Yammer widgets

This page is about the Yammer widgets included into Elementi 2018, Elementi 2020, and Elementi 2021.

Introduction

Yammer is an enterprise social networking service used for private communication within organizations. Access to a Yammer network is determined by a user's Internet domain so that only individuals with approved email addresses may join their respective networks. Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012 and later included it within Office 356 services.

The Elementi Yammer widgets help you enable and nurture an open modern culture through employee dialogue: a true breeding ground for innovation.

Use the Yammer widgets to discover all the work that happens between the big announcements and the success story or to connect your org's front-runners or top-level leaders back at headquarters to see everyone's progress come together.

Get started

1. Create a new Elementi project or open an existing one.
2. Click the "Widgets" tab in the Browse panel.
3. Open the "Yammer" folder.
4. Pick a widget (see the list below) that best fits how you want to present the data.
5. Drag & drop that widget from the Browse panel into the Preview panel or Edit panel. The widget is automatically copied within your opened project.
6. Configure the widget to display your data.

Yammer widgets

Elementi software comes with several Yammer widgets accessible from "Widgets" tab within the Browse panel of the Elementi GUI.

Yammer widgets

• Single Post

  Displays a single post using pre-formatted design. The posts are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

  Note that only post with images are displayed with this widget.

• Multi Post

  Displays a one or more post on the same page using pre-formatted design. The posts are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

  Note that all posts with text are displayed by this widget.

• Text Bar

  Displays text content using a fixed number of lines and applying a bottom-to-top & line-by-line scrolling effect whenever the entire text doesn't fit into the widget area.

• Text Ticker

  Displays text content using a continuous horizontal scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the text to fit into the widget area.

• Text Roll

  Displays text content using a continuous vertical scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the selected number of lines to fit into the predefined area.

• Slideshow

  Displays slides composed of tweet & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from Yammer. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

• Horizontal Table, Vertical Table, and Table

  Displays slides composed of multiple cells of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from Yammer. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

Notes:

• These widgets can only be used on a single screen when creating a multiscreen project.
• Any formatting present within the post is discarded and you can customize how the text appears on the screen within Elementi. If you want to keep the white spaces, simply use [[raw]] data field instead of the default [[text]], which doesn't keep the white spaces.

Single Post

This widget displays a single post using pre-formatted design. The posts are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist. Note that only post with images are displayed with this widget.

The following properties, found under "Properties" tab, can be used to customize the widget:

• Data

  Click the button to open the "Data Properties" dialog and set up the data source.

• Slide duration

  Enter the number of seconds each tweet is displayed on the screen.

• Transition

  Click the button to open the "Transition Properties" dialog and select a transition effect and its properties.

• Looping

  Select whether the widget ends after the last tweet or loops to the first one.

• Call to Action
  • Show

    Select whether the Yammer logo and the call to action text should be displayed or not.

  • Text

    Text to be displayed next to the Yammer logo.

Multi Post

This widget displays one or more posts on the same page using pre-formatted design. The posts are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist. Note that all posts with text are displayed by this widget.

The following properties, found under "Properties" tab, can be used to customize the widget:

• Data

  Click the button to open the "Data Properties" dialog and set up the data source.

• Locale

  Select the locale used for displaying dates and numbers.

• Slide duration

  Enter the number of seconds each slide of tweets is displayed on the screen.

• Transition

  Click the button to open the "Transition Properties" dialog and select a transition effect and its properties.

• Looping

  Select whether the widget ends after the last tweet or loops to the first one.

• Number of rows

  Enter the number of tweets to display on a single slide.

• Delay per cell

  Enter the number of seconds to wait before displaying the next cell of the table.

• Call to Action
  • Show

    Select whether the Yammer logo and the call to action text should be displayed or not.

  • Text

    Text to be displayed next to the Yammer logo.

Configuration

Each of the widgets above can be customized using the options provided under "Properties" tab - for more details go to the dedicated page of each widget type, linked above.

Data source setup

To edit the properties related to the data source, click the button. This opens the "Data Properties" dialog, which allows changing the following:

• Account

  Select one of the connected Yammer accounts or click "Connect account..." if none was previously connected.

• Timeline

  Select the type of data to be displayed from: "Home timeline", "Followed by me", "Posted by me", and "In Group".

  Elementi X offers additional options: "Mentions of me", "About topic", and "Yammer search".

  For "In Group" or "About topic", click the "Change..." button to search for the group / topic name.

• Max count

  Max number of posts to be retrieved.

• Refresh

  Specify the period after which the widget should automatically refresh the feed data - this is useful when the widget is running in a loop.

  Select one of the predefined options or enter a number, optionally followed by s (implicit), m or h, to specify the period after which the widget should refresh the feed data; the minimum accepted value is 60 seconds.

  Select "When document opens" to get new data only when the widget is re-opened by its parent document (like a playlist).

Notes:

• At any point, the data source configuration can be tested by clicking on the "Test..." button.
• When searching for groups, the private ones are marked with the text "private".
• The refresh option should be at most 90 minutes when showing images.

Secure data access

Security is a fundamental element to consider when giving access to your personal data and we've created our data-driven widgets with that in mind. To ensure secure access and permission control, without exposing any user credentials, Cockpit must authorize any request for third-party data. For that, you need to do the following:

1. Create a Cockpit account, if you don't have one.
2. Register your Elementi license into your Cockpit account.
3. Add your players into your Cockpit account.
4. Connect your Yammer account to your Cockpit account.

See more about secure data access.

Yammer channel connection

When selecting this channel in the "Data Properties" dialog, your existing Yammer accounts are automatically retrieved from Cockpit and displayed in the "Account" drop-down box. If you need to connect a new account, follow these steps:

1. Select "Connect account..." option .
2. Click the link displayed within the "Connect account..." dialog to open it in a browser.
3. If you are not signed into your Cockpit account, you are asked to do that.
4. Cockpit then checks that your Elementi license is registered into your Cockpit account; if not, you are asked to do that.
5. You are then redirected to the Yammer website. Log into your account there, if you are not already.
6. Then, you need to authorize the SpinetiX app to access the specified information of your Yammer account.
7. Once done, you are redirected back to Cockpit channels page and you can find your account listed under "Connected Accounts".
8. Then, return to Elementi and click the "OK" button within the "Connect Account..." dialog.
9. The list of accounts is refreshed and you can select the new one from the "Account" drop-down box.

Note:

The Yammer account can be disconnected at any time from Cockpit from the "Channels" page.

Troubleshooting

• You get this message: Problem detected with target device. Widgets using channels will not work properly. Are you sure you want to continue?

  This happens when trying to publish a project containing Yammer widgets and one or more of the target HMPs have not been added to Cockpit. To solve the issue, open the HMP Control Center and add the player to Cockpit using the same account as the one used to registered the Elementi license into Cockpit

• You get an HTTP ERROR 500 in Cockpit while trying to link your Yammer account.

  You need to have the “3rd Party Applications” setting turned on (admin rights required) in your Yammer network configuration, under the gear icon → Edit Network Admin Settings → Configuration → Enabled Features.

• Multiscreen usage.

  These widgets can only be used on a single screen when creating a multiscreen project; for multiple screens, a data feed widget must be used instead.

• My images are shown, but not my videos.

  Video content is not supported.

• Some or all posted images are no longer shown.

  This is due to some Yammer internal changes regarding where the files are stored - on their blog, it is written that "all new photos and files uploaded through Yammer in Microsoft 365 connected communities are now stored in the communities’ default SharePoint document library". These changes prevent accessing the post files through the Yammer REST API, but no alternative is yet provided by Microsoft. Our team has contacted Microsoft regarding this situation, without any answer so far.

See also

• Elementi 2018 Widgets
• Data-driven widgets
• Data feeds
• Widgets