Although Microsoft would claim that during the design process of SharePoint 2007 it invented social networking before Facebook and LinkedIn did, the times have changed somewhat since then and SharePoint 2007 wasnt really as social capable as we are now accustomed to.
In this post I would like to give an overview of all the cool new social features which I think will make SharePoint that much more interesting from a knowledge management perspective.
Tagging & Noteboard
In my previous post on SharePoint 2010 Term store and other metadata enhancements - Orbit One Blog I talked about the new tagging possibilities in SharePoint. The cool thing is that this functionality is present on all pages within SharePoint at the top right of the page.
So by clicking on these buttons you can quickly tag en note pages that you see within SharePoint but even nicer is to put a button on your favorites bar to tag and note stuff on the internet as well
– Well for that just press the button once on a SharePoint page make the link on the screen a favorite.
The tagging function works with autocomplete which is nice and on the same screen you see recent activity on the item.
SharePoint profiles
Already since SharePoint 2003, users of SharePoint have had a profile with information about themselves. Normally these profiles get stale from the moment it got first updated on the first working day of a new employee :-)
The new version of SharePoint offers some new features that might be interesting in this respect:
Integration of the Microsoft Knowledge Network
The Microsoft Knowledge Network was introduced by Microsoft as an add-on for SharePoint 2007. It automates the discovery and sharing of undocumented knowledge and relationships, mining your communications for keywords and relationships within Outlook and updating your SharePoint profile accordingly. This way enabling you to quickly locate who knows whom and who knows what within your constantly changing organization.
Now the combination of Outlook 2010 and SharePoint 2010 gives you the opportunity to do just that out-of-the-box. It’s called Colleague and Outlook Social Connector
Sync SharePoint profile with other systems (social networks, Active Directory)
It is now possible to sync your SharePoint profile back to Active Directory including your profile picture. This way it will be easier to maintain data in your Active Directory. Another cool opportunity would be a Business Connectivity Services (BCS) connection that would sync your SharePoint profile with your profile on a social network, for instance LinkedIn?
So now that you are tagging, noting inside and outside of the firewall and your SharePoint profile is always up to date how will you other people within your organisation benefit from all this data?
Newsfeed
Well with a newsfeed just like you have on common social network sites:
Within your profile you can set the types of updates you want to get in your newsfeed. See the following screenshot for the out-of-the-box settings. Developers can customize the activities that can be followed so you can track custom actions happening in SharePoint as well.
That is it for the new and interesting social networking features in SharePoint.