Friday, August 31, 2012

Social capabilities of SharePoint 2013

With SharePoint 2013 the amount of social capabilities has increased a lot. Also the way they have become an integral part of the product is a radical change from the way it was implemented with SharePoint 2010. In this post I will provide a list of social capabilities of SharePoint 2013. Keep in mind that the list was compiled against my own knowledge of SharePoint 2013 which is right now based on the preview version. So if you think I have missed a couple please let me know through the comments and I will definitely add it to the list.

Social features we already know from SP2010


01. Like
enabled on lists through rating settings. By default enabled on conversations, posts, discussions etc

02. Private tag
on the Ribbon of lists people find the Tags & Notes button both on the Files as the List or Library tab. Hence documents can be tagged on a per item basis. People can mark the tag as private in the dialog

03. Public tag
on the Ribbon of lists people find the Tags & Notes button both on the Files as the List or Library tab. Hence documents can be tagged on a per item basis. People can mark the tag as private in the dialog.
Secondly, people can add tags in posts and replies by using typing the #-symbol followed by a (multi word) tag and next select the Create new tag from the drop down.

04. Note
on the Ribbon of lists people find the Tags & Notes button both on the Files as the List or Library tab. Hence documents can be tagged on a per item basis. People can mark the tag as private in the dialog.

05. Page rating
as a field control on a publishing page layout. Sometimes available out of the box as on Wikis

06. Document rating
enabled through rating settings of the list, mostly turned off by default

07. Keyword column
enabled through enterprise keywords setting and social tag publishing setting of the list

08. Term column
enabled through managed term sets and also through enterprise keywords setting and social tag publishing setting of the list

09. Attribute change
enabled by editing your profile on the My site host

10. Commenting
enabled through commenting on blog posts and through the notes web part


New Social features of SharePoint 2013


I have more or less sorted the list by name and now and then attached a screenshot from my dev machine in the cloud. And yes, I am a great fan of Bob Ross (does it matter?)

11. Achievement points system
enabled on the Community site when users interact with posts they are awared points. A certain amount of points translate to a level which is shown as an image or text next to the User



12. Activities overview
shown on the My site - Newsfeed page



13. Add links to conversations
enabled through the link icon below the conversations box



14. Aggregated likes per discussion or conversation
shown on conversations, discussions and search results



15. Reference videos in conversations
if you add a link in a conversation pointing to a video on SharePoint or on YouTube, the video including title, thumbnail and details will be shown inline



16. Automatically assign badges
On Community sites - reputation points are translated into levels and levels are translated into achievement badges (shown as image or as text)



17. Manually assign gifted badges
Manually assigned badges are tags that are defined in the badges list. If the community owner assigns badges manually then these will replace the automatically assigned ones.



18. Click on a tag to search related conversations

19. Community discussions
Discussions are shown on for instance the Community site template



20. Start a discussion and raise as question
When you start a new discussion it can be raised as a question hence it will show in the Unanswered questions overview



21. Community sites
Community sites are site templates offering out the box discussions, membership, achievements and badges and trends in terms of what's hot and contributors

22. Connect tags to Ask me about
On a Tag profile page there is a Get Connected part which allows you to add the current tag to the About me attribute of your profile



23. Copy link to conversation
From within the ... Menu of a conversation you can copy a unique link to your conversation which you might copy to clipboard for use in other applications



24. Delete a conversation
enabled through X icon at the top right of each conversation and through the ... Menu

25. Discussions categories

26. Embed documents in conversations

27. Embed pictures in conversations

28. Embed videos in conversations

29. Featured discussions

30. Follow documents

31. Follow people

32. Follow sites

33. Follow tags
enabled on Tag profile page under Get Connected. Tag will be added as Interests



34. Follow up conversations

35. Followed sites overview

36. Join and leave communities

37. Like a discussion reply

38. Like conversations

39. Like documents

40. Likes overview

41. Lock conversations

42. Mark reply as best reply

43. Mention people in conversations

44. Mentions overview

45. Most popular tags in last 60 days
enabled on tag profile page under Tagged items

46. My discussions overview

47. Notes overview

48. People in videos
If you upload a video and edit its properties in a asset library, then you can add names of people appearing in  the video



49. Play videos inline in conversations

50. Preview documents inline in conversations

51. Private notes overview

52. Public notes overview

53. Reply to conversations

54. Reputation levels and scores

55. Search conversations



56. Search for tags
enabled through the use of tags='...' in search queries



57. Search people in videos

This one is closely related to People in videos, a property of the video content type. If you enter someones name in the search box and select videos as scope, you will find all videos where this person was added


58. Share conversations (with everyone or followed site)
enabled through the Share with menu at the top of the conversation box

59. Start a conversation
enabled on My Site- Newsfeed




60. Suggested sites to follow overview

61. Tag followed by overview
enabled through the Get connected part on the Tag profile page as well as by clicking on a tag

62. Tag profile page
accessible by clicking on a tag link



63. Tags overview

64. Threaded replies

65. Thumbnails for embedded documents

66. Thumbnails for embedded videos

67. Top discussion contributors

68. Trending tags overview
enabled on My Site - Newsfeed page




69. Unlike conversations

70. Unlike documents

71. Use multi word tags
enabled through the use of # symbol in conversations. There is no need to enclose multiple words with [] brackets as this is taken care of automatically

72. Use tags in conversations
enabled when Managed Metadata service is available through use of # symbol in conversation



73. View related activities

74. What's hot discussions overview



Summarized

The number of social capabilities has increased a lot. The overall experience is a lot more Facebook and Twitter like which will definitely drive user adoption.

Following and liking has become something you will see almost everywhere. Conversations or posts are much more interactive and rich allowing for thumbnails and inline previewing of videos as well.

The My Site has become a crucial entry point for not only consuming feeds but also for keeping track of your sites and recent documents.

The new community site template contains not only discussions but an achievement points system and trends as well, making it truly more interactive like we are used from sites as sharepoint stackexchange.

Hopefully this list will help you deciding whether or not you need a 3rd party product like Newsgator Social Sites, Beezy, Attini etc etc. I think these 3rd party products definitely will add value to the overall social stack but the question is what do you need and how fast will my business be able to adopt.

Finally, keep in mind that many social features depend on other service applications like office web apps for thumbnails, managed metadata, and search. Even in SP2010 a lot of people where not aware that search drives security trimming. Meaning that in SP2010 on a My Site - tags and notes tab the activities are security trimmed by search. So if you have another Search vendor, keep in mind that these kind of lists will be empty. Same for tag profile pages and recent activities. In SP2013 things like Trending tags depend on search.

If you have anything to add to this list, feel free and leave a comment so  that this list may become even better. ;-) 



9 comments:

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