Everything You Need To Know About SharePoint Social Capabilities - SPLive360

Editor's Notes

• #12: Business Impact What Does That Mean? Lowers Cost Of Sharing & Organizing Information Most social technologies within an enterprise leverage the identity of the contributing individual heavily. There is no such thing (in most cases) of anonymity within the enterprise. This means that the enterprise social technology usage will: Improves Search Relevance Improve Content Authority Adds Additional Contextual Relevance Additionally what this means for finding people in the case of expertise searching and discovery is that people are more easily found and their properties (that help you find them) are more accurate. In terms of the accuracy it is no longer as expensive to manage everyone’s expertise and profile information. This is especially true if self-serviced or self-managed user profiles exist within the organization. In regards to profile properties being filled out, often there are mechanisms that encourage people to fill out their profiles. The most common techniques are through vanity search and statistics as well as a “completeness” rating on the profile. Reduces Organizational Barriers Social technologies are rarely deployed for only specific departments or organization units. As a result of this (and the value of enterprise wide deployments) there are traditionally less organization boundaries to ‘social’ information such as people profiles. An additional item worth noting here is that most social platforms also only account for ‘read’ permissions on items and allow people to ‘contribute’ or share items they may not have the ability to easily edit, copy, or move. In some instances it has been known to reduce duplication of information as well due to the increased discovery and ease of sharing. Improves Business Agility Since social interaction is tied directly to chronological relevancy (in other words when people engage in social activity there is always a relation to that activity being important at that point in time) it has a natural tendency to support quick, immediate, and current decision making activities. When the organization is reacting to something it also enables users to quickly discover one another and engage in a way that makes adding additional participants much easier. (Especially true in open social collaboration/discussions instead of using the features in an online private setting.) Compliments Talent Management As employees connect with one another and share the results of their work it tends to highlight many employee accomplishments. Frequently outputting highly rated documents as an example can provide additional information to management that the documents/output of one employee is having a strong benefit on the organization. Additionally poorly rated items can help encourage plans for development or improvement. Employees sharing more about their personal motivations, experiences, skills, and expertise can also greatly help when determining organizational competencies, weaknesses, strengths, and how best to begin engaging/planning that individuals professional growth. Promotes End User Innovation Most social technologies empower more people to contribute. Often it’s not necessary to have ‘edit’ rights to an item to add social tags or social discussions around it. Allowing even readers to share feedback, ideas, or categories on things they can see, interact with, but perhaps not modify.
• #13: Technology Benefit SharePoint Explanation Improves Search Relevance A concrete example of improving search relevance in SharePoint would be that social tagging, rating, and action results in an increase the ranking of that document or item. If it’s being socialized the assumption is that it’s more important than content that is not. Improve Content Authority When searching or browsing through so much corporate information the use of social features such as tagging, rating, and discussions can greatly help understand the authority level of certain content. Adds Additional Contextual Relevance In SharePoint it’s not only within communities or personal sites that social features are leveraged. Even on executive dashboards that use roll ups and reports of data it is possible in many cases to use the note board for discussion, to tag specific reports, to rate specific reports or data summaries. Provides Additional Ways To Find Content Beyond searching for information by using keywords, phrases, or tags it can often be useful to find information by discovering ‘experts’ or individuals who are linked to the content either as authors or as someone who recently highlighted that content through the use of social tags, ratings, or sharing.
• #14: Technology Benefit SharePoint Explanation Improves Search Relevance A concrete example of improving search relevance in SharePoint would be that social tagging, rating, and action results in an increase the ranking of that document or item. If it’s being socialized the assumption is that it’s more important than content that is not. Improve Content Authority When searching or browsing through so much corporate information the use of social features such as tagging, rating, and discussions can greatly help understand the authority level of certain content. Adds Additional Contextual Relevance In SharePoint it’s not only within communities or personal sites that social features are leveraged. Even on executive dashboards that use roll ups and reports of data it is possible in many cases to use the note board for discussion, to tag specific reports, to rate specific reports or data summaries. Provides Additional Ways To Find Content Beyond searching for information by using keywords, phrases, or tags it can often be useful to find information by discovering ‘experts’ or individuals who are linked to the content either as authors or as someone who recently highlighted that content through the use of social tags, ratings, or sharing.
• #39: MySites Implementation & Roll Out The SharePoint MySites from a simplistic level allow users to share content with one another without needing to provision a new team site, community site, or clutter structured department/project sites. The reality though is that MySites are actually individual site collections which allow users (for all intents and purposes) to develop and share business applications and content through SharePoint features/functionality.   Most Used MySite Functionality Shared Documents A document library that allows users to share their documents with other employees. By default this library is unsecured and any employee will be able to read documents placed here. Private Documents A document library that allows the user to share just their own personal documents. By default this library is only accessible by the MySite site collection owners.
• #40: MySites Implementation & Roll Out The SharePoint MySites from a simplistic level allow users to share content with one another without needing to provision a new team site, community site, or clutter structured department/project sites. The reality though is that MySites are actually individual site collections which allow users (for all intents and purposes) to develop and share business applications and content through SharePoint features/functionality.   Most Used MySite Functionality Shared Documents A document library that allows users to share their documents with other employees. By default this library is unsecured and any employee will be able to read documents placed here. Private Documents A document library that allows the user to share just their own personal documents. By default this library is only accessible by the MySite site collection owners.
• #48: How many times have you found a useful link somewhere on the internet, but had no way to usefull record that and get feedback from your colleagues?   Well, SharePoint 2010 social feedback can help with this, you can now "tag" any source on the internet (or intranet) which has a URL. This is stored in your "tags" section on your My Site, and also appears in your "Activity Feed" (which is one of the new areas in the SharePoint 2010 My Site).   Other users can also post "notes" relating to your tag, which effectively creates a discussion board around the "tagging" activity, allowing conversations around something that has been tagged.   Now, one of the key points is Security Trimming . Lets take this example: what happens if you Tag a document that someone else doesn't have access to?   The good news is that social tagging uses the Search Index to provide security trimming on content that is stored in SharePoint.   This provides the capability for senior managers to tag confidential documents (and hold conversations about that using notes) but those tags (and notes) are not visible to anyone who doesn't have read-access to the document!   On top of this is included a Ratings feature, where you can rate content within SharePoint lists (finally, the death of third party "rate my content" web parts).   This means that SharePoint 2010 now has similar social feedback functionality as other products like Digg or Delicious, in that you can tag and rate content, and other people can interact with that "tag" creating a discussion.   Architecture All of the Social Feedback information in SharePoint 2010 is stored in a separate "Social Database". This sits alongside the Profile Database.   There are then "Gatherers" (Timer Jobs) which will collect all of the changes to both the Social Database and the Profile Database and this is stored in another database for Activity Feeds (the Activity Feed Database) with foreign key pointers back to the Profile Database (so you know who's activity it is).   The performance is impressive, aiming for 2000 requests per second, and in terms of storage they are looking to support over 600,000,000 rows of data! They claim that this is sufficient for activity (including social feedback) for 400,000 users over 5 years!   Extensibility You can also hook into this process yourself. You can build your own "Gatherer" jobs to collect information from any data source that you like.   A good example is a CRM database, so that you can show activity in CRM in the My Site Activity Feed, showing when people schedule meetings or achieve sales activites.
• #49: How many times have you found a useful link somewhere on the internet, but had no way to usefull record that and get feedback from your colleagues?   Well, SharePoint 2010 social feedback can help with this, you can now "tag" any source on the internet (or intranet) which has a URL. This is stored in your "tags" section on your My Site, and also appears in your "Activity Feed" (which is one of the new areas in the SharePoint 2010 My Site).   Other users can also post "notes" relating to your tag, which effectively creates a discussion board around the "tagging" activity, allowing conversations around something that has been tagged.   Now, one of the key points is Security Trimming . Lets take this example: what happens if you Tag a document that someone else doesn't have access to?   The good news is that social tagging uses the Search Index to provide security trimming on content that is stored in SharePoint.   This provides the capability for senior managers to tag confidential documents (and hold conversations about that using notes) but those tags (and notes) are not visible to anyone who doesn't have read-access to the document!   On top of this is included a Ratings feature, where you can rate content within SharePoint lists (finally, the death of third party "rate my content" web parts).   This means that SharePoint 2010 now has similar social feedback functionality as other products like Digg or Delicious, in that you can tag and rate content, and other people can interact with that "tag" creating a discussion.   Architecture All of the Social Feedback information in SharePoint 2010 is stored in a separate "Social Database". This sits alongside the Profile Database.   There are then "Gatherers" (Timer Jobs) which will collect all of the changes to both the Social Database and the Profile Database and this is stored in another database for Activity Feeds (the Activity Feed Database) with foreign key pointers back to the Profile Database (so you know who's activity it is).   The performance is impressive, aiming for 2000 requests per second, and in terms of storage they are looking to support over 600,000,000 rows of data! They claim that this is sufficient for activity (including social feedback) for 400,000 users over 5 years!   Extensibility You can also hook into this process yourself. You can build your own "Gatherer" jobs to collect information from any data source that you like.   A good example is a CRM database, so that you can show activity in CRM in the My Site Activity Feed, showing when people schedule meetings or achieve sales activites.
• #56: Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 02/12/13 © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
• #65: Communities Communities are a term that is often used in many contexts. What is important is that at a base level organizations understand what a community is and what ‘kinds’ of communities can exist. Below is a collection of possible communities titled in a way that is representative of the activity/engagement contained within that community. Here Are Some Sample Communities for an Organization: Green/Sustainable Living Young Professionals Improving Project Success: For Project Managers Internal SharePoint User Group Software Development Patterns & Practices [Company Name] Fitness Fanatics
• #68: Builds on the concepts of discussions, likes, ratings, badges and reputations Communities can be created by using a new Site Definition Template available for site collections and sites Underneath is a feature that can be activated on any site. Uses Wiki Pages infrastructure A community is based on set of functionalities and lists that exist in the community: it is self consistent. Content is organized by Categories, with a rich UI comprised of image and data Presentation pages are «wiki pages» Rich content experience Easier to customize doesn’t need to be SharePoint master for creating content Users can use rating for content and «reputation» for people Can vote 1 to 5 stars, or Likes Reputation is only available in community sites and it is «per community» People can also report “abuse” for a moderator to act upon Moderators can choose the “best” reply
• #70: Every post can be edited and deleted by the original owner as well as moderators Every member of the community can report a post to the moderator (if the setting is enabled) Marking a post as “featured”: once marked, a specific post will render at top of its category
• #71: A conversation can have zero or multiple replies Replies can happen for the main topic or for other replies as well (replies of replies) A reply can be reported to moderator Community moderators can also delete or edit a reply Best Reply: bubbles up in a specific reply and shows it up as the first reply in the discussion thread
• #72: Available in the home page and in site settings Home page is «security trimmed»: only moderators see tools Provides access to the main community settings and underneath lists: Discussions Categories Members Gifts Reported Posts Allow any members to report any post (reply or discussion) as an abuse of the Community Reports with comments are stored in an hidden list Members are notified real time for their reporting activity Moderators can then decide to delete the post, edit the post or remove the Report
• #73: Owners can enable ratings on Community Ratings can be a star system or like system: Both are completely decoupled from Social DB and live only in the Content DB Owner can switch between the two systems and rating values get preserved in the switch Mouse hovering on the rating provides quick information at a glance: Who rated The value of the rate Visual representation for your likes Offers a way to keep track of specific posts across all the microblogging activity Likes: is a personal view to see things you liked* Other people don't have access to the list of everything you liked, but they can see what you liked if they look at your profile feed (About me). Useful to track Social activities The popularity of an item Tracking a specific post – thread It shows in the main consolidated feeds web part Every time a user likes a post: An entry gets created in the user’s Microfeed list This show the “user liked a post” entry The original post gets updated in the Microfeed list of the user that created the post itself This keep tracks of all the likes on the post An entry gets also created in the Social list of the user who did the “like” action This keeps track of the user “like” activities Used in the “Likes” view
• #74: People reputation is impacted by activities like creating posts, adding replies, etc. Reputation is per community – reputation in one does not affect it in another community Reputation model cannot be extended Community owners control points for each activity Administrators also configure what point thresholds are required to achieve reputation rankings Once a member reach a specific level he/she receives a «badge» that shows achievement goals reached Badges can be customized in term of text Badges image cannot be customized But the color is inherited from the site theme There are two type of badges in communities: Achieved badges Gained by people by collecting points performing specific activities Gifted badges Assigned by community owners Achieved badges can be displayed as a ranking level or as a specific text It’s a way for Community moderators to “push” recognition to member Not achieved by members By assignation only from Community moderator List of Gifted Badges can be managed to add or remove badges Gifted Badges are showed in the people status and are colored Again: color is inherited by site theme At any time people can go to the Members list to see all members and rank them by various metrics People can also see their status and what is needed to move to the next level of reputation:
• #76: Newsfeed: shows you updates on social activities for items and people you are following: People posts People profile changes Changes on followed documents Items tagged with followed tags Mentions Activities: all my activities Likes Company Feeds
• #78: Available in Central Administration in the UPA Shared Service Application Give the ability to the Administrators to govern profile information that user can manage or not Users can always override Admin settings regarding activities and following people privacy settings. Simplified compared to SharePoint 2010 Policy settings: Privacy setting is now “Only me” or “Everyone” Available in Central Administration in the UPA Shared Service Application Give the ability to the Administrators to govern profile information that user can manage or not Users can always override Admin settings regarding activities and following people privacy settings. Simplified compared to SharePoint 2010 Policy settings: Privacy setting is now “Only me” or “Everyone” Admins can also enable a “default“ privacy setting to make people following information and activities public. This setting is “off” by default
• #81: 15 social features mostly rely on data on the person’s personal site and in the Windows Server AppFabric Cache Two lists are created for providing social features: the Microfeed list and the Social List As part of the social effort personal site document libraries experience has been re-designed as well Profile Database is still used for following peoples and tags
• #82: SPC2012 - Developer 02/12/13
• #83: You can specify which users can use social features. You can specify which users can have MySites. This allows you to roll it out slowly and to targeted groups who receive training/support. In 2013 – The biggest change is the dependency on personal sites for social functionality.
• #84: Microfeed List: contains all activity around the user Store user generated activities (i.e. Microblogging posts) and system generated activities (e.g. Notification of a change in profile or following changes) Users and administrators control which system generated activities are showed in as activity feeds via privacy settings in policies Majority of user activities are available to all authenticated users Same for system activities Activities related to content sensitivity are security trimmed (e.g. following a document) Every time a new system activity or user activity happens a new entry is created in this list and in the Windows Server AppFabric Cache* *exceptions apply
• #85: Gives information about all of the things that user is following number of people, Documents*, Sites* Tags Can easily identify all of the things that powers a user’s newsfeed Allows the user to access all of those things within a single click from the newsfeed
• #86: In 15 who has rights can follow different things People Sites Documents Tags Following has a common user interface experience
• #88: Following people infrastructure in 15 is the same as it is in 2010 Information about followed people and “followed by” is stored in the Profile Database The followed person gets notified by email if a new follower shows up Two main improvements we introduced in 15 Integration with Consolidated Feeds Web Part Following people infrastructure in 15 is the same as it is in 2010 Information about followed people and “followed by” is stored in the Profile Database The followed person gets notified by email if a new follower shows up Two main improvements we introduced in 15 Integration with Consolidated Feeds Web Part My followers: people can now see who are their followers
• #91: Users who do have permissions to create Personal Sites: Are able to use all social features (including Microblogging and Content Following) Have full Personal Site capabilities (including the My Documents, the Tasks page, and the ability to create new Apps). Users who do not have permissions to create Personal Sites will have a ‘profile only’ experience.  More specifically: They CAN : Visit and edit their profile, and enter any information about themselves that they want, including adding a photo. Follow people, and through their People page can see and reply the latest Microblog posts * Visit other people’s profiles Have people @mention them (which will result in them getting an email). * requires followed people to have enabled Personal Sites as well Users who do not have permissions to create Personal Sites will have a ‘profile only’ experience.  More specifically: They CANNOT : Create any root Microblog Posts View Microblog posts of people they following in the consolidated feeds web part they will be redirected from the Newsfeed page to their Profile page Follow content Follow tags* Aggregate tasks Upload documents (or do any Personal Site activities) @mention to somebody * users are still able to set their interests but the will not get notified on Microfeed tagged by any of those tags Administrators are also able to control number of objects people can follow Controlled centrally in the UPA Affects both lists in the personal site and the Profile DB usage Not possible to control number of tags get followed
• #96: Your Companies Key Differentiators What makes your company different? What makes your company stand out? Let’s say our fake company has four key differentiators that seemed to stand out and were referenced by leadership and executives in the organization. Community Caring Community Engagement, Involvement & Support State Of The Art Technology Technology, Systems & Products Of Large Enterprise Organizations Incredible Support Staff Personal Service High Touch Attention Strong Customer Relationships Personal & Professional Sales Staff It is important to be able to align new initiatives, technologies and business solutions with these differentiators. To try and help visualize this effect the following objectives were broken down based on the differentiators of the business. Example Company Objectives Grow Organizational Footprint Acquisitions Provide Excellent Customer Service Promote a Positive Work Culture Highlight Exceptional People Have Highly Effective Decision Making Provide Community Support Provide Customer-Transparent Support Functions Have Leadership Greeting Customers By Name These objectives actually map easily to Social Concepts and Features within SharePoint or within related technology. What follows is a visual map of the organization objectives extrapolated above and the ‘solutions’ or social solutions that might directly, or indirectly help achieve those objectives.
• #104: A lot of this can seem daunting and I know one of the hardest things is figuring out how to do some of the things I have shown today. If you are interested in further training or assistance please let me know. Based on the number of people who are interested and the areas of interest we can schedule further training sessions to help everyone better use the SharePoint portal. It's our commitment to you that we will continue to hear your feedback and identify the issues. I encourage you to give us feedback during the coming months, and we will continue to deliver more and more functionality, more and more guidance to help you be successful with your application of SharePoint. Thank You for Reading/Listening
• #106: Your Portal’s Identity and Branding Your company most likely has a slogan. Leverage it! Let’s say your slogan is: “We Make Things Happen.” Now let’s say that this slogan is known by every employee and is a great internal brand mechanism to create a sense of unified culture and purpose. One simple but effective business tactic for larger enterprise initiatives, technologies, or solutions is to leverage existing and well-known brands/messages in the organization to help people understand the importance or purpose of an organizational change.   What follows are potential ‘Social’ Slogan Additions (based on “We Make Things Happen”): “ When we work together.” “ Keep up with them using COMPANYXYZ Social.” “ Be a part of them with COMPANYXYZ Social.” “ Share them on COMPANYXYZ Social.” “ Be involved in creating them on COMPANYXYZ Innovate”
• #114: Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 02/12/13 © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
• #135: Be REALLY careful investing in some of these players. Many of the previous ones no longer exist: Awareness ConnectBeam
• #143: Enable the User Profile Service Activity Feed By default the user profile service activity feed is not enabled. What follows are the steps that ensure that the activity feed will display updates appropriately within the “My Newsfeed” view of MySites. Verify that you have the following administrative credentials: To configure timer jobs, you must be a member of the Farm Administrators group on the computer running the SharePoint Central Administration Web site. In SharePoint Central Administration, click Monitoring and then click Review job definitions . The Job Definitions page opens. In the View list, select Service . The Service list appears. If the Service list does not display User Profile Service , click Change Service . The Select Service page opens. Use the arrows in the upper-right corner to locate User Profile Service and then click it. The Job Definitions page updates with the User Profile Service jobs. Click the activity feed job for the User Profile service application that you created in the prerequisites section of this task. The job name is in the format User_Profile_Service_name - Activity Feed Job , where the User Profile Service name is the name that you specified for your User Profile service application. The Edit Timer Job page opens. In Recurring Schedule , select the interval that you want the job to run. Available intervals are Minutes , Hourly , Daily , Weekly , and Monthly . Selecting a shorter interval, such as Minutes or Hourly , ensures that activities appear on users' My Site newsfeeds more frequently. However, it can also place a heavy load on the system depending on how many activities are available. Selecting a longer interval, such as Daily , Weekly , or Monthly reduces the number of times the job runs and processes feeds. However, it also means that users receive less frequent updates to activities in their newsfeeds. Click Enable . Optionally, click Run Now to run the job immediately without waiting for the next scheduled interval.
• #154: Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 02/12/13 © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
• #158: Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 02/12/13 © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
• #159: Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 02/12/13 © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
• #160: Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 02/12/13 © 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
• #162: A lot of this can seem daunting and I know one of the hardest things is figuring out how to do some of the things I have shown today. If you are interested in further training or assistance please let me know. Based on the number of people who are interested and the areas of interest we can schedule further training sessions to help everyone better use the SharePoint portal. It's our commitment to you that we will continue to hear your feedback and identify the issues. I encourage you to give us feedback during the coming months, and we will continue to deliver more and more functionality, more and more guidance to help you be successful with your application of SharePoint. Thank You for Reading/Listening