With the Advent of the
Web 2.0, the concept of Social Networking has experienced a great deal of
visibility as a means to increase productivity, through shared knowledge
amongst groups of people or communities. And with this concept really taking
off on the Internet, there is acknowledgment, within organizations, of the
fact that the community concept really is a means of developing, harnessing and
maintaining long term organizational memory, and communities are in fact an
effective way for organizations to capture unstructured data, and to share
knowledge outside of the traditional structural boundaries.
It has been further
observed that Social Networking within enterprises can also assist in the
extinction of Information and capability silos by identifying subject matter
experts and resources. The fact that now it could be possible to discover and
identify people, teams and information related to their specific initiatives
and efforts, through an understanding of the web model, has information workers
wanting these social networking applications at their disposal more than ever.
And even Organizations have started to realize the potential of these
applications and as a mechanism to unlock and surface unstructured data and
valuable information.
Having said that, it is
absolutely essential for organizations to invest in, and choose the right kind
of application to host these solutions. And we are going to discuss, in this article,
about how SharePoint’s inherent Social Networking capabilities, along with its
robust platform could just be the right application for you.
Some of the Social
Networking Components of SharePoint
User Profile: This is the Profile information of a user, where
users store their personal information.
My Sites: These are personalized Sites created for each user,
allowing him to create blogs, wikis, store his personal documents, Share
information with others, etc.
Organizational Hierarchy Web Part: This
Web Part shows, where the user is situated, in terms of hierarchy, in the
corporate pantheon.
Colleagues Web Part: This web Part allows the user
to mention who colleagues are and define his relationship with them though the
use of Meta data.
People Search: This feature allows users to be able to search for
colleagues based on filter criteria.
Though SharePoint, does
not have all the components to be called a complete Social Networking Solution,
such as bookmarking, Tagging, the ability to publish this internal data on the
Internet, and more extensive support for Forms based authentication, etc, but
nevertheless, It is a great platform for building robust and flexible
Enterprise 2.0 solutions that are extensible and secure, and leverage Web 2.0
in a holistic fashion to empower business users, and help organizations become
more agile, efficient and productive, all in a seamless and secure fashion.,
but it is a great starting point, and given the fact that it is already being
touted as a great publishing and Business platform, and with the progress being
made in the social networking aspects, it is a good platform to bet on.
About OptimusBT,
OptimusBT Microsoft Gold
Certified Partner is a global leader in providing Business solutions that are primarily
sharepoint based and utilize existing client infrastructure. For over 5 years,
OptimusBT has paved the road when implementing complex, global sharepoint solutions in the areas of Sales, Finance, Procurement, Manufacturing, Human Resources,
and others across industry segments around the world.