaboration capabilities?

A. The Office Online native file preview and edit capabilities inside Yammer replace the third-party service Crocodoc in its entirety.

Previously, we announced the release of document conversations, which embeds Yammer conversations inside files stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online. However, we’ve seen very low engagement with this feature in its current implementation. Today’s announced Office Online integration brings document collaboration into Yammer. We believe giving teams the ability to work on files in the context of their existing Yammer groups and conversations provides a more engaging and relevant experience. As such, with this latest release of document collaboration using Office Online inside Yammer, we are rolling back the current implementation of the document conversation feature, but will continue to explore other ways for users to start new Yammer conversations from files.

The “Post” functionality, which lets users discuss and post files from OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online to Yammer, is a great alternative to document conversations and will not be impacted by today’s changes. The recently announced Yammer integration with Delve and the Office 365 Video Portal, which enables users to have inline Yammer conversations and share content to Yammer, will also remain available.

Some networks are part of an earlier Yammer document collaboration experiment, which provides Office Online document preview, single-user editing, and multi-user co-authoring capabilities. We will be rolling back this experiment in favor of the Office Online integration announced today, which provides a more immersive, reliable and performant experience. Multi-user co-authoring will not be available in the latest implementation until 2016.

—Juliet Wei