Social Computing with Microsoft Sharepoint 2007: Implementing Applications for Sharepoint to Enable Collaboration and Interaction in the Enterprise (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

Social computing is a fast-moving technology, and many of the concepts grow or change every year. Use this book as part of your research for how you will implement any of the social computing applications, but also use online research for keeping updated on new changes to this exciting area of software today. Although social computing applications can be written on any framework or even on their own, we have taken a unique approach to help you understand the landscape of social computing as it relates to SharePoint 2007.

Each chapter introduces you to the concept of the chapter, for example, the RSS chapter gives a brief overview of what RSS is and the history behind it. Then the chapter provides a section of how this is possible with SharePoint 2007. Finally, if there are any extensions that would make it easier to work with social computing and SharePoint, such as open source code or products you can buy, we briefly discuss these options so you are aware of them for your organization.

This book was written for anyone who is approaching social computing applications for an enterprise. This would include developers, managers, directors, and even C-level executives. This book is designed to help decision makers learn about the concepts and understand how they might implement them in their own company. Although this book does reach out to developers, most of the chapters give examples with either built-in options and configuration or show how to use code already installed on SharePoint.

Anyone interested in social computing and the topics covered in each chapter could read this book to get an understanding of what each concept has. The You Try It sections do require having SharePoint 2007 and some of the features installed to actually attempt them. If you are not an IT professional or developer, this is the perfect opportunity for you to start a discussion with your technology group to try out some of these wonderful tools.

The book is designed to allow the reader to start from not knowing about social computing to being able to have an understanding of the concepts and how he or she would use them in his or her company. To accomplish this, you can read the book from front cover to back, or you can pick the specific chapter that your organization is interested in. Because so many people want to know exactly what the topics are and what they are about, we have organized the book into chapters that work together, but stand alone and provide complete coverage of a topic. We have also used a very simple and direct naming of each chapter so you can quickly recognize what the chapter is about and what it covers.

This book covers the major concepts, applications, and implementations of social computing and shows how they are built with SharePoint 2007 today. As you noticed earlier, this is a fast-moving area of computing. Where SharePoint 2007 does not have the capability today, we made sure and explained how you could extend SharePoint 2007 with open source or products you can purchase. We did not cover every product on the market, but we gave you any idea of what you can look for when you are trying to extend SharePoint.

The first two chapters provide the introduction for people new to social computing and how people will have to manage a social computing project. The following chapters break out each concept into a chapter to make it easy to get up to speed and understand what the topic is about.

• Chapter 1 provides the introduction to what social computing is and the concepts behind social computing applications and discusses some of the technologies your organization might use to implement these concepts.

• Chapter 2 describes how to build a successful project around social computing. This chapter takes you through steps that can make your team more successful, discusses the adoption of the application, and points out pitfalls that may get in your way to avoid them.

• Chapter 3 discusses content tagging as one of the fundamental pieces of social computing. This chapter shows what content tagging is and how to use it to effectively build a solution with more visibility.

• Chapter 4 demonstrates how to use wikis to build solutions for your organization and gives you hands-on examples of what the wiki can do for your company.

• Chapter 5 covers the popular topic of blogs. This chapter shows you how to set up your own blog for your organization as well as discuss why you would even want a blog.

• Chapter 6 delves into RSS and shows you what the XML is all about. This chapter covers what RSS is and how to consume it in your organization to successfully increase communication.

• Chapter 7 gives an overview of social networking and SharePoint 2007 My Sites and what is required for social computing in a company.

• Chapter 8 demonstrates what podcasting is and how you might implement this concept in your organization. Podcasting is a fast-growing concept that many people are using for communication and entertainment. This chapter will show how to use SharePoint 2007 to enhance the communication in your organization.

• Chapter 9 explains what mashups are and how you might use them today. Mashups are still growing in organizations and still need some customizations to make them powerful, but you will understand the concepts and an overview of how to create these powerful applications.

• Chapter 10 covers presence and OCS/Windows Live as a central part of social computing. This chapter helps to understand how you might enhance your projects just by including a valuable part of social computing and being connected to other people.

• Chapter11 discusses some of the forward-looking technologies such as interactive media, video, and communication. These technologies are still being transformed from the general use applications to powerful implements that include pieces of many of the social computing concepts.

• Chapter 12 talks about social computing search and how to use search to find the information you are looking for. In social computing applications, finding data is critical to the success of the application, and this chapter introduces how to accomplish that with SharePoint 2007.

Social Computing with Microsoft® SharePoint® 2007

Social computing is a fast-moving and constantly evolving technology that aims to increase communication, encourage collaboration, and enhance productivity among people and resources. This book covers the major concepts, applications, and implementations of social computing and shows you how they are built with SharePoint 2007 today.

Serving as an introduction to social computing applications, the book answers fundamental questions such as what are social computing applications, how can these applications be used in my organization, how do I manage a social computing project, and what are the major components and applications that currently exist? The authors walk you through the necessary steps for adopting social computing applications and they prepare you for the pitfalls you may face—and explain how to avoid them.

You'll discover that social computing applications can be written on any framework, or even on their own, and you'll gain an understanding of the landscape of social computing as it relates to SharePoint 2007. With astrong comprehension of how to use SharePoint 2007 with social computing, you can promote collaboration and interaction between people in an organization through the use of blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups, and more.

What you will learn from this book

• How to use content tagging to effectively build solutions

• The benefits of using wikis

• Why your company should have a blog and how you can create it

• How to incorporate SharePoint 2007 with podcasting

• Various ways to use mashups

• The importance of using social computing search in order to have a successful application

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who is interested in using the concepts, applications, and implementations of social computing. Experience working with social computing is not necessary.

Wrox guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think. Written by programmers for programmers, they provide a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

The concept of social networking has experienced a great deal of visibility as a means to increase the productivity of information workers and organization members. Social networking as a concept involves the ability for a technology platform to provide enhanced information and interaction capabilities with regard to people and resources. Within an organization, the goal of a technology platform providing social networking is to enhance communication, collaboration and bring about productivity increases regarding day to day activities and projects. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 adds a significant social networking context to its existing collaboration and communication features and capabilities. By providing a framework for the establishment of user profiles and the ability to understand the organizational hierarchy between these profiles, Office SharePoint Server can easily connect information workers and organization members together.

This book describes the fundamentals of Social Computing using SharePoint Server and discusses the different productivity and communication product enhancements, including blogs, wikis and technologies such as RSS and Mashups. Through real world examples, this book is ideal for those who implement these technologies, for the end users, developers who work on the specific applications once they have been implemented, and anyone else who is involved in getting social computing up and running in a large organization.

Forward by Lawrence Liu (Senior Technical Product Manager and the Community Lead for SharePoint Products and Technologies at Microsoft).

1. Intro.

Web 2.0 (loosely) defined.

Overview.

Business Value and relevance to the enterprise.

Enterprise 2.0.

Open Source.

2. Taxonomy, site structure, governance (Building Effective Collaboration Sites).

3. Content Tagging.

Why Tag Content?

Surface data using tagged content.

How tagging connects items in a site.

4. Wikis.

How Wikis Work.

Online uses of Wikis (MediaWikis).

Functionality of Wikis.

Common usage scenarios.

Explain Wiki History and Versioning.

Tokens.

Extensions with open source and third party tools (cks) stuff.

History.

Components.

Pages.

Open source implementations.

Example sites.

5. Blogs.

History.

Reasons for Blogging.

SharePoint Blogs.

Possibilities with Blogs (CKS).

Adding blog components.

Using category tagging.

6. RSS and ATOM.

What are RSS Feeds.

History of RSS.

Search Results RSS.

Lists with RSS.

Applications to view RSS.

Email vs RSS.

7. Social Networking.

Online community leads the enterprise.

Add integration with extended application (Fuzzy).

SharePoint My Sites.

User Profile Information.

Value of SC applications.

Example Sites.

8. Podcasting.

Determine your audience.

How to pin point your target audience.

Creating an archive.

Provide content and information relevant to the listeners.

9. Mashups.

Reasons to assemble data.

Types of data sources.

Visualization on the web.

Example using virtual earth.

Example sites.

10. Presence and OCS/Live.

11. Interactive Media/Video and communication.

Video.

Effective communication with newsletters.

Using Publishing sites for PR Departments.

12. Search.

Surfacing the right data in an organization.

Using Search to surface data.

SharePointPedia.

Filtered Results.

Governance –a subset of every chapter rather than a chapter on its own.