Wiley Social Computing with Microsoft SharePoint 2007: Implementing Applications for SharePoint to Enable Collaboration and Interaction in the Enterprise
Contents
1. Chapter 1 Social 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 11 Computing 6 A e B ritp ilfriendeed comjsettingsjsersoss Te de i FrirFeed MKEO Services AEE e Dee e Grok e E A A a Lf z be ar Brendon Schwartz Friends Account Sign out lal Home BrendonSchwartz gt Favorites Change picture Embed in a web page gt Personal gt Professional Feed Comments Likes BrandonSchwartz Friends Add edit services now iat Me Blogging Photos Video My Services E Blog ee Flickr Seesmic Rooms Tumbir 2 Picasa Web Albums Vimeo SharePoint Talk amp SmugMvg BS YouTube B hours ago Bookmarking Zooomr Social Computing S a delicious Comments brendonschwanz ba iH Diigo Status D Disqus Le 8 Furl brightkite com Intense Debate gore C Google Shared Stuff Gmail Google Talk aias Ma sen BB identica i mei Everyone 33 Mister Wong Jaiku GB Amazon com StumbleUpon E Plurk E Linkedin Bi Pownce O Nettix Books vitar E Netvibes 9 Goodreads fJ Potwore Li LibraryThing Music SlideShare iLike tayoy rne Lastm Upcoming 1g P Pandora Yelp ED Google Reader mix Reddit 2008 FriendFeed About 8 API Terms af Semice Privacy Pe O internet Aim Figure 1 6 Social Computing for the Enterprise Social computing has the capability to enhance and increase productivity in an organization When extending an organization s capabilities around social computing make sure there are business2. Page 7 Chapter 1 Social Computing Wwerw myspace com orn Go J E hetpssHeas myspace comitom wit x 5 3 oa z k e MySnae com Tom 33 Mads Sarte Morica CALI Gh Do lo e Greek ig myspace com a piace tor trends in Tom is listening to the unreleased oasis album 33 years old exdusive on myspace com oasis Santa Monica CALIFORNIA United States Tom s Latest Blog Entry Subscribe to this Blog myspace music update number 3 view more Last Login 10 17 2008 music update number 2 view more Mood content View My Pics Videos presidential debates live on myspace tonight view more myspace music update view more Seat eewens gt forward t Friend rolling out the new nav and home view more Adhd to Frinnds E Add to Favorites View All Blog Entries ims call nlock user IES Add to Group i Rank User tom s Blurbs About me m and I m here to help you Send me a message if you re MySpace URL y hing Before asking me question please check the hepi wewe rmyspace com tom used by anything Hef king question pi heck th FAQ to sew if your question has already been amswarw d t may have been an your friend list when you signed up tf you don t iia want me to be click Edit Friends end remove me Us Against the World Also feel free to tell me what features you want to see on Christina Milian MySpace and if I think i
3. as independent web sites or even SharePoint to integrate to the user profile stores of the social networking sites Some common application characteristics that typify the concept of a social networking application include features such as Q User profile picture How can you be sure if the John Smith asking to be your friend is the John Smith you know Look at his profile picture and see it that s the right John Smith Detailed user profile information Social Networks rely on user profiles to help match one user to another The ability to store rich user profile information in a social networking site is a must Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 6 Chapter 1 Social Computing Q List of friends and colleagues It can t be considered a social network if every user is an island unto themselves Social networks work to connect users with each other and maintaining the list of relationships is an easy way to browse through these social connections Q Activity or change log The activity or change log keeps track of everything a user does inside of the social application and allows the user s friends to read and react to those changes For example if a Facebook user posts a new profile picture friends of the Facebook user can make comments about the new photograph Q Threaded or unthreaded discussion board The discussion board allows users to talk back and forth to each other Q Subscribe for updates By using
4. as remote access with a multitude of web services Building a YouTube com style Media Site Before looking at additional concepts and definitions look at the concepts of building an application that provides social feedback to the users of the site and see how it would provide benefits in an organization Many organizations have training videos videos from presidents or CEOs or even employees providing direction on a single subject These videos can be difficult for users to watch and especially hard to find depending on where they are located If they are located on a single user s machine the user will need to email the videos or upload them to a file share that has proper rights for the users that will need to use them SharePoint 2007 can help resolve these issues The first step is open a SharePoint site and follow these steps to create a video subsite Chapter 11 will go into more depth on interactive media but for now these will create a simple YouTube style site 1 Click View All Site Content and then select Create Under the Web Pages section select Sites and Workspaces Enter the title description and URL name In the Template Selection area select the Collaboration tab Then select Blank Site Keep the remaining options the same and click Create DARUN In the new blank site follow the same steps but this time create a picture library named Video Links and add the following fields Q Video URL This
5. facebook com pagesiFacebookGang Se 04 17 Updated Inbox MP3 Download ht more More in Comedy Manage your messages and invites with ease MUNG Lunice x LAZERSWORD Gucci From Z04ohs ae ee Figure 1 1 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 5 E Chapter 1 Social Computing The social bookmarking concept is typified by including some common features such as Q Availability of link information title link and so forth Much like a media file is the core of a social media site the link of bookmark information is the core of a social bookmarking site Q Ability to categorize and comment on a link Again like a social media site allows comments and tagging for media files a social bookmarking site frequently allows the bookmarking user to categorize and comment on the link information Q Track the number of people saving the bookmark In order to elevate the most requested book marks the system must track each bookmark s relative popularity Q User profile and link to profile page Users of a social application take advantage of the user pro file to identify themselves and their activities in the social application Q Subscribe for updates By using a subscription technology such as email or RSS feeds the social application reminds the user to come back and continue to participate in the conversation and the social experience One of the most common sites for viewing links of content that has been saved an
6. personal communications Chapter 1 Social Computing subscribes to Q User profile and link to profile page m Current or last status posting Ability to mark items as favorites Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 Q List of friends and colleagues who subscribe to communications from the user and who the user Twitter brendonschwarlz Windows Infernel Explorer Go ae es le Tvitter f brendonectnartc ne at ni n Ce eS E htp compbrendonschwvarte Twitter pion Dn Dn pen Dn Da pen Dn Dn mian Do Da mien Dn Da mien Dn Da Yy Workin Social with all together now lam Telligent The real thing georgedeanng or lucky most important tip of the Gay today 12 2 Server make sure and skin it scottw good luck and have fun at in Telligent 3 07 We OS aie Se Kame or locaton Hey there brendonschwartz is using Twitter is a free service that lets you keep in touch with people using the web your phone or IM Join today to start receiving brendonschwartz s updates Vy Wy Wy Wy Wy Wy Vy om brendonschwartz mranlett on Wrox book uting with Microsoft SharePoint 2 007 almost done putting it SQL Craftsman what could de better than working everyday on someth ning you love ang having people support what you are doing a igeorgedearing funny everyone said branding was important that was my g g y y g one of the most mportant parts ot your sile ShareP
7. reasons that drive the addition of software It is important to make sure the solution is actually enhancing the user s experience and not just creating more work for him or her to maintain Some of the common business problems that can be solved will be centered around communication and collaboration These two areas are the primary focus of answering questions like How will a blog help me and Why do my developers want a wiki The two major areas that enterprise social computing provides key values include improved communi cation and building collaboration Improved Communication Many companies struggle to get information out to all of their employees in meaningful and fast ways without creating too much of a burden of time on the individual employee The improved communication 11 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 12 E Chapter 1 Social Computing aspects of a social computing solution will increase the speed at which an organization can accomplish tasks An example of this might be something as simple as using an RSS feed to pull down informa tion about company news only when an employees is ready to read it This improved communication usually works well with internal PR PA groups and resonates well with upper management looking to streamline its corporate communications divisions Strategies for building a good communications plan using social computing techniques frequently plan to implement technolo
8. the conversation and the social experience An excellent example of a social media application would be the popular web site YouTube as shown in Figure 1 1 below Although the example shows YouTube which supports video content almost exclusively applications for audio such as Microsoft s Zune Social and image applications such as Flickr should also be included in the category of social media applications These sites take media and allow users to interact with that media The most common social user interactions are the popularity counters as well as the comments and ratings systems Social Bookmarking With all of the information users deal with today it can be difficult for a user to find the right information he or she is looking for Social bookmarking applications allow users to work together to mark items as 3 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 4 Chapter 1 Social Computing useful and save it to a central location where other users can benefit from the discovery These sites usually allow users to group bookmarks into categories and will frequently identify the most popular bookmarks for all users to see Sign Up QuickList 0 Help Signin Site Home Videos Channels Community Videos Search advanced Upload Videos being watched right now SMEP BROTHERS JULY 25 GET FREE VOICETONES aa a mt 01 58 01 35 una 04 02 08 28 Promoted Videos Teil
9. think the site must have round borders and a shiny interface like Figure 1 8 to make a site a Web 2 0 site but this is becoming less and less true There are still certain design elements such as larger text and cute buttons but none of them is required to have a Web 2 0 site Blogs One of the most popular concepts in the Web 2 0 space is a blog a space that allows the user to write content about a topic The user could create a personal blog a blog about technology or in the case of this book a blog about business or a facet of the business such as a specific product line Blogs provide a 14 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 15 Chapter 1 Social Computing way to communicate important information to the readers Some common features found on a blog are RSS feeds comments and content tagging Chapter 5 explores blogs in more detail wie fae What is this site About this Site Quisque eu sem sed lacus This site was set up to show the different Graffiti CMS themes that you can apply and to tincleu consectetuer et eget use the new Graffiti Extras to let you select which Theme to try If you have your own tempus aget dolore Blandt sad theme and would like to get it on the site please send an email to etiam dolore nullam dolore support devcow com Thanks and let me know if you find any Continue reading Select a Theme Post2 Thursday February 21 2008 ay Mo
10. will be used when the user clicks the URL to view the video N Once again click Create This time create a new document library named Videos 8 Now upload the videos add the video links and place the video links on the default aspx page of the site The site might look very similar to Figure 1 7 below You will probably not want to upload large video files to the document libraries In fact you might want to have them on a streaming media server in a production environment 13 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 14 Chapter 1 Social Computing Socal Computing Book gt Company YouTube Welcome System Account My Site My Links W zi Company YouTube All Sites x P Advanced Search sGompany YouTube View All Site Content n Videos Links id cbs Video URL ap Videos Links A y z SORTS Creating and Using Create user defined content Microsoft Documents wade Content Types in types using inheritance and Wi ws Windows SharePoint then configure a document Windov t Servi Videos Services 3 0 library to use these content areroin TvICes z types Lists Creating and Use Visual Studio to create a Sites Testing Features custom feature and an with Windows associated assembly DLL People and Groups SharePoint Services 8 Recycle Bin 3 0 Creating a Custom Create a custom page layout Page Layout with using the Web Content SharePoint Server Managemen
11. Eye To Eye Defibri AngelYKhriz La Love Will Tear Us A G Unit Rider Pt CBS universaimusicgroup neworder universalmusicgroup Featured Videos See More Featured Videos Step Brothers In Theaters July Legin to rate video Featured Most Viewed Most Discussed Top Favorites 25th kkhk From St hers 1572 ratings Holographic Text Messages Comments 12 HOLOTEXT Messages are hip and cool Advertisement Want to personalize this homepage Sign in to YouTube now Green Guru Challenge m michelekauf Welcome to our Recycle in Style challenge 199 639 ign im weih your Googl ot we want to see how green you can go Showus more 02 59 More in Howto amp Style TOP FILMS FROM AROUND THE WORLD SEE MORE The Shures Uh Oh Life is Calling Add us on myspace 7 http www myspace comitheshures D Thanks kkk 2008 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION SUBMIT A VIDEO AND WIN A CHANCE TO 04 27 ATTEND CONVENTION PLEASE SUBSCRIBE We w more More in Music BOXeD From spyfims2007 What s New http Avww spyfilms com Ori Ben Shabat makes fE Video Annotations a new piece called BOXeD Add interactive commentary and links to 01 03 your videos More in Film amp Animation mr ira New Address Book Facebook Gangsta F flacebookgangsts Organizing your YouTube friends and Facebook Me V 472 435 contacts just got a lot simpler httpAvww
12. Schwartz Wall Info Photos Boxes Edit Info Section v A Fan informator Basa Information View Photos o Atlanta GA Exit My Profle S Male Manetta GA Joticnanp Stan Married to Heid York Schwartz inte something about yoursel Personal Information a r SharePoint 2007 and al Sings Mrosoft T s easy to lead when you org Determneton is not when you contnue to work towards someting Inonwing the end resut but rather when you are wiling to push ahead when yeu do net krew the outcome About Me Personal Family amp very important to me and as such my wife Hedi means the urent work lo me She amazes me with her strength and resolve to keep us Shalala ta ceng every day Her compeasion and pazence to deal vath m ae ends 1 aiso have two wonderful sisters who sre successful earth and caring To top that off T have the best parents in the world 1am a bucky guy Friends 2 280 frends See al Professional x A 1 work n the field of computers and focus on Microsoft technolboges Some accolades that have received are the Ma osoft MVP for MOSS Microsoft Office SharePoint Server MVP for ASP NET anc A enjoyed working herd to 3 improve the Microsoft community over the last 54 years have aso Lemrence Jer ad co authored a beck and arades on SharePont bu Pattensude Sch Contact Information rrent Tewm fet inberly Education and Work Donohue a r Rariett Colege pink Computer Science Ss ih Se Pebblebr ook High School S6 83 Appli
13. Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 1 Social Computing If you are reading this book then you are either interested in or have heard about software referred to as social Social computing applications are those built on the various supporting technologies and concepts that are designed to enhance a person s experience on the computer by including the inter actions and experiences of multiple users A number of different categories of social applications have been identified by the continuing Web 2 0 trend including social media social bookmarking and social networks Nowhere has this trend toward social applications been more apparent than on the Internet Each of the different social application categories have been exemplified by numer ous web sites that are very popular today in both the mainstream media and countless individuals personal use Some of the best known public sites are Facebook MySpace YouTube and LinkedIn Web sites are only one example of social computing applications There are many types of social computing applications that can be built When building a social computing application it is impor tant to think of the audience the application is being created for The problems solved by an Internet site or public facing corporate web site are going to be very different than the problems solved for employees of a company using internally available resources This could mean that most people using a web
14. XMLHttpRequest which never went away despite the introduction of AJAX and related objects using JavaScript to avoid the need to deploy or install any additional AJAX frameworks on servers Silverlight JavaScript and AJAX provide powerful data driven web pages but people are increasingly looking for extremely rich and interactive sites For years Abode Flash has answered this need for rich interactivity Flash is an animation heavy programming environment that requires a unique set of skills to work with To provide NET developers with tools for performing this rich set of functionality Microsoft introduced a technology called Silverlight allowing developers to create powerful user interfaces using an XML based language called XAML JavaScript AJAX and NET Silverlight has been quickly growing and has become an adopted technology in that it is similar to Flash yet is accessible to NET developers Figure 1 10 shows one of Microsoft examples for SharePoint and Silverlight Microsoft has now created a set of recommendations for using Silverlight with SharePoint called the Microsoft Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint These guidance packages called Software Services Blueprints have a number of compelling scenarios that are worth investigating The Software Services Blueprints will have many scenarios like Outlook and SharePoint Here is an 20 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 21 Chapter 1 Social Computin
15. a subscription technology such as email or RSS feeds the social application reminds the user to come back and continue to participate in the conversation and the social experience 2 Delicious Windews Internet Explorer Go e mokes Be de pp vekins delicious social bookmarking Your bookmarks will organize themselves Sollections wi naturally Leam More Search the biggest collection of bookmarks in the universe Search Dene searcn Eee Bookmarks 3 The most popular bookmarks on Delicious right now See more Popular bookmarks oi B08 The 15 dumbest names for Web 2 0 startups s ss Poputsr Tage u web2 0 namng startup branding business cein bbg video YouTube Obama Roasts McCain at Al Smith Dinner save 114 eohware E polices obama humor vieo funny gt Fore music programing h5 Fic Second Sight 1 3 s1 wescesan zarah5 Fic Second Sight 1 3 save su brendonryan psd bss sissh fic reference tutorial an Ea Ajaxian The bane and choice of Rich Text Editors save 104 wyalwyg javascript edtor apx wel howto javazcrt Ruby On Rails Security Guide save 145 ima securty rais rubyonrais y tutorial development goog paulhammond org Conditional classnames save 107 Hrapiration ces e himi con tonal hacks photogrssny nowa EJE AS GUREMERR EA TLRS NBonin ABELVRAAY IY save s E mem f O interret Aim Figure 1 2 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am
16. application type is most well known as a tool to connect with people and friends Some business users still do not see the value in having connections and data available for searching but there are many business values that can be achieved by having this type of application Common traits found in social networking applications are friend lists profile information and stream of the user s friends changes An approach to social networking using SharePoint is explored in chapter 7 Enterprise 2 0 Enterprise 2 0 is taking the Web 2 0 concepts and applications and applying them to internal company initiatives This type of activity usually happens when an executive would like to foster more collabora tion and communication within the organization Be aware that the term Web 2 0 can mean many things to people so designing applications or explaining the concepts of what Web 2 0 means in the enterprise requires explicit descriptions to prevent unintentionally underdelivering on promises As mentioned earlier it is relatively simple to start by using some of the functionality that SharePoint provides with blogs wikis or RSS feeds This can be a simple way to start adding new features to internal sites without adding much risk One big difference between the way public sites operate rather than corporate sites is the governance and polices that must be applied to sensitive data When a user is contributing content on most Internet web sites it is
17. atic subroutine that can be called at a later time lt script type text javascript gt lt CDATA var theForm document forms aspnetForm if theForm theForm document aspnetForm function __doPostBack eventTarget eventArgument if theForm onsubmit theForm onsubmit false theForm __EVENTTARGET value eventTarget theForm __ EVENTARGUMENT value eventArgument theForm submit HAM NE lt script gt lt script src WebResource axd d Ueyb Jxh5 PeDBgOXK nV102 amp t 633326287538634355 type text javascript gt lt script gt lt script gt var MSOWebPartPageFormName aspnetForm lt script gt All of the variables that are created outside of a function call are global and can be used in the functions on the page or linked scripts The easiest way to view a page to see the JavaScript and linked files is to right click on the page and select View Source The HTML of the page as well as the JavaScript that is run will be displayed in the default viewer such as Notepad Although JavaScript is available on almost every Internet browser application today it is not a require ment when building a social computing application In fact there are times when other technologies or even a full page refresh might make an application more usable When JavaScript makes changes to the page it can be challenging to get back to exactly what the user was doing if he or she presses the Back or Ref
18. b page to an external file or actually place the JavaScript directly in the web page in ques tion The code below is a sample of some of the actual SharePoint JavaScript files that are referenced by SharePoint pages and loaded whenever a page is opened lt script type text javascript language javascript src _layouts 1033 core js rev S5dt4K8TJGVTYU9IHrW6enw 3D 3D defer gt lt script gt lt script type text javascript language javascript src _layouts portal js rev cRI8b5r5N 2BkLhIuWR031Cg 3D 3D gt lt script gt lt script type text javascript language javascript src _layouts 1033 ie55up js rev Ni7 2Fj2ZV 2FzCvd0 9IXYSSWVA 3D 3D gt lt script gt 18 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 19 E Chapter 1 Social Computing lt script type text javascript language javascript src _layouts 1033 search js rev yqBjpvg 2Foi3KG5XV 2FStmA 3D 3D defer gt lt script gt lt script type text javascript language javascript src _layouts 1033 EditingMenu js rev 04 2BTJbLGM9AF 07 theU 2BW6A 3D 3D gt lt script gt The second way is to add the JavaScript code directly to the page it needs to run on Generally when a developer does this he or she will either create a function that can run later or make a call to a function or code that will run as it is parsed in line For example the code below will create a variable run some logic code with an if statement and create a function or programm
19. can be performed this way There are certainly cases where more complex programming that takes advantage of the SharePoint web services API is required Web Services Web services are what is known as a standards based way of retrieving data Web services declare a set of method calls that can be called from another set of code using XML messages and the SOAP standard as the method of communication Although it is possible to create RESTful web services most of the web services today are based on remote procedure calls RPC web services RPC web services use a different XML based standard to pass requests and data around the Internet This RPC communication requires that each side of the communication agree to a contract that defines the available commands and the expected return data types To define a contract for the two endpoints to communicate web services use a language named Web Services Description Language WSDL The WSDL file will contain information such as the endpoints the data types and the interfaces that will be used SharePoint 2007 provides many web services that can be used to work with the system either from remote machines or code that does not have direct access to the object model One major difference between a non SharePoint web service and a SharePoint web service is that the endpoint in a SharePoint web services is virtualized Every call to SharePoint web service is in the form of the site location followed by the web s
20. cations Menu Applicators P h Ak E e At Orire Frends 9 8 oy O internet Ros Figure 1 5 The user profile store provides the storage of individual data as well as enabling rich applications to be built This is why the user profiles are the center of most social applications It provides the data needed to display and connect users without requiring the user to reenter personal data every time they perform an action Social Applications on the Internet Today 10 Dozens of social applications are available on the Internet today In fact there are so many social appli cations that a social application called FriendFeed was created to pull the various updates from all of these disparate social applications into a single content stream Figure 1 6 is the list of 43 social applica tions that FriendFeed allows content to be pulled from and this list of social applications is far from an exhaustive list of social web sites FriendFeed breaks down the four major categories of social applications a bit differently from the way this book does it but it is possible to recognize that social media includes the video photo and music sites while the bookmarking and news lists both fall into the social bookmarking category Conspicuously absent from the FriendFeed list of supported applications are some of the world s most popular social networking applications such as MySpace and Facebook 11 38am Page 10 Schwartz c01 tex V3
21. d marked with reference tags is on del icio us http delicious com as seen in Figure 1 2 This image illustrates how delicious tracks links popularity counters and categories or tags for each link Social Networks Social networks are the most popular type of social applications Social networks were thrust into the spotlight when sites such as Facebook and MySpace achieved their legendary levels of popularity These applications are primarily used as content management systems which help users keep up with friends coworkers and even potential sale leads or new jobs Social networking sites rely heavily on the user profile data This might include information a user enters about himself or herself such as interests age location or work history This data can allow the system to match people based on common information in their profiles It is critical to have accurate and consistent data to make these matches in the profiles In the MySpace profile of Tom below Figure 1 3 it s possible to see that Tom s profile includes basic information about him and his interests which have enabled him to become one of the most heavily friended people on earth with over 247 million MySpace friends To help drive traffic to the site and keep users interested many social networking sites on the Internet have a developer kit and API for building mini social applications or extending the sites themselves This can allow other applications such
22. d not provide a critical business value During the rise of the personal computing era people within companies started to get desktop com puters and companies began to see this as a valuable tool for increasing business communication with remote offices and customers However many companies originally didn t see the value of allowing their employees to be on the Internet for example chatting with friends or surfing personal web sites such as those found on www geocities com one of the first freely available web page hosting sites Another problem during this time was the cost of sending all of this information through the Internet The cost of providing Internet to all households and employees was still a large price to pay Most social comput ing applications rely heavily on transferring larger than normal amounts of data During the mid 1990s many users still had 56K modems or less In most cases it was much less This made it initially diffi cult to have large web sites that were very interactive with rich media or continuously manage instant messaging AOL was one of the first to provide this service to the mass public but it took much longer to finally adopt these standards within companies As the close of the 1990s came Internet bandwidth and the number of computers were no longer a problem As the number of connected machines increased popular new tools like instant messaging and interactive web site portals started to show up D
23. e ments for the team By using RSS feeds SharePoint allows team members to read the announcement during their day without filling their email system and causing fragmentation in their work environ ment Some of the key technologies that are used for building a more collaborative environment tend to include blogs wikis and discussion boards The real value is the ability for multiple people to provide feedback to each other and work on the same set of information without waiting for a strict workflow process For example take an internal instructional document for a software company s product that is designed to help the company s software engineers work more effectively In general there are many engineers working on a single document Because this is a single document there are a number of options that can be considered to enhance the collaboration experience First and most obvious the document can be stored in a SharePoint library This library could require version control and enforce document checkout any time the document is going to be worked on By checking out the document the user is preventing other people from adding information directly to the document while it is in use which could cause one person s changes to be overwritten Unfortunately this process of only allowing a single user at a time does slow down the overall progress of work To share the document it could be emailed to each person on a routing list for review bu
24. e number of companies looking to see who jumps first and was successful doing so As soon as there are a number of large companies that are successful I think there will be a wave of other companies following the trend Competition Many companies don t know what the best solution is yet and they are still evaluating what is out there This can be a problem if your product is just like any other product available For instance some people use LinkedIn and some use Facebook but when you have free access to both you can use both If you had to invest a lot of money into each one you may be forced to evaluate the cost benefit of each and select only one of them to buy What would you do if you had to pick just one Iam sure there are many other factors but I think many customers are getting ready to move and they just need more time and or resources one of which being money It is difficult to change without the availability of these Social networking may be behind right now but I don t think it will be for very long I have been talking with some leading enterprise companies and they are looking at the tools They are looking not only for productivity but also as a requirement to attracting good employees Some of the best and brightest workers have come to expect a certain level of tools at work that help them accomplish their tasks Used with permission from http blogs sharepointguys com brendon web 2 0 enterprise web 2 0 is
25. either update data that might have been requested on a page but doesn t require a full page refresh or can be used to load a page while making a call to a data service that may take longer to load This gives the illusion that the page renders quickly even if all of the data for that page was not ready prior to loading the page An example of how these callbacks are made in SharePoint 2007 can be seen in the RSS feed or the usage reports that are generated as seen in Figure 1 9 RSS Viewer oe oe oe oe oo oe oe om ee Figure 1 9 This new technology really gives developers the power to build amazingly full interactive sites Microsoft noticed that this technology was so helpful that it created Microsoft ASP NET AJAX Microsoft has even included Microsoft ASP NET AJAX into the ASP NET 3 5 as part of the NET Framework installation Because SharePoint is built on ASP NET 2 0 Microsoft ASP NET AJAX is not part of the default instal lation It can still be downloaded and installed separately for ASP NET 2 0 and SharePoint 2007 To help get developers started community members like Daniel Larson created open source toolkits known as the SharePoint AJAX Toolkit When building rich applications using the Microsoft ASP NET AJAX Framework it is important to make sure that it is installed on all of the SharePoint Web Front End WFE servers prior to deploying it to production However developers could simply use the built in method calls to the
26. ementation might not work better for the business Part of the process of building the right social computing applications for an organization is determining the right need and building an application that best solves that need There are four major areas that the concepts can be broken into however these groupings are not hard and fast as many applications span across multiple social concepts These four areas are Q Social media This is the use of bringing interactive media together with user profiles Q Social bookmarking This concept allows users to save content to review later and share with other users Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 3 E Chapter 1 Social Computing Q Social networks This concept focuses on building groups of users that are connected by a shared interest or goal Q Social communication This concept allows users to communicate ideas and information while maintaining a context about each message Social Media Media has always been a popular form of communication beginning with the invention of the radio and television to media streaming over the Internet onto a personal computer Most of the common forms of media do not include direct interaction on the part of the users yet social applications rely on users participating in the application The concept of building applications that use social interaction and media is the blend of these two ideas and it has been a very popular
27. ervice file such as http lt Site gt _vti_bin Lists asmx There are many SharePoint web services and the full description of each web service is outside the scope of this book Feel free to refer to other Wrox Press books such as chapter 5 of Professional SharePoint 2007 Development or the SharePoint documentation on MSDN for more information on the SharePoint web services API Software Services Many social computing services today provide free software use These types of software can range from blogs to social networking pages The next generation of software will most likely have a service offering as well as a standalone offering This might even include full applications such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 The trend with software as a service is to have a free basic version and then charge for support nonadvertising sites and larger scaling capabilities Microsoft Online Services already provides Office Live Meeting Exchange Hosted Services Exchange Online SharePoint Online and Office Communication Online This provides a solution for com panies that want leading edge capabilities but do not want the burden of hosting these services themselves Summary This chapter has provided an overview of what social computing is and the types of applications that are created to achieve the benefits of social computing applications The chapter explored each appli cation s characteristics and demonstrated an implementation of s
28. g explanation directly from the Channel 9 site on what they are http channel9 msdn com wiki softwareplusservicesblueprints Software plus Services Blueprints are a series of source code and guidance packages designed to provide an architectural bridge between vision and implementation by making it easier to build Software plus Services applications aos a p s b TE _ 19 eit Morte suscapet 4 lous eu oas E Figure 1 10 As companies begin to incorporate more Silverlight application into their offerings this set of samples and code is likely to continue to grow to meet the training demands of NET developers looking to learn this new technology REST A common architecture that has been used in many new social computing and Web 2 0 applications is called Representational State Transfer REST This architecture allows calls to data through a resource based representation that can be called using the basic HTTP objects in the browser When an application is built using the principles of REST it is called a RESTful application RESTful applications can mimic the same operations of CRUD methods These CRUD methods are create read update and delete also the common operations for data retrieval and modification Table 1 1 shows the HTML operations and the corresponding type of action that might be called in HTTP request Although the HTTP methods map very well to the CRUD operation
29. gies such as tagging rating and improved search This can hold true with people or documents from a social computing view as the application centers around people and the content they create This is a fundamental difference from traditional enterprise content management ECM systems that are centered on documents SharePoint s key is the ability to provide both of these capabilities and allow the customer to pick what is most important to him or her documents people or both SharePoint doesn t force its users to exclude one way of doing something just because it is using another The most frequently cited example of this combined approach in SharePoint is focused on being able to search for an employee who is hard to find today or finding out who has edited a document Additional business value can be discovered as users solve the problems they have today with actual Web 2 0 concepts not just sample implementations Building Collaboration 12 Building collaboration is the other major aspect of enterprise social computing Enhancing collaboration has been a central tenet of SharePoint ever since its inception as a product For users of SharePoint 2003 this could be seen with the early value of having a Team Site in SharePoint allowing a team to have a single point for work Collaboration and communication are closely tied together and can increase value when used together For instance a SharePoint 2007 Team Site might have a set of announc
30. his reason many companies and consultants want to know what the clear return on investment ROI with these applications can be Enabling Technologies of Social Computing Many technologies make the capabilities of social computing applications possible in today s envi ronment These technologies have evolved over time and will continue to change and grow as new capabilities become available in Internet browsers as well as operating systems JavaScript One of the primary technologies used on the web during the dot com days to make more interactive sites was JavaScript JavaScript allowed developers to program code that would be downloaded as part of the page s content and run inside the Internet user s browser This ability to run in the browser makes JavaScript a client side technology as opposed to server side code which runs only on a central server such as a process fetching data from a database This client side code is a critical part of many applications that want to provide rich interactive experiences for the user There are countless appli cations including numerous social computing applications which take advantage of JavaScript An easy to imagine example is JavaScript code that lets the user confirm friend associations or view pictures without having to wait long periods of time for the page to refresh on each click The two most common ways to add JavaScript to a web page is to either make a programmatic reference on the we
31. int In fact SharePoint provides a set of pages called a My Site for managing user profiles These pages allow users to manage their own personal data as well as view data from other users With SharePoint users can get to the My Site page from many links Some of which are located directly in the collaboration features such as discussion boards Collaboration features that are augmented by the user profile store allow users to work together in a forum that builds on interaction Some prime examples of familiar features include discussion boards surveys and announcements Each one of these features uses the user profile differently but each stores information about the user as he or she performs an action For example the discussion board in Share Point can display the users profile picture that is stored in the user profile store next to each post by that user By using the rich data available in a user s profile social application users can quickly determine who has performed an action or view more information about the person perhaps to ask a follow up question Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 Chapter 1 Social Computing Facebook Brendon Schwartz Windows Internet Explorer Sow GS E betp s neas Fecebock comipectie phpl wil ela m gt Te Be p Fabo Brenden Surmarte A Bl Se pppoe Greek facebook Home pro le Friends Inbox arendon Sdmartz sengs loyer E al Brendon
32. l application is the ability to surface or display and present information that would normally be lost or only occur in a person to person interaction Once the users have entered data into their user profiles they are able to create connections to other people within the application SharePoint allows the surfacing some of this data through the use of people search Using the user profiles as the source location of searched data SharePoint can find people who have similar projects managers or even groups they work in Search can be very powerful but in order to allow search to have a way to display the results the user profile information needs a way to surface that data The most common way is with a user profile page that displays the user profile information in a structured manner The user profile page is a central location from which a user performs the actions on his or her profile In many cases the profile pages also let users review actions they have performed such as adding content and commenting on or tagging content These are usually contained in rollups that are specific to the user and sorted or filtered based on date As can be seen in Figure 1 5 a common Facebook page will contain a profile picture as well as information specific to the user In the business world this would be equivalent to a dashboard into the current application Although Figure 1 5 was of a Facebook site the same kind of information can be stored in SharePo
33. ocial media on SharePoint with the beginnings of a YouTube style site in only eight steps The chapter closed with a brief explanation of the core technologies available to designers of social applications in the Web 2 0 world 23 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 24 E Chapter 1 Social Computing Key takeaways from this chapter include Q While social computing has recently experienced a surge in popularity history teaches that the social nature of computing has existed as long as computer networks have Q Web 2 0 is a buzzword implying a user focused software application that takes advantage of modern web technologies Enterprise 2 0 is the adoption of the same user focused and web tech nologies inside of the enterprise Q Both Web 2 0 in general and social computing specifically offer numerous technical aspects and approaches to problem solving There is no need to use every technology or social concept at once Instead pick the concepts and technologies hat bring value to the business The next chapter will discuss how to embark on a social computing project in the enterprise including advice on assembling a project team designing appropriate corporate governance policies and strategies for building end user adoption 24
34. oint o or Community It is difficult to figure out where to extend SharePoint vs where to a One batty Snor and the other hosts insi e of SharePoint 2 ae ae earch Arendy using Twitter via SMS or IM Finish signing up Name Brendon Scwaitz E R R a naa na n raalte er oom De Seg Saen t 2 De bs ae Dan Favorites om w Eaa on a Don D mons 2h e RR A A com De Ee De gosam E 9 fe G neret 202 274 folowing folowers pak Updates View All Figure 1 4 User Profiles Each of the four major categories of social computing applications defined above contain a common element the user profile A central piece of any social application the ability to store information about a user is critical to an application which allows people to interact with each other SharePoint is no different from any other social application in that a user s profile is an important piece of the application SharePoint already supports a central location to store this user profile information Windows SharePoint Services WSS the free version of SharePoint offers the User Information List 11 38am Page 8 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 9 E Chapter 1 Social Computing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server MOSS both the Standard and Enterprise versions offer the Shared Service Provider s SSP Profile Store The premium versions of SharePoint offer application developers the opportunit
35. rbi sit amet mauris Nam vitae nibh eu sapien dictum pharetra Vestibulum elementum neque vel lacus Proin auctor dolor et massa Phasellus sit amet vetit Vestibulum vel lacus vitae tortor consectetuer sapien semper dictum Integer est fetis facilisis quis lacinia sed lacinia et augue Vivamus B Read full artide No Comments Pluretism Figure 1 8 Wikis As one of the most popular ways to create and maintain documentation or information with large groups of people wikis have become a very popular Web 2 0 technology There are now wikis such as Wikipedia that have grown to be used for maintaining and managing references for millions of pages Wikis can also provide links to other parts of the documentation by using standard tokens Tokens are similar to HTML markup with the fact that they modify the look of text they surround Some common features of wikis are content search and version history Chapter 4 will investigate the buzz surrounding wikis Mashups Mashups are still growing in popularity but they are a very powerful way to display data from different sources with many types of visualizations such as a list of locations and a Virtual Earth map Mashups are discussed in chapter 9 15 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 16 E Chapter 1 Social Computing Social Networking The media and younger generations have made social networking applications visible as the forefront application This
36. resh buttons AJAX In order to make an interactive site driven with updates of data a programming technique called AJAX was introduced in the mid 2000s Although there had been different ways of dynamically interacting with content AJAX provided a standard way for web developers to make dynamic requests to the server without having a full page refresh In common web programming the Internet browser being used makes a call to the web server using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol HTTP The common model for HTTP is to make a call and return the HTTP page markup If the display of the page needs to be modified 19 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 20 E Chapter 1 Social Computing based on the changes of the page the entire page must be submitted to the server Then it is re rendered to the end user once more Microsoft realized this would be a problem for rich clients like Outlook Web Access OWA so it created an ActiveX control called the XMLHttpRequest object Eventually other browsers added this capability to their browsers as dynamic sites and data was becoming more popular as a way to render a web page This technology has essentially replaced the original XMLHttpRequest technology that is now called AJAX AJAX has become popular with social computing applications based on how dynamic the data is and how often the data changes To help programmers manage the ever changing data AJAX allows the developer to
37. s there is no hard or fast rule that states that a developer can only use those operations In fact many times the POST method is used simply for any action that will have effects on the data that it is making a call to 21 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 22 E Chapter 1 Social Computing Table 1 1 HTTP Method PUT Create GET Read POST Update DELETE Delete The best way to recognize when a system has used REST as a way to make calls to the underlying data is to see if a resource based call can be made such as the following http www devcow com eventserver usergrouops http www devcow com eventserver usergroups group each group will have a URL The resulting XML that might be returned might look like the following lt xml version 1 0 encoding UTF 8 gt lt usergroups_get_response xmlns http www devcow com api 1 0 gt lt usergroup gt SharePoint Users Group lt usergroup gt lt usergroup gt NET Users Group lt usergroup gt lt usergroups_get_response gt This can make programming an application very easy from client code such as JavaScript In fact the code can return the result of the URL in any form desired The returned data set could be sent back in the form of XML JSON NET or even HTML all of which are popular mechanisms for passing data around the Internet Because a web browser can display any HTML developers could simply point their web browsers to a re
38. site such as Facebook on their own time will be using it for personal use or relaxation When a user is at work he or she is usually trying to accomplish a work task that a social applica tion can assist with Because most people want to get their work done during the working hours so they can go home to enjoy their personal time make sure to keep this in mind when creating new social applications When getting requirements from business units requests such as wanting a site like Facebook may cause application designers to mix application features designed for work and application features designed for leisure This book will talk about the concepts and technologies that can be used with SharePoint to bring the benefits of social computing applications to enterprise users History of Social Computing The principles and ideas of social computing have been around for a long time In fact they have taken on different names throughout the years As early as the 1980s things like discussion forums known then as bulletin board systems and email provided ways for people outside of Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 2 E Chapter 1 Social Computing military and universities to interact with each other Social computing has actually almost always started as a tool that people saw as only being useful for goofing off or having fun Originally email was thought of as a way for people to communicate with their friends and di
39. social networking behind in the enterprise The Business Value of Social Computing One of the most questioned parts of social computing is the value it provides to the business Some IT organizations as well as users still feel that the value returned with social computing applications is not well defined Part of the reason is that many inexperienced IT managers and corporate executives think that social computing is the same as social networking web sites like Facebook Because of this they feel there is no value in creating a social network in a company for employees to waste time They couldn t be 17 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 18 E Chapter 1 Social Computing any farther from the truth Social computing applications not only provide a real business value social applications can also provide a feeling of ownership within the company s employees Some of the more tangible common business values are as follows Q Promote direct communication between subject matter experts and individuals with questions within companies Q Entice users to visit and revisit online material as they keep up with comments and other content changes Q Provide marketing of products or services Q Provide better communication for public relations or public affairs departments Q Build an understanding of partners or customers Business value is something that does not always have to be measured in hard dollars For t
40. source that displays the output in HTML and let the browser take care of displaying the output without any other programming SharePoint 2007 actually has a set of interfaces that are very similar to REST In the documentation they are called the URL protocol This references the way they are called more than the operations that are described These operations make use of a d11 named owssvr dl1l and specify the command that is called as one of the parameters that is passed in These calls are made from external applications as well as the SharePoint web pages One of the reasons that these URL protocol methods do not match the REST architecture is that they are all based on the GET requests and require that the command be passed as a parameter as stated above When making a call to these methods a similar pattern emerges that looks like the following code http Server_Name sites Site_Name _vti_bin owssvr d11 Cmd Method_name amp Parameterl Valuel amp Parameter2 Value2 In most cases the return value is an XML string that represents CAML output This CAML can be decoded to display the requested information on a page In some cases it can display either XML or 22 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 23 E Chapter 1 Social Computing HTML Using these method calls a developer can access many aspects of SharePoint with simple calls to the URL protocol but it is important to understand that not all actions
41. success The major features frequently seen in social media applications include Q Streaming or downloadable video or audio files These media files make up the heart of a social media application and the continual presence of new media files is generally why users return to the application Ability to rate and comment upon content The ability to communicate one s impression of a media file is the soul of a social media site Users rate the content to help other users find the best content User comments generate an open conversation about the media content in question in a way that is impossible to replicate with a standard television or radio experience Q Number of views Tracking the number of unique views of a media file helps the social applica tion rate the item s popularity and potentially elevate the most popular items to the most visible locations Q User profile and link to profile page Users of a social application take advantage of the user pro file to identify themselves and their activities in the social application QO Metadata about the media Metadata about the media such as the time a media file was uploaded to the site or the geographic location a photograph was taken help provide users with additional context for relating to the media file Q Subscribe for updates By using a subscription technology such as email or RSS the social appli cation reminds the user to come back and continue to participate in
42. t features of 2007 SharePoint Server 2007 Building ASP NET Create an ASP NET Web Part Web Parts for project from scratch and get it Windows SharePoint up and running within a Services 3 0 Windows SharePoint Services 3 0 site Add new picture Figure 1 7 A few items will need to be added over time to this such as the user who uploaded it and information like ratings comments keywords and many other social computing concepts This small sample illustrates how quickly a site can be set up for these possibilities in a very short time Web 2 0 Recently people have been grouping some common industry buzzwords together as a single term Terms such as Web 2 0 are often referenced when talking about rich social and interactive web sites This does not mean that Web 2 0 is the same as social computing applications There is actually a reason why there are two different terms The most common usage of the term Web 2 0 refers to slick looking web sites that use new web technologies in order to provide a better user experience These sites will use technologies such as AJAX JavaScript Flash and Silverlight to enhance their look and interaction In addition to the technologies the sites use the sites frequently have a distinct visual look that includes rounded corners Web 2 0 will usually refer to the common implementations seen on the web These implementations might include blogs wikis mashups social networking site and more While most people
43. t s cool we ll do it 34 005 pa Who Id like to meet a ra I d like to meet peaple who educate inspire or entertain me I have a few close frends I ve known all my life I d ike to make more Tom s Friend Space Tom has 247480775 friends m gt Saneena Aa MySpace Jordyn Taylor meiko Jeremy s Mobile Greene profile s Check out 3 Sidfrend MySpace mebile s Matthew Smaart o0 new Look G ps gt profile Memyspace U 4 Under My W Aize Cooper i profile z OP TO more Rons Figure 1 3 Social Communication Inside of the general social computing concept there is a category of applications designed specifically to enable and enhance one to one or one to many communication This is different from social media because the communication itself is not based on a media file Some examples of social communication applications include Twitter and FriendFeed Social communication applications are distinct from instant messaging applications in that conversations are normally not private These applications create a pub licly searchable stream or feed of all incoming communications to an individual user that anyone can reply to or comment on Figure 1 4 demonstrates this public communication feed on the Twitter web site Applications that implement the concept of social communication can usually be identified by the pres ence of the following features Visible username Q Feed of
44. t this would require high amounts of duplication and disk space while minimizing the ability to collaborate quickly with other members In this example case a better collaboration tool such as a wiki could allow a secure version controlled and collaborative environment for each of the users to work in This would provide the most up to date living document and take some of the burden or extra work off the employees responsible for these documents Learn more about wikis in the enterprise in chapter 4 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 13 E Chapter 1 Social Computing Enterprise Software Platform There are many situations where another implementation of a social computing tool could be used but the real value in the enterprise is having a powerful and extendable platform such as SharePoint that can leverage existing resources to create better tools for the organization To build connected social com puting applications the enterprise needs a platform that enables quick development of these powerful applications The platform used in this book focuses on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Share Point 2007 can be used as a platform for building social applications by enhancing the out of the box functionality or creating custom add ons This rich platform contains the entry points needed to enhance applications where necessary SharePoint includes direct access to data for developers through an easy to use object model as well
45. the user s responsibility to display only information that he or she wants people to see In contrast a company is held accountable for information that users can view on company sites both internal and external This data includes an employee s personal data as well as company documents Is Social Networking Behind in the Enterprise The short answer is Yes it is but there are reasons There is a bigger problem than just social networking which is that many enterprises are behind on the Web 2 0 push I m not sure they are behind but there just isn t always a good business reason to push to something that could just be a buzzword There are two sides to social networking that should be looked at maybe in another post 0 Social networking for intranets internal Q Social networking for business web sites external and applications provided by companies I was talking to a friend of mine who works at a large bank and I told him that the first bank to figure out how to bring Web 2 0 to enterprise banks would have a major advantage Now this may never happen because you have to find the business reason for doing this first Let s go back to enterprise social networking Keep in mind that I will be looking at it from a SharePoint 2007 point of view I think there are many large enterprises looking to bring in social networking right now Most large enterprises are probably looking for a way to increase the collabora
46. tion they have now If they weren t they wouldn t be doing their job 16 Schwartz c01 tex V3 12 26 2008 11 38am Page 17 E Chapter 1 Social Computing Some of the reasons preventing the private enterprise sector from adopting Social Net working might be based on a number of factors and challenges that are very different from and may not affect the public sector users including the governance of the sites information and time You don t want to have people on the computer all day trying to set up social networks and leaving messages on other people s walls This would not be a good use of time Cost is one of the biggest factors I have seen for why a company might not bring in the tools This includes hardware and software costs The investment can be very high for enterprise level tools especially when the number of users starts to climb Integration seems to be a problem that has always been a challenge Some recent chal lenges have been how to integrate the data from these products Although it is much easier in SharePoint 2007 this is still a concern for many companies There are always features that companies want that they cannot get from a product and that is where the community has to step up and create them You need to have a good community of people continually improving the product The good news for SharePoint users is that it does have great community involvement There are always a larg
47. uring the dot com days many companies started to push the limit of what could be done with web sites There were many investors for technology firms who were hoping to get rich and this helped move the web portal and space New applications like wikis and blogs started to show up for people to use Sites like Wikipedia and WordPress quickly became popular as more users began to share their thoughts ideas and experiences The beginning of the new century was the start of a sea change that was to bring social computing to the forefront of many computer users daily experiences More and more people started to use the social computing tools that have grown into what we know today Social Computing Concepts In order to build social computing applications it is good to know what types of features define social applications There are many types of social computing applications that have been implemented today but each one can usually be assigned to a general category that has similar traits These general categories can be viewed as the social computing concepts Each category has a different focus in terms of the way the data is displayed and how users interact with that data It is important to keep in mind that hundreds of social computing applications have been created and more are arriving almost daily Just because there is an existing implementation of one of these concepts available on the Internet doesn t mean that a totally different impl
48. y to build more robust and scalable applications for large enterprises based on the Shared Services Profile The User Information List is better suited to smaller team sized applications as the list itself is a little more restricted than the SSP s profile store For example the User Information List does not allow the user to change the visibility of the individual profile data elements As the center of these social applications the user profiles enable the application to provide robust and dynamic data to its users These features sets include the application personalization system people search user profile page and the social aspect of SharePoint s collaboration features Personalization is the ability for a user to change aspects of what he or she sees or the locations of where the items will appear The most common and recognizable area where SharePoint provides the flexibility of per sonalization to the user is the Web Part framework The Web Part framework in SharePoint allows administrators to determine what pieces of the user interface the end user can arrange for a more pro ductive environment for him or her to work in In addition to being able to move the user interface elements many of the Web Parts have properties that either a site administrator or even the end user can set This personalization allows the user to adjust an application to optimize it for his or her personal work style One of the most powerful aspects of a socia
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