I don’t like using social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ for my professional questions that I have. Of course I publish all my posts to these networks as most of the times when I publish an articles on SharePains I’ve got the answer ready already.
But, what do I do when I need some help? I could of course ask my colleagues for help. But there are limited number of colleagues available. What if I had more than 10.000 colleagues who I could ask my questions? What if these 1000 colleagues were all experts in their field or even better in my field.
Even though I’ve been developing SharePoint and other Microsoft technology based solutions for over 10 years, there are always new question that I have, with new version or new products that I haven’t worked with before. Nobody knows everything but all together we might be getting close.
Yammer External Networks and Groups
When you visit Yammer in your browser (yammer.com) click on the cog menu and select Browse External Networks and you can find all your external networks.
As I’m interested in SharePoint/Office 365 related networks I’m looking here at the Office 365 related network. But there are more and more external networks published by companies trying to offer 24/7 support by their communities.
Recently I’ve been working a lot with the Office 365 Network where there are 
88.000 members working together, helping each other getting the most out of their Office 365.
Within this network there are many groups available.
Depending on the groups that you have joined you will see more or less listed in your personalised overview.
The main groups that I find very useful are:
- SharePoint IT Pro
- O365 Dev Patterns & Practices
- Office 365 IT Pro
But there are many more. Each group has their own administrators and experts. Many MVPs spend time on Yammer helping other users.
By submitting my questions here I’m quite often avoiding raising support calls and I’m getting straight away access to the best SharePoint people in the world!
A couple of years ago I would log a support call with Microsoft. Costing me money and more important a lot of time.
So how do I get to join this great community? Simply visit https://www.yammer.com/itpronetwork and join up today. So that you can help me tomorrow!
Of course it doesn’t stop there! While other people help you why not help some other people too!
Even if SharePoint isn’t your thing, there are plenty of other groups available:
See also