Collaborative Thinking

Building An Enterprise KM Solution in SP2010

Notes from session w/Sean Squires and Lincoln Demaris

• Case Study: Knowledge For The Field - one of several systems for KM at Microsoft, repository of high-quality of field-ready content, intitial phase focused on content publishing and discovery
• 80K Microsoft employees might access the system to learn about a product, 45K sales/marketing/field might want to know how to sell the product, 1K subject matter experts might use the system as well
• Challenges/key takeaways: user experience (tough to cut across different processes), collaboration (different groups manage information differently), Info Discovery (search results are difficult to refine and validate)
• Wikipedia held up as very good KM solution
• Key Component: Publishing Site:
  • Pages as storefronts
  • Consistent wiki-like user experience
  • Implicit structure
• Key Component: Document Center
  • High-value managed content
  • Not a walled garden
  • Submissions can come from anywhere
• Key Component: Shared Services
  • Enterprise consistency, taxonomy and folksonomy
  • Content type, metadata, content analytics, social feedback
• Planning for on term store for all of Microsoft, one feed store (?)
• May have multiple term sets and taxonomies but centralized management and sharing
• Demo
  • Prototype Site: InfoPedia
  • Search results include lots of metadata
  • Refinement pane on left side - pulls metadata to be used as filters
  • Custom control for Digg-lke voting
  • Document center is a stylized content query web part out of the box
  • Managed keyword control also shown
  • You can use tagged filters relevant for a page to send into the content query web part of show different documents in the doc set based on the page and the tags on the page (if I heard the speaker correctly) - contextual content query then.
  • Workflows associated with topic areas that are assigned to pages so participant contributions can be routed to page owner, subject matter expert etc.
• Tagging is relied on extensively and works with content query web part - social tags and/or authorized tags - tags drive navigation, discovery, etc
• Pages as storefronts vs nested subsites
• Wiki editing and social features can help with user participation and contributions within a governance model to have contributions checked.
• Document Center is strictly managed
• Demo
  • Document set can be thought of as a better folder model for collections of content
  • Content Organization - folders, rules, poilicies
  • Can now attach policies to location - location-based retention
• Content Organizer ensures permissions and policies applied correctly
• Overall impression: very well done for content-centric KM approaches.

Customize Enterprise Wikis In SP2010

Gail Giacobbe, Principal Program Manager Lead and Ted Pattison, SharePoint MVP

• "Primary reason I don't use wikis is that we have so much information to track across so many sites that I simply can't keep track of them and forget they exist" as opening statement - not sure this is a real argument, can say that about any new tool not just wikis. Any new tool that requires behavior change can be a burden.
• Valid point is the need for wikis to support rich information (video, diagrams, etc) and need for compliance, audit, DLP, etc etc
• Enterprise Wiki leverages publishing infrastructure which powers Enterprise Wikis
• Note: should include differentiation from team wiki and deal with possibility that team wiki might be promoted to an Enterprise Wiki so how does that happen?
• Enterprise Wiki address the Community component of SP2010
• SP Foundation: Web Edit - easy page editing, wiki linking with auto complete, cross browser
• New site template for SharePoint Server build on publishing infrastructure - enhanced with categories, social tags and notes, page templates (content types and page layouts), ratings (web analytics) and customizations (master pages, CSS)
• Inherent content management, security, etc from SP2010 platform
• Wiki is an open publishing model - hmm, not sure I agree - it is an open collaboration space more than publishing - more community than publishing
• Demo:
  • Can insert web parts in wiki page
  • Can use rich text editor, insert graphics, use ribbon to change formats, etc etc
  • Good news - no wiki syntax and very easy to work with content as if it was a familiar document style
  • Rich content support is very straight forward
• Enterprise WIki is a publishing site - managed meta data, site provisioning causes group creation, metadata column automatically added, brand via master pages and CSS, cache scheme built in for scaling,
• Added new content type for wiki ...
• Enterprise Wiki can have multiple sub-sites ...
• Users will need to remember the different user experience, features and capabilities between the different types of "wikis" (enterprise and team) - that might prove to be a problem down the road from a design and user experience viewpoint.
• My Tweets during the session:
  • Nice demo in the sense of using a wiki style of content in an application context but not what you would think of as a wiki demo #spc09
  • Not sure I see this clear line between baby wikis and adult wikis (team vs enterprise) #spc09
  • I wonder if some of the distinctions between team and enterprise wiki are somewhat artificial based on underlying tooling #spc09
  • Seems that content gets locked into one wiki or the other - you need tomake the right decision up front and hope it doesnt change #spc09
  • So how does a Team Site with wEB Edit "wiki" get promoted to an Enterprise Wiki? #spc09
  • Interesting that "wiki" is implemented via publishing engine #spc09
  • Sitting in Customizing Enterprise Wikis in SP2010 #spc09

MySite - Social Architecture & Planning

Notes from Venky Veeraraghavan's presentation, forgive the typos!

• Session objective: understand technical architecture and planning required to deploy
  • MySite personal portal
  • Social feedback
  • People and expertise search
• @SPSocial is the Twitter ID to follow
• Demo:
  • MySite has 3 out of box pages ... expect people to rename pages to make them their own
  • Shows stream of comments on Note Board and activities re: tracking people and tags
  • Activity feed is very extensible stream ... can track items coming form within SharePoint but you can build connectors to include other sources
  • Will talk about mining Outlook later
  • Shows Silverlight org chart browser
• Major components
  • Pages: My Network (was in 2003, removed in 2007 now back?), My Profile (was in 2003), My Content (was in 2007) (own personal site collection, you are the administrator of your own site), My <foo>
  • Site Collections: MySIte Host (centrally managed), My Site
  • Web App: My Web Application
  • Service Application Proxies: EMM (meta data). UPA, Search
• Activity Feed
  • New for SP2010, web part, Atom 2.0 feed
  • Consolidated: activities from everything I track (inbound)
  • Published: my activities (outbound)
  • Should be able to export atom feed for other feed readers
  • Need to consider performance implications of feeds
  • Architecture: two databases: social data (note feedback, social bookmarks, social tagging) profile database (profile properties, membership colleagues etc). "Gatherer" job scoops up data and sends to feed table to scale ... simple select all items I track ... then API to inject into feed store ... you can write gatherers that collect data from sources you think are interesting and then stick into feed - set to 1 hour timer
  • Note: permission models! What are the ACLs around the feed elements so that right people see only permissions items in consolidated feed. Also true for "My Activity" stream - how to wrapper what is sent outbound.
  • Extensibility requires some key points to know: Activity Application (say CRM), Activity Type (say New Meeting) and then an Activity Template "<person> has scheduled a meeting with <customer> on <details> for user experience.
  • Activity Event: "Mike has scheduled a meeting with Company ABC on DD, MM, YY" is displayed
  • Considering whether you can "friend" a gatherer if I heard it right...
  • Consumption API is an Atom 2.0 feed
• Feed Readers
  • Goal of 2000 RPS current at 500-700 with activity, 2100 without activity RPS = requests per second
• Profile Pictures
  • Central picture library
  • Resided three ways (for use in SP 32x32, use in AD and client apps 48x48 and for profile page 96x96)
  • Controls needed for photos due to legal and risk concerns (e.g., harassment) 
  • Picture picker, supports policies, can replace with other picker
  • Sync up to AD, supports write-back if configured
  • Outlook and OCS use Pictures in AD
  • Note: really, really, need to plan for privacy
  • Top issue: Picture usage: consent, opt-in, corporate policy
  • Top Issue: Activity feeds: who follows me and possible need for two-way consent
• Bookmarklet for browsers, can see who else in company has tagged page, discussions around URL, using Firefox in demo,
• May also want to tag customers, may have LOB application for instance, can tag customers or other artifacts - you will want your info to be URI accessible thus leveraging tags
• Note: Wonder if there will be a bookmarket for Office client tools not just browser.
• Social Feedback: Social tags, notes and ratings
  • Helps categorize, annotate, promote and help retrieval of relevant links
  • Applies to any URL inside or outside of SP with bookmarklet
  • Independent of write-permissions
  • Primary way or promoting documents and web pages to news feed
  • Basic level 3 tuple: Person, URL, Feedback
  • Note: still need permission controls around sources being tagged/bookmarked as well as tags/bookmarks - not sure enough security was discussed and therefore not sure if it is in there
  • Note: biggest barrier: not enough intranets have rich native web content
• Social Feedback table has 3 tables with foreign keys into Profile and EMM (Enterprise Metadata)
• EMM supports folksonomy and taxonomy terms so people can select the meanings they want
• Now we get to security ... need to prevent tags as giving away existence of document people don't have access to
• Security trimming ... not explained deeply, pointed to other sessions
• Related services: search service index tags and security trimming
• Scale: Cab be very large datasets ... enterprise metadata generates tag at Internet scale
• SP2010 will estimate 600 million rows at RTM - use Excel model ... social feedback database
• Need a privacy policy for tags/bookmarks ... transparent sharing, what happens when an employee leaves, security, activity feed repercussions, etc
• Note: security teams will look at this to see if it introduces additional surface area for attack as well as data loss/leakage etc
• Need to plan for adoption - employee advisory committee prior to deployment, seed the network with tags, connect with HR, legal, execs, etc
• Workflow for handling concerns and escalations
• Mining Outlook for expertise is consent driven ... nothing every published without user concent
• Knowledge Mining: Tags are in Outlook 2010 and SP2010 (knowledge network stuff), client does analysis, get consent on client and server, indexing occurs and they can query
• Colleagues (social graph) is indexed as well as distribution list and site membership (see Social Search session)
• First question people ask is "how did it know" (the system) so user education about company policy is important, "suggestions" form system only visible to owner, only indexing profile properties marked for "everyone"

Analyst Breakfast With Microsoft Execs: Good Food, Insight Pending

Jeff Teper, Corporate VP; Kirk Koenigsbauer, GM

• Question: A follow-up to a response during Steve Ballmer's keynote that was somewhat evasive. My follow-up here this morning was:
  • What architectural change has been implemented within SP 2010 so that clients can expect quicker release cycles for application layer capabilities vs. lower-level infrastructure/platform modifications?
  • What development life-cycle change internally was made to support a faster cycle-time (vs. 3-3.5 years between releases now)?
• Answer: None. There was absolutely no additional insight. Microsoft is trying to "have it's cake and eat it to". You cannot make the case that the value of SharePoint to organizations is that it provides this massive all-encompassing platform that supports a wide range of capabilities unlike any other solution in the market - and then, turn around and say "well, because it's so large and complex it takes time for this platform to change and move forward in a manner that is stable consistently over time". It begs the fundamental question - when does a platform become too large? Is SharePoint getting so complex and so inter-twined that no one should expect a more streamlined release cycle - regardless of cloud. Cloud does not make it any easier for Microsoft to deliver business capabilities defacto any faster if (1) internally, the development cycle remains the same and (2) there are no specific architectural changes to allow different collections of components to be released at different pace rates. 

I'm left thinking that we will be talking about SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2017 and so on - a release cycle of 3-4 years - even with Cloud/SaaS and BPOS. Should business and IT decision makers pause for a moment and take a long-view perspective on SharePoint over time.

While there is a level of irrational exuberance right now at the conference given all the changes in this release (there is a lot in SP2010 to like), business and IT decision-makers should think long and hard about committing too much of their business to this type of slow-moving platform infrastructure since Microsoft seems incapable or articulating how this release is a more adaptive platform for Microsoft itself to deliver capabilities more rapidly in response to customer needs.

For instance - even with this release there is still a lack of parity between on-premises and BPOS. As you listen to some Microsoft execs is sounds (not all the time but often) that SaaS follows on-premises vs. having BPOS as a first-class release target (that SaaS will "catch up to" on-premises) - I could be off here - but that's my perception. Microsoft still seems to be reacting to the Cloud from a SharePoint perspective versus treating it as a peer. And this gets back to the development life-cycle internally.

The other angle here is mobile - mobile seems to be consistently marginalized or treated as an after-thought. Responses are somewhat flippant and seem to avoid discussing much more popular platforms like iPhone and Android.

Perhaps there are certain solution domains that should NOT be on SharePoint if those solution areas require more business agility in the market. One space where this might be true is the social computing area as an example.

The eggs, bacon, and sausage however were excellent.

Microsoft Social Computing Overview

Notes from Christian Finn, Director, Social Computing

• 13 sessions in "social track"
• Microsoft design point is to co-mingle structured collaboration tools alongside social computing tools - it's unrealistic to think of social computing disconnected from collaborations strategies
• Back to information workers and productivity ... find knowledge, share ideas, work in teams, feel valued, manage projects, build= a network and use content
• Long-term ROI of social computing is helping information workers feel valued (e.g., via comments from peers, ratings, etc)
• Microsoft also thinks of the IT Pro ... control costs, provide solutions, maintain security, do more with less, ensure compliance, reduce islands, etc
• This situation also causes users experience is fractured across too many tools and silos
• The challenge for IT: If you are in IT - they are asking for consumer versions of sites for internal use - but arguments raised re: compliance, security, etc.
• The challenge for the Enterprise: Connecting the dots is the challenge of the enterprise ... need to locate expertise, build community between people as a result of mergers, or onboard new employees
• Social Computing lowers the cost for sharing and organizing ... surfaces knowledge and networks (expertise) and increase employee engagement
• Pitfalls: Demographics, hierarchy, policies, culture, etc
• Microsoft believes SharePoint scales to meet as narrow or broad a view an organization has on social computing, you can use it in a very classic way - no MySite etc - keep with basic document libraries, forums, workspaces - or - you can use blogs, wikis, profiles, etc - all in one platform.
• Customer examples: Accenture (extensive use of MySite, social distance), skill attributes used for staffing, etc), Electronic Arts (very strong from a user experience and aesthetic viewpoint). Looks more like Facebook, supports skins for different product areas, etc. British Telecom used podcasting kit for just-in-time learning. Supports knowledge retention (interviews, user-generated videos on best practices).
• SharePointM social journey began with MySite 2003 (disagree that Microsoft had any clue of social computing in 2003 though - some recasting history here)
• Demo
  • MySite: much cleaner UI, less form-like, softer blending of UI elements, typical stuff (name, presence, phone, etc), can use Business Connectivity Services to bring in HR data etc, free-form text for entry of ad-hoc information, redesign of middle section of MySite - tabs for organization, colleagues, tags, memberships etc) - supported by privacy settings.
  • Note Board emulates Facebook Wall type interface - can have Note Board on documents, sites, not just "wall". can have list of comments ala discussion stream
  • Personal tag cloud - when clicked will find people and artifacts
  • Tag Profile: way to aggregate all the people who are using a tag inside the organization... can "follow" tag - do a people search and locate all people associated with that tag
  • MyNetwork is a running newsfeed - stream, river of news model - activity stream comes close to social messaging (Twitter) but not sure I would go that far - seems more "FriendFeed" like.
  • Follow a tag results in event being posted into news stream - way to discover people and artifacts - passive signal model
  • Colleagues ... social graph, Facebook friends, can organize colleagues into groups with privacy controls at group level
  • Filters for newsfeed
  • Organization: org browser is an overlay directory to find people and their relationship to the organization ... not sure who someone works for, where they report in the org structure - Silverlight and HTML version. See digest, direct reports, etc and then can link to full profile - can control delegation
  • Content: similar to 2007 version - can share documents, etc.
  • Status message shows up in news feed Note: wonder how this works with OCS presence status? Opportunity for integration but doubt that there is any linkage right now. Visa-versa - can OCS/Communicator status be sent to news feed - maybe too much noise (on phone, busy) but maybe not
  • Blogs: Much improved UI ... actually looks like a blog ... more Ajax type UI for posting ... maybe not as great as Wordpress or other tools but likely good enough for many situations ... believe you can use Live Writer as well (better choice in my opinion for authoring)
  • Note: Wonder if there is a blogs central type catalog - does not sound like it.
  • Video streaming built into SP2010 ... natively stream of video up to 2GB from store ... ratings supported ... Silverlight player
  • Wikis: two varieties ... team site wiki:  as people move from documents to web pages as medium of information exchange, need to support this within team sites - rich text editor ... bar was really low, previous version of wiki really was not a wiki so this implementation is a significant advancement ... oddly, don't use wiki term. Also have Enterprise Wiki (different) - more like Wikipedia - build on publishing model ... page publishing and categorizing of pages (then why call it a Wiki?) ... access controls supported and versioning ... can chose to have workflow aroudn wiki as well (ex: HR policies database). Under the cover all of this are in lists so blogs, wikis can have workflow attached.
  • Enterprise Wiki surface is a publishing template so you can put web parts and other artifacts like video.
  • Note: people will have to keep close track of team wiki vs. enterprise wiki - different capabilities and different implementations! Will not be able to take a team wiki and promote it to an enterprise wiki for example.
  • Records management and social computing: can apply rules (disposition etc) to blogs, wikis, etc.
  • Note: I still do not believe there are sufficient data loss controls, audit logs, etc here - Msft needs to prove that the support for security, identity and privacy needs much more thoroughly beyond demoware.
  • No iPhone application - too bad :)
• Customization: REST, JSON, ATOM, etc.

SharePoint 2009 Conference: Morning Keynotes

Notes from Steve Ballmer keynote...

• Vision: seamless experiences across your life
• SharePoint is at the center of intranet, Internet, etc
• Public Beta in November
• Synergies with SharePoint Workspace (Groove recast for SharePoint with improved offline support)
• Targeting 1H2010 for general release (note: my guess is May)
• What is SharePoint? Collaboration, analytics, social networking, content management, portal, workflow, etc etc
• Want to someday bring SharePoint to consumer market
• New user experience for SP2010 - ribbon and other office UI elements
• Consolidate workloads and costs on a single platform (old argument but more so with this release)
• Adding sandbox environment
• Additional standards support (REST, JSON, ATOM) Note: Encouraging widespread development of third-party applications (e.g., Adobe AIR) that front-end SP2010 via these standards might be one of the most significant advancements in the release and Microsoft doesn't push this concept strongly enough - look at all the AIR apps around other social tools for instance
• Demo
  • Business Connectivity Services (next generation of business data catalog)
  • Many more templates within Visual Studio specific to SharePoint
  • Sandbox solution:enable developers to create applications that can be throttled by IT ... isolate application ...
• Note: so far, 45 minutes into keynote, not a single message that would be considered a message to a "business decision maker" - interesting ... pitching to developers and support people in audience, no focus on business solutions, processes, etc (few side comments but nothing in-depth and compelling)
• Cloud, discussion on hybrid split between SP online and SP on-premises
• Important: Still no parity still between SP2010 in cloud and on-premises - better, but not 100%
• Note: When will cloud/SaaS be the primary target environment for SP releases? Seems like on-premises is the target environment creating this lag in terms of parity
• Internet-facing SP: SP in cloud for intranet different than customer-facing Internet
• First real business scenario: Kraft example, consolidated 200 web sites. Volvo also using SP externally for Internet. Not clear what percentage though in these examples are SP - are they 100% run on SP or other platforms are also leveraged
• Demo Internet Facing
  • SharePoint Server For Internet Sites
  • FAST Search Server for Internet Business
• Intranet 2010 Products
  • SharePoint Foundation (successor to WSS)
  • SharePoint Server
  • Fast Search Server
  • SharePoint Online
• Question on long elapsed-time between releases: Basically, SteveB reply is that it has taken them this long (to the 2010 release) to get to the point where the foundation is at a point where they can release application-level functionality faster. But no insight as to what people should expect in the future - is the next release 2013? No guidance so I'm not sure anyone should believe that cycle times are going to get any better until there is proof...
• Question on social computing: SteveB rightly points out the need for social computing to address security and identity aspects of related applications and that IT organizations play a key role to help mitigate risks but no specific insight as to how data loss, identity and security issues are handling in 2010 social computing. Hopefully more to come in this space...

Notes from Jeff Teper keynote

• SharePoint 2010: the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the web
• Sites: single infrastructure for intranets, extranets and Internet sites
• "Replumbing" of UI, adding ribbon, etc
• SharePoint and Groove user experience consistent now - SharePoint Workspace, offline support, better mobile support
• Collaboration: wiki, blog, tags, etc etc all improved
• Social tagging was a significant focus area
• MySite - some rewriting of history on how MySite was positioned originally. Back circa 2003, MySite was an orphan feature that no one seemed at Microsoft was able to clearly position. Was never intended to play the role it is being positioned for today re: social computing.
• Profiles - revamping search and finding people
• Single metadata store for tags, taxonomy etc
• Search - query on experience, people search, KM aspects, social graph, org chart, etc
• Social Computing Demo
  • Activity feed, tags, tag clouds, recent blog posts, etc
  • Can see aggregation of other connections re: activities, etc
  • Ratings fro documents
  • Expertise location: people search ... displays people and profile information, can view recent content from person, authored content, browser where person is in organizational chart
  • Note board (like FB wall) on profile page