Exploring Microsoft SharePoint 2013: Social Computing

Summary

Social computing is a big investment area in SharePoint Server 2013, which now offers Facebook-like and Twitter-like functionality. This chapter described the new social functionality, such as microblogging, the use of #Tags, and @mentions, with which users can mention other people. Users can follow people, content, documents, sites and tags.

We also explored the three hubs, Newsfeed, SkyDrive, and Sites, where social activities can be viewed in groups, such as following, likes, mentions, and activities. These hubs are accessed from the global navigation bar. Thus, social computing is available from any site, even though the hubs are hosted either in the My Site Host site or a user’s personal site. However, site feeds can be added to collaboration sites and the new community sites.

Planning is critical to any social computing project, regardless of the technologies that will be used. The organization’s strategy with regard to IdM is important, and it will become more important as the breadth of social features in SharePoint Server grows.

The chapter then finished by briefly looking at the integration of Yammer with SharePoint.