Social computing technologies are powerful business collaboration tools. Office SharePoint Server 2007 helps ease their deployment and management. In summary, social computing tools:| • | Can help employees exchange information and collaborate on documents. | | • | Need extra attention to security. | | • | Require clear user training and guidelines. |
Social computing technologies such as blogs and wikis have been popular with recreational Web users for years. Now these technologies are changing the way workers collaborate. In fact, 32 percent of companies worldwide already either use or plan to use blogs, while 33 percent use or plan to use wikis, according to a March 2007 executive survey by the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Technology firms report increasing interest in social computing, too. "There’s unbelievable demand for these technologies in the business world," says Tracey Klein, vice president of sales in the Application Development division at Invision.com, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified integrator in Commack, New York. To help satisfy that demand, Microsoft incorporated several social computing features in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, including the ability to create blogs, wikis, and RSS feeds. Using those tools, midsize businesses can equip their employees to share information broadly and to find that information fast. Social computing is changing how we work Blogs, the most common social computing technology, are essentially online journals in which individuals share their views and opinions. Blogs also incorporate reader comments. Business leaders often find them more efficient and interactive than e-mail for conducting wide-ranging conversations on topics of ongoing interest. For example, a chief executive might use a blog on the company intranet to discuss evolving business strategies. Similarly, research and development staff can use them to collect informal input from peers on new product ideas. Some companies use public blogs as marketing and community-building tools that help them collect feedback from customers and partners about new products and business strategies. A wiki (the Hawaiian word for "quick") is a tool that allows multiple people to publish and edit information cooperatively. In a business setting, wikis are ideal for collaborating on documents. For example, human resources employees can use a wiki to refine job descriptions, while a design team can use another to develop new product specifications. By putting a wiki on your extranet, you can invite partners and even customers into a conversation. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a widely used mechanism for publishing regularly updated content, such as news headlines. Businesses can use RSS to help employees stay current with new content on blogs and wikis without visiting numerous Web sites separately. Deploying and managing social computing technologies gets easierTo get started, ease your IT management burden by looking for solutions that package together as many social computing applications as possible. Office SharePoint Server 2007, for example, combines many popular social computing technologies in a single package, so that you don’t have to install and maintain multiple applications. Office SharePoint Server 2007 also offers built-in support for both blogs and wikis, so employees can intuitively create them on their own. In addition, the application provides options for editing content. Employees can use the text editor in Office SharePoint Server 2007, which includes spelling- and grammar-checking tools, along with other common word-processing features, or they can use the familiar editing tools in Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Office Outlook. In addition, Office SharePoint Server 2007 comes with: | • | Sophisticated history and version management features, so that employees can track and undo changes. | | • | RSS features that enable blog and wiki owners to create feeds that distribute new content automatically to employees’ RSS client applications. | | • | A personal profile feature called My Site (similar to social networking sites such as Windows Live Spaces, Facebook, and hi5), where employees can describe their skills, professional interests, and past work experience. Using the enterprise search functionality in Office SharePoint Server 2007, employees can scan My Site pages for colleagues who have a particular expertise. |
Finally, the Community Kit for SharePoint includes a wide variety of free add-ons you can use to enhance the Office SharePoint Server 2007 standard blog and wiki functionality. For example, the kit comes with design templates that can improve the appearance of your blog. How to ensure success with social computingLike many software deployments, a successful social computing deployment takes thorough planning. First, clearly define goals and success metrics, and ensure that you can link your social computing initiative to larger business strategies. "Blogging for the sake of blogging may not be the best use of corporate resources," Klein observes. Below are some other considerations: | • | Infrastructure requirements. Blogs, wikis, and RSS applications generate more network traffic, so you might need additional bandwidth. You might also need extra storage capacity to accommodate all of the new content that employees create. Finally, include social computing tools in your company’s backup routines, so there’s no risk of losing valuable content. | | • | Security and data privacy requirements. Office SharePoint Server 2007 simplifies security by integrating with your Microsoft Windows Server infrastructure. For example, you can use existing permissions and group policies in Active Directory to restrict access to sensitive matters, such as compensation schemes and performance reviews. You can also establish access rules for My Site pages to restrict individuals other than a direct manager from seeing personal information such as home phone numbers. | | • | Governance policies. Define standards for the appropriate use of your company’s social computing systems. "You want people to use these tools, but you also want them to focus on their job," Klein notes. In addition, set clear guidelines against offensive or derogatory language, and establish penalties for disclosing legally safeguarded information. Then, perform periodic audits to confirm that employees are following the rules. Office SharePoint Server 2007 can assist with governance enforcement, for example, by giving blog and wiki owners the option to review new content before others can see it. | | • | Training requirements. Despite its popularity, social computing is new to some people, so be sure to provide training. "Certain groups can pick it up quite easily, but for other groups, it’s a bit of a change from how things were done in the past," observes Deon Taylor, a business solution architect at Sydney, Australia–based Strategic Data Management Pty Ltd., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with an extensive Office SharePoint Server 2007 practice. | | • | Pilot projects. Before deploying social computing tools company-wide, consider running a pilot project in a branch office or in a single department. That can help you identify planning oversights before they cause major problems. The time to experiment with social computing technology, though, is now. "These are tools people are using every day in their [free] time on the Internet," Klein observes. "It only makes sense to use them in the office, too." |
 | Rich Freeman is a Seattle-based freelance writer specializing in business and technology. He has more than 14 years of strategic marketing and communications experience in the IT industry. |
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