The new capability will be provided via an integration with , whose Crane software is designed to identify and analyze "sentiment" in text, Yammer said on Thursday.

Yammer customers who sign up for this feature will have a new Crane dashboard in their Yammer admin console that will describe the prevalent mood in reactions from employees in the ESN about specific topics.

For example, after a change in health benefits is announced, a company can use Yammer's Crane dashboard to find out what type of reception the news has received among staffers.

This partnership is a good move for Yammer, said Rob Koplowitz, a Forrester Research analyst. "As enterprise social networks grow, the ability to separate signal from noise becomes increasingly critical," he said via email. "This gives Yammer customers better ability to locate and tune into critical conversations."

The Crane dashboard also lets Yammer administrators slice and dice the analytics data to see how reactions vary among employees in different locations or in different departments.