SharePoint 2010 Lags Behind in Social Features
December 20, 2011
Beyond Search has written extensively on social media and implementations that help to achieve a higher level of social media integration. Recently, we have found more reporting devoted to the incorporation of social features into an organization’s enterprise solution. Bjorn Furuknap gives his insight into SharePoint 2010’s social functionality in his lighthearted blog entry, “Why SharePoint 2010 Social Features Suck.”
Try to get the activity feed to behave like the FaceBook activity feed and add simple things like a ‘Like’ or ‘Comment’ functionality to the feed . . . Try creating an ad-hoc filter of the activity feed, for example to implement a ‘Social Groups’ functionality where a temporary team, say the people in an organization responsible for the next department annual review, can organize their activities into a single activity feed. It turns out that the way the activity feed is implemented is so locked down and restricted that seemingly simple extensions like these are virtually impossible to create.
So how does an organization tackle both its social and enterprise needs? There are several good third party solutions out there, including Fabasoft Mindbreeze, who are devoting time and attention to social features. Fabasoft Mindbreeze has received the prestigious KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year 2011, making it the fourth year in a row that the Austrian enterprise solution took home the prize. In its previous win in 2010, its social media functionality was sited as a major factor.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise covers corporation -wide heterogeneous document stores and data sources such as email systems, file systems, databases, document management systems, intranets, the internet and social media.
We agree with Furuknap that social features, and social media functions, are just now being developed and implemented into enterprise solutions. Microsoft has never been one for rapid adoption or innovation, so SharePoint is suffering a bit in the social department. To meet your organization’s social needs we recommend seeking a smart third party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, and avoiding unnecessary aggravation.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 20, 2011
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