SharePoint 2007 - Social NetworkingWes Preston – MVP, MCTS

AGENDA

• Introductions• Social Networking• Customization & Development• 3rd Party Offerings• Governance

• Website for user group• SharePoint resource documents• SharePoint resource links• RSS Feeds • Meeting Schedule• Past User Group Presentations• This presentation

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SOCIAL NETWORKING

WHAT IS SOCIAL NETWORKING?

• A virtual gathering place• A web of contacts• A bulletin board

• A scrapbook• A knowledgebase

WHAT IS SOCIAL NETWORKING?

Examples• Linked In• Facebook• MySpace• Twitter• Classmates.com• Reunion.com

• Yammer• Forums• Distribution Lists• Blogs, RSS feeds• Many more…

• Participate in LinkedIn as a career networking tool– Keep track of previous co-workers, networking contacts, etc

• Participate on facebook with friends, family and some work and community contacts

– Get a little more personal by sharing photos and comments with friends– Control access to different groups– Follow statuses and updates

• Forums– Keep track of a few hobby-related lists to keep up on the latest news and info. – Contribute from time to time

• Blogs– Family blog – Technical or work topical blog– Read a list of blogs using Google Reader or some other RSS aggregator

ONE USER EXAMPLE…

• Employing the same concepts used in other social networking solutions, but done while asking: “Is this good for the company?”

• Realize the potential of social networking concepts in your workplace, with your partners and with your clients.

• The same standard business questions apply:– What is the return on investment?– Where are the efficiencies?

• But in one slide… WHY?

WHAT IS ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING?

WHY ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING?

Drive collaboration &

social interaction

Capture & share tacit knowledge

Discover content in new

ways

Capture the “wisdom of the

masses” via social

feedback

Build a sense of connection

to the company

New workers expect social tools in the workplace

1. Profile Database – The database containing information about SharePoint users, imported from Active Directory and other potential sources.

2. People Search – A search scope and result page configured specifically for finding people, based on data crawled from the Profile database.

3. My Profile Page – One method of displaying the Profile database information, using web parts designed for that purpose and available only on the Profile page

SHAREPOINT SOCIAL NETWORKING – KEY FEATURES

SHAREPOINT SOCIAL NETWORKING – PEOPLE SEARCH

• Profile Page

SHAREPOINT SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Finding the right resources, when you need them– People Search or advanced search can be used to find people based on

many attributes – based on the Profile Database– Immediate needs: Finding the right resource for the current issue, fast– Ongoing needs: Building a project or organizational team

SCENARIOS FOR ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Accessing the organization chart– Succession planning– Finding co-workers, colleagues

and managers

SCENARIOS FOR ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Communication– Using blogs and RSS feeds to internally broadcast information

• Company announcements rather than e-mail broadcasting• Strategy and quarterly updates • Promotions, staffing changes, etc…

– Use external blogs to share relevant information with clients • Press Releases for stakeholders and the public• Technical / Product information and updates for clients and

partners

SCENARIOS FOR ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Communication – Blogs (out of the box)

SCENARIOS FOR ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Communication – Blogs continued

• Codeplex Enhanced Blog Edition 2.0http://www.codeplex.com/CKS/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=5134

• Tag Cloud (SharePoint Designer)http://www.iwkid.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=41

SCENARIOS FOR ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING

• Retain and more effectively utilize intellectual property – Use knowledge bases to capture critical information and make it

available to those that need it, when they need it• Wikis can be used to capture critical information and allow it to evolve

quickly as needed by as many people as needed. • Blogs can be used as internal ‘journals’ to track research, work and progress• Discussion boards can be used as places to capture and track conversation

threads and have benefits over e-mail

– Train new employees• Use the knowledge captured in the containers listed above to identify

‘required reading’ for new team members.

SCENARIOS FOR ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING

• ‘Communities of interest’– Aligning employees in different departments that have similar roles so

they can benefit from each others’ experiences– Internal User Groups– Cross-Department Collaboration

SCENARIOS FOR ENTERPRISE SOCIAL NETWORKING

WSS – Windows SharePoint Services. The ‘no additional charge’ version of SharePoint that includes all the core functionality.

MOSS Standard – Some considerable enhancements on top of the core platform – My Sites, People search, Employee Lookup web part, etc…

MOSS Enterprise – Doesn’t offer a lot of functionality for social networking, but does include the BDC, which may allow for richer data

SHAREPOINT – VERSION RECAP

• My Sites– Special web parts– You could do the facebook status with a Discussion list – configure a web part on

the home page to only show the latest entry, have alerts, allow others to comment on it…

• People Search• Employee Search web part• Audiences

SSP• Profile Management• Search Management

SHAREPOINT MOSS FEATURE REFERENCE

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

What is presence and how does it impact collaboration and social computing in SharePoint?

• This is presence...

• Know before you attempt to reach out

• Presence is the “center ring” of Unified Communications

WHAT IS PRESENCE?

• A COLLECTION of technologies – not a silver bullet

• “Game-Changer”• “Disruptor”• “Equalizer”

THE GOAL OF UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS IS TO REDUCE THE

HUMAN LATENCY IN BUSINESS PROCESSES

WHAT IS UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS?

The collection of communication technologies, applications and processes to enhance communication and business between you, your customers, partners and employees

“ “

Unified Messaging

On-premise and Hosted Conferencing

Software-Powered VoIP

E-mail and Calendaring

IM and Presence

Collaboration,

Portals, and

Search

Unified Communications

MICROSOFT UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS PRODUCT ALIGNMENT

Customization & Development

CUSTOMIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT

• Custom My Sites• Customizing the person.aspx page

CUSTOMIZATION OPPORTUNITIES

• Configuring User Profile Imports• Adding new User Profile Properties

– Customizing Privacy Policies (who can see what properties)

• Business Data Catalog• Configuring Audiences

CUSTOMIZATION OPPORTUNITIES

• Custom Search Results– Configurable XSLT to display relevant User Profile Properties

• Custom Search Properties

CUSTOMIZATION OPPORTUNITIES

• Working with User Profiles– Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles– User Profile Web Service

• User Profile Change Web Service (_vti_bin/UserProfileChangeService.asmx)• User Profile Web Service

DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES

• Possible Customizations:– Custom Web Parts that display relevant User Profile Properties– Import additional User Profile Properties without leveraging the BDC– Create a Vista Gadget that surfaces SharePoint data:

• Person browser/phonebook?

• ‘OneView’ Customizations:– Yammer web part– Twitter web part– Employee blog web part – SPC09 page

DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES

3rd Party Offerings

3RD PARTY OFFERINGS

• CodePlex!!– Community Kit for SharePoint

• Enhanced Blog Edition– Podcasting Kit for SharePoint

3RD PARTY OFFERINGS

GOVERNANCE

• Don’t just update SharePoint – keep Active Directory up to date– Information also available in Outlook / other tools

• Sync with other systems – PeopleSoft, etc…• Development processes for User Profile/Import Changes• Database and server topology planning is required before rolling out

company-wide My Site deployments (100s or 1000s of sites)

THOUGHTS ON GOVERNANCE

WHAT’S NEXT…

• Improvements and new features– My Sites: status and activity monitoring– Social Tagging– Rating and feedback– Social search: more data, better results– Finding people: phonetic name search, name

variations and wildcard– Expertise mining and discovery– Enhanced wikis and blogs

SHAREPOINT 2010

REFERENCES

• Social Computing with SharePoint http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/capabilities/collaboration/social.mspx

• White Paper on Social Networking http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=98123&clcid=0x409

• SharePoint Server 2007 SDK: Software Development Kithttp://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D94E307-67D9-41AC-B2D6-0074D6286FA9&displaylang=en

REFERENCES

• Our Blogs– http://www.idubbs.com/blog– http://blogs.inetium.com/blogs

• This slideshow!– http://www.sharepointmn.com

http://www.sharepointmn.com

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