Hail thee fellow heroes of information worker productivity!
In the first part of this article we looked into the general benefits of adopting social networking to an Organization. In this article we look into how SharePoint 2013 becomes a core driver for corporate social networks.
May peace favour your swords fellow information worker heroes…
In the first part of this article we looked into the general benefits of adopting social networking to an Organization. In this article we look into how SharePoint 2013 becomes a core driver for corporate social networks.
May peace favour your swords fellow information worker heroes…
When you look at the new and in my humble opinion very much improved version of SharePoint, you can clearly see where Microsoft was putting its focus into. Also with the purchase of the enterprise social network software Yammer, it’s pretty much obvious that Microsoft will assimilate the social features of Yammer and integrate it fully into the next coming SharePoint version.
However currently Yammer is not really integrated into the SharePoint architecture. It runs rather in parallel where you can display certain information from Yammer within SharePoint through WebParts.
What makes the own Social Features of SharePoint more powerful at this very moment is, that it is fully integrated into the whole SharePoint information landscape. You can follow most content and you can also easily share it and consolidate activities within one feed within your MySite. So its pretty much similar what Facebook does.
So let’s have a look at some cool productivity features in the new and upgraded SharePoint 2013 version.
Newsfeed
This is maybe the most useful and convenient social feature Microsoft introduced to SharePoint. In the newsfeed you get a stream of activities about stuff and people you follow in the SharePoint Intranet. You can also use your newsfeed to post updates on your own or openly communicate with your peers with social tags. For social tags we can use @-tags to address a message to someone or several people at once. Additionally we can also use #-tags to create topics ad hoc, which can be followed by others right away once it has been created on any newsfeed on any site within the whole SharePoint environment. Like this, SharePoint combines the worlds of Facebook and Twitter in one feed. Which makes it a very powerful and exciting communication medium.
So basically in your MySite newsfeed you should see stuff what is important and relevant for you, rather than being CC-spammed in your e-mail inbox.
Consolidated tasks
Another very powerful social productivity feature is the consolidated task list. Within your MySite SharePoint pulls all the tasks together which are assigned to you from any site within the SharePoint environment. So this saves a lot of time for you in keeping track of your to dos and deadlines. Rather than pulling the information manually from each and every project site, I get an overview about everything what’s going on, on one location.
Follow up functionality
Also a very neat functionality is to create a task out of a newsfeed message. You can follow up newsfeed messages from your newsfeed timeline by “following it up”. SharePoint will automatically create a task in your MySite. This again is also a great time saver, since I don’t need to navigate to the task list anymore and type in the task manually.
As an example: Tim sends a message to me via the newsfeed functionality in our team site “@Jussi Have you checked out the #Digistars blog already? You might find that interesting! Cheers @Tim.”
So this message would pop up of course in the team site site feed but also on my own personal newsfeed in my Mysite. I would see that message, but I don’t have the time to look at the blog right now, so I would follow it up and look at it later. With couple of clicks, the same message will appear in my task list on my MySite, which can also be synchronised to Outlook. From there I won’t forget to look at the blog later on when I have more time.
Very useful indeed! :-)
Social Search
The new search engine of SharePoint 2013 listens much more on people generated metadata. So everything and anyone you follow will have an impact on your personal search results. Two different persons can get a total different search result while using the same search phrase.
So SharePoint remembers which search terms you have used the most, which term lead to clicks where you found what you were looking for and which persons were involved in creating and editing the content source.
Additionally SharePoint offers a feature called “People Card”. With the help of the people card you can ad hoc start connecting with the people who have been involved in creating content.
Ok, now we have seen the most convenient social features SharePoint 2013 introduced to the community. Of course all existing MySite features like status updates and personal document stores are still available in the new version as well.
Having said that @Digistarsreaders have fun #Connecting and #Socializing with SharePoint 2013
SharePoint, Strength and #-Tags
Ser Jussi
However currently Yammer is not really integrated into the SharePoint architecture. It runs rather in parallel where you can display certain information from Yammer within SharePoint through WebParts.
What makes the own Social Features of SharePoint more powerful at this very moment is, that it is fully integrated into the whole SharePoint information landscape. You can follow most content and you can also easily share it and consolidate activities within one feed within your MySite. So its pretty much similar what Facebook does.
So let’s have a look at some cool productivity features in the new and upgraded SharePoint 2013 version.
Newsfeed
This is maybe the most useful and convenient social feature Microsoft introduced to SharePoint. In the newsfeed you get a stream of activities about stuff and people you follow in the SharePoint Intranet. You can also use your newsfeed to post updates on your own or openly communicate with your peers with social tags. For social tags we can use @-tags to address a message to someone or several people at once. Additionally we can also use #-tags to create topics ad hoc, which can be followed by others right away once it has been created on any newsfeed on any site within the whole SharePoint environment. Like this, SharePoint combines the worlds of Facebook and Twitter in one feed. Which makes it a very powerful and exciting communication medium.
So basically in your MySite newsfeed you should see stuff what is important and relevant for you, rather than being CC-spammed in your e-mail inbox.
Consolidated tasks
Another very powerful social productivity feature is the consolidated task list. Within your MySite SharePoint pulls all the tasks together which are assigned to you from any site within the SharePoint environment. So this saves a lot of time for you in keeping track of your to dos and deadlines. Rather than pulling the information manually from each and every project site, I get an overview about everything what’s going on, on one location.
Follow up functionality
Also a very neat functionality is to create a task out of a newsfeed message. You can follow up newsfeed messages from your newsfeed timeline by “following it up”. SharePoint will automatically create a task in your MySite. This again is also a great time saver, since I don’t need to navigate to the task list anymore and type in the task manually.
As an example: Tim sends a message to me via the newsfeed functionality in our team site “@Jussi Have you checked out the #Digistars blog already? You might find that interesting! Cheers @Tim.”
So this message would pop up of course in the team site site feed but also on my own personal newsfeed in my Mysite. I would see that message, but I don’t have the time to look at the blog right now, so I would follow it up and look at it later. With couple of clicks, the same message will appear in my task list on my MySite, which can also be synchronised to Outlook. From there I won’t forget to look at the blog later on when I have more time.
Very useful indeed! :-)
Social Search
The new search engine of SharePoint 2013 listens much more on people generated metadata. So everything and anyone you follow will have an impact on your personal search results. Two different persons can get a total different search result while using the same search phrase.
So SharePoint remembers which search terms you have used the most, which term lead to clicks where you found what you were looking for and which persons were involved in creating and editing the content source.
Additionally SharePoint offers a feature called “People Card”. With the help of the people card you can ad hoc start connecting with the people who have been involved in creating content.
Ok, now we have seen the most convenient social features SharePoint 2013 introduced to the community. Of course all existing MySite features like status updates and personal document stores are still available in the new version as well.
Having said that @Digistarsreaders have fun #Connecting and #Socializing with SharePoint 2013
SharePoint, Strength and #-Tags
Ser Jussi
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