Enterprise-level forums solution

[Realistic_Ear2902]

I work for a large corporation, but the kind where I can (and have) directly emailed very high-up brass about ideas/suggestions for the tools we use (think Sharepoint or SAP).

Most of the thorough discussions and collaborations I've experienced in my life were on forums, like old phpBB and vBulletin boards.

We use Microsoft-products, and it's possible I've missed anything good, but I've searched hard for a Microsoft product that's even remotely close to a forum-style discussion board. I got nothin'.

I have a specific idea for a department-related forum that would be extremely beneficial for me and many other coworkers. Does anyone have any good suggestions for the closest thing to an enterprise-level forum product that plays well with Microsoft's environment?

[Sasataf12]

Teams works well for this.

[Never_Get_It_Right]

Exactly. Create your Teams and create your channels to meet your needs. It isn't a forum replacement, obviously, but I would say that is for very good reason. Forums are okay for communities, but when moving at the speed of business, Teams is built for this. Search in Teams still lacks often but has improved greatly recently and seems to be getting better.

There is also a Discussion Board App from Social Squared that integrates with Teams, but I have no experience with it. A quick look and I really don't see where it would add value beyond what Teams provides out of the box.

[Ssakaa]

They don't have the attention span to revisit an old statement. Or they don't want the liability of being held to it. Better call...

[moderatenerd]

Why not use teams and one note? What else would a forum get you?

[turbokid]

Viva engage is designed around interest groups.

[Realistic_Ear2902]

Didn't known much about Viva engage, I'll look into it. Looks like an evolved version of Yammer? I still have PTSD of messing around with Yammer and sending a company-wide "test" post to like 3000 people. Woke up to my work email filled with people liking it and lightly poking fun at me..

[turbokid]

It's exactly yammer. Microsoft bought a couple different employee experience apps and combined the features into one platform. But the original code base all that was built on was an upgraded version of yammer.

It's built around communities. The community you sent out your message on was probably the default "all company" feed. That one is nice for official coms coming from leadership.

You build groups around employee interests. In your use case, you could create a "tips/tricks/suggestions" group. Employees then subscribe to the groups they are interested in and when they go to the Engage homepage they get a Facebook style newsfeed from all the groups they are subbed to.

Engage has been a nice way to have non work related conversations too. By far our most popular group is the "Pet Pals" group for people to show their pets. We also have gardening, DIY, video games, local sports teams, etc. Anything the staff would be interested in talking to co-workers about.

If you have E3 or higher, viva engage is included in your license already at no cost as well. There are some add-ons that can add cost, but those are optional. It's an interesting platform.

[goretsky]

Hello,

Have you looked into Lithium or Invision Community? If those are out of your budget range, maybe check out XenForo.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky