Social Networking Features of MOSS 2007

Following is a list of some features provided by MOSS 2007 that will help developers to easily provide social networking features in MOSS based Enterprise wide Social Networking applications.

Colleagues: One of the main Social Networking components of MOSS 2007 is the concept of "Colleagues".

Colleagues are a list of friends, team members and co-workers that are related to a specific person through the establishment of a user profile.

A list of colleagues for a user is set up at the time of the user's profile creation and of course can be updated later through various built-in web parts. The details about the colleagues can be obtained from the Active Directory, Exchange Server, Live Communications Server 2005 or Office Communications Server 2007 set ups within the organization. Thus, the colleagues list is populated primarily based on Organization hierarchy. As a result, peers, supervisors, managers become a part of the colleagues. Additionally, MOSS can also gather this information by mining data sources like Outlook 2007 and IM contacts. (Note that privacy could become an issue here).

Through the list of colleagues, a user can find subject experts and key contacts within the organization, enabling increased and faster lines of communication.

Built-in Web Parts:

Colleagues Web Part: The colleagues web part allows users to present their mined and compiled colleagues to visitors. The colleagues list is a presentation of other organization members that the specified user works closely with in terms of organizational structure, interaction (i.e., email conversations and instant messaging contact lists) and group/site memberships. SharePoint can make recommendations regarding a colleague based on commonality of interactivity with these small groups, but users can also manually add and remove colleagues.

Colleagues Tracker Web Part: The colleague tracker web part allows organization members to privately view their list of compiled colleagues and to modify their views and inclusion in their colleagues list. The colleague tracker web part allows for the presentation of recommended colleagues and allows the user to modify colleague tracking by profile information. For example, users can modify the colleague tracker to present updated colleagues when anniversaries, profile properties, authored documents and blogs change. Additionally, scoping the presentation can occur when users choose to view colleagues specifically for the user's workgroup or organization-wide.

In Common With Web Part: Office SharePoint Server provides a summary view of information relating to the memberships, organizational managers and colleagues that a visitor has in common with the owner of a My Site.

Membership Web Parts, Links, Sharepoint Sites: These web parts provide the ability for users to view their own Office SharePoint Server site, group and mail list memberships and links as well as those that they have in common with others. Additionally, visitors can view a user's memberships, Office SharePoint Server Sites and distribution group memberships.

Web Parts: Colleague Tracker, Colleague Web Part, Membership Web Part

Presence Information: When coupled with Office Communications Server and Exchange Server, presence information indicating online instant messaging status, Out of Office messages and contact information is displayed whenever user information is presented (i.e., colleagues and colleague tracker web parts, etc.).

People Search: Office SharePoint Server supports the discovery of team members, colleagues and other individuals by exposing a search interface in which information workers can search on the organization's personnel. Results are returned to users and are presented in terms of social distance and relevance for grouping. The search can further be refined by user profile attributes including job title and alternatively be viewed based on search term relevance.

My Sites: Finallty, "My Sites" is the place where the list of colleagues will get displayed. My Site allows users to present information about their skills, individuals they know as well as other social information to visitors.

Content from the link: http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/10/24/enabling-and-managing-social-networks-for-business-use-with-microsoft-office-sharepoint-server-2007.aspx (contains some nice images / screenshots of the Sharepoint application)

 

Social Networking

If you are in the IT world or are a so-called Net savvy person, you must have heard about the word "Social Networking". It sounds great, although what does it mean really? And is it only restricted to sites like MySpace and Orkut and Facebook? Or can it be applied, is it being applied to intranet applications, for bringing people together within an Organization?

This blog is just a collection of some information, ideas that I found – a high level overview, to shed some light on the very frequently used term "Social Networking".

What is a Social Network?

"A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes" - This is what Wikipedia has to say about "Social Networks". The concept of social networks and social network analysis has been around for quite some time, bringing about a major change in the fields of sociology, social psychology, economics, organizational studies etc., helping social scientists to understand how organizations work, how networks or groups of people within an organization influence the organization in turn. Just to make this point a little more understandable – the size of a social network is a good indicator of its usefulness, its reach and the impact it will have. A small, very highly connected network will be less useful as compared to a loosely connected network, where people within the group have connections to networks / groups outside the home network. More open type of networks as the latter one result in introducing and sharing of newer ideas and opportunities, bringing people with different facets and capabilities together.

In simple words, a "social network" is an association of people drawn together by family, work or hobby. The term was first coined by professor J. A. Barnes in the 1950s, who defined the size of a social network as a group of about 100 to 150 people.

What is a Social Networking Site?

A social networking site is a web site that provides a virtual community for people interested in a particular subject or just to "hang out" together. Members communicate by voice, chat, instant message, videoconference and blogs, and the service typically provides a way for members to contact friends of other members. Examples of public social networking sites of course are Orkut, MySpace, Facebook etc.

These sites build on the Web 2.0 model, propagating the use of the Web as an application platform, helping members to share content of any form by forming online communities and are typically supported by an Ajaxified / rich / easy to use user interface.

Social Networking within Organizations

Public social networking sites are the "in things" anyhow – but what is gaining momentum now is the use of social networking sites or applications within organizations, to help employees share data, content, information, in the form of documents, videos, photos, presentations, making finding relevant people within the organization easier, and helping automate a lot of manual workflows and business processes within an organization by making use of a social networking platform.

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007) fits this scenario and provides a lot of built-in features that will make building social networking applications. More on this in the next blog.