Extending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts

Bram de Jager

Audience: DevelopmentLevel: 300

About Bram

• Lead SharePoint developer / architect for Information Worker Solutions center of Macaw

• Microsoft Certified Master for SharePoint Server 2010

• Contact– http://bramdejager.wordpress.com– @bramdejager– bram.de.jager@macaw.nl

Poll

• Who had a coffee?• Who are developers?• Who developed on social solutions?• Who played around with the Activity Feed

API?• Who extended the Activity Feed for customer

based solutions?

Agenda

• User Profiles and My Site• Activity Feeds• Extending the Activity Feed• Demo

USER PROFILES AND MY SITEExtending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts

User Profiles and My Site

• User Profiles– User Profile Service Application– Tight relation with MMS, BCS and Search– My Site Host (mandatory) provides My Profile and

My Newsfeed pages• My Site– Personal Site Collection (personal storage)– “Content” tab on My Profile page

Improvements SharePoint 2010

• My Colleagues, My Interests, and Newsfeed Settings• Shows Activity Feeds from user’s network• Configuration and social network settings & interests

My Network

• User profile data, including position within organization, memberships

• Public notes, ratings and tagsMy Profile

• Personal and shared document libraries• Shared pictures, discussion boards, surveys• Lists, and sub-workspaces

My Content (MOSS 2007 feature)

Logical Architecture Components

My Network

MyProfile

My Content

Pages / Navigation

My Site Host My Site Site Collections

My Web Application Web Application

UPA MMS Search Service Applications

ACTIVITY FEEDSExtending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts

Activity Feeds

• Aggregates colleague activity as feed• Natively displays user profile changes, tagging

and notes activity• Security trimmed, you can only see what you

are allowed to see• Can be extended via Activity Feed API

Data aggregation

• Two types of activities– User profile changes such as job title, colleague

changes, shared interest and anniversary reminders

– Social feedback events such as tags, notes, ratings and personal blog posts

• Gathering by timer job and broadcasted to colleagues

Timer Jobs

• Activity Feed job (Hourly)• Pre-computes activities to be shown in users'

activity feeds.• Aggregates user profile changes and social

feedback• Activity Feed Cleanup (Daily)– Cleans up pre-computed activities used in activity

feeds which are older than 14 days. This job does not affect the User Profile Change Log.

Before and after SP1

• Enable Activity Feed job– RTM: disabled by default– SP1: enabled by default

• Additional setting in “Setup My Sites”

Activity Feed types

• Consolidated feed– Activities from everything I track

http://<my>/_layouts/activityfeed.aspx?consolidated=true

• Published feed– My activities

http://<my>/_layouts/activityfeed.aspx

– Activities by publisherhttp://<my>/_layouts/activityfeed.aspx?publisher=<accountname>

Consolidated feed

• Activities from everything I track

Activities I am following…

• Activity feed depends on interests defined in Edit Profile page

• Custom activity applications will be soon here as well

Published feed

• Account related activities / my activities

EXTENDING THE ACTIVITY FEEDExtending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts

Extending activity feed

• Why extend the activity feed?– ECM activities within SharePoint environment– xRM/CRM activities– External data (WordPress, Facebook, Twitter)

• Activity Feed API for extending the activity feed– Microsoft.Office.Server.ActivityFeed namespace– Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.dll

Activity feed architecture

Activity Feed - Profile DB

Change log - Profile DB

Social database

Custom Timer Job

Custom gatherer

Activity Timer JobProfile and social

gatherers

Activity Feed

Activity Feed classes

Activity Application

Blog Activity Application

Activity Type

Blog Post Added

Comment Added

Activity Template

Type Display

Single Value Template

Multi Value Template

Activity Event

Type Value

DEMO OVERVIEWExtending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts

Blog Activity Application

Activity Feed - Profile DB

Change log - Profile DB

Social database

Custom Timer JobActivity Timer JobProfile and social

gatherers

BlogPostTimerJob

Activity Feed

Custom gathererBlogPostGatherer

Main classes

• ActivityFeed namespace– BlogActivityApplication– BlogPostGatherer– BlogPostTimerJob

• Entities namespace– Blog– Post

• BlogActivityApplicationGlobals

Solution Package (WSP)

• Features– Activity Feed Blog application (Farm)– Configure Diagnostic Areas and Categories (Farm)– Activity Feed Blog Post Setup (WebApp)

• Resources– ActivityFeedBlog.resx

Activity Templates

• Type Display– ActivityFeed_Blog_BlogPostAdded_Type_Display– “Posted a new blog post”

Activity Templates

• Single Value Template– ActivityFeed_Blog_BlogPostAdded_SV_Template– “{Publisher} has written a new post {Link} on blog

{Link2}.”

Activity Templates

• Multi Value Template– ActivityFeed_Blog_BlogPostAdded_MV_Template– “{Publisher} has written {Size} new posts on blog

{Link}. <br/> {List}”

DEMO TIME!!Extending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts

Recap: Key Points

• Activity Feed types– Consolidated feed– Published feed

• Extending the activity feed– Don’t just add everything, like Twitter (overload

database)– Because you can, doesn’t mean you must!

What We Covered

• User Profiles and My Site• Activity Feeds• Extending the Activity Feed

Resources

• MSDN – User Profiles and Social Data Code Samples

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512773.aspx – Microsoft.Office.Server.ActivityFeed namespace

• Wes Hackett’s blog– http://weshackett.com

• SharePoint Guidance– SharePoint Logger– http://spg.codeplex.com

Thank You!

• Blog: http://bramdejager.wordpress.com • Twitter: @bramdejager

• Thanks to Wes Hackett– http://weshackett.com