Plan for social computing and collaboration (SharePoint Server 2010)

Article
07/22/2014

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 implements features that make enterprise social computing and collaboration easier. Social networking tools such as My Sites and social content technologies such as blogs, wikis, and really simple syndication (RSS), are examples of social computing features. These features enable users to easily capture and share the knowledge and expertise that is needed to do their work. This sharing of information encourages collaboration, improves innovation, and targets relevant content to the people who have to see it. You can adapt content to each user while enabling administrators to set policies to protect privacy.

The social computing and collaboration features in SharePoint Server 2010 are built upon a database of properties that integrates information about people from many kinds of business applications and directory services.

Good understanding and planning of social computing and collaboration features is very important for creating effective Microsoft SharePoint Server solutions.

In this section:

User Profile Service overview
Plan user profiles
Profile synchronization overview
Plan for profile synchronization
Plan My Sites overview
Plan for My Sites
Plan for audiences and content targeting
Social tagging overview
Privacy and security implications of social tagging
Enterprise Wikis overview
Enterprise Wiki planning
Collaboration site planning

User Profile service overview

The User Profile service is a service application in SharePoint Server that can be consumed across multiple sites and farms. The User Profile service provides a central location for configuring and managing the following personalization settings:

User profile properties
Audiences
Profile synchronization settings
Organization browsing and management settings
My Site settings

For more information, see User Profile service application overview (SharePoint Server 2010).

Plan user profiles

The User Profile service integrates user information from various sources into user profiles that are the basis for powerful personalization features. In addition to planning connections to the User Profile service, planning for people and user profiles includes profile synchronization and planning group policies. You can also use profiles to turn off a feature. For example, profiles can help you prevent information about colleagues from appearing automatically in the colleagues section of profile pages.

For more information, see Plan user profiles (SharePoint Server 2010).

Profile synchronization overview

Profile synchronization in SharePoint Server 2010 deals with the following concepts:

Synchronization connections
Property mappings
Exclusion filters
Full and incremental synchronization

For more information, see Profile synchronization overview (SharePoint Server 2010).

Plan for profile synchronization

If you plan to use social computing features, such as My Sites or People Search, in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, you will likely want to integrate profile information that you have stored in a directory service such as Active Directory Domain Service (AD DS) or a business system, such as SAP or Siebel, with SharePoint Server 2010. By using profile synchronization in SharePoint Server 2010, you can do exactly that.

For more information, see Plan for profile synchronization (SharePoint Server 2010).

Plan for audiences and content targeting

Use audiences to group the users in an organization so that you can target information to relevant users. From the Manage Audiences page for the User Profile service in SharePoint Server, you can create and manage audiences and use them to target content in all of the site collections that use that shared service. You can also use SharePoint groups to target content to specific Web parts.

For more information, see Audience and content targeting planning (SharePoint Server 2010).

Plan My Sites overview

My Sites are special SharePoint sites that contain profile information about a user, links to content created by a user and stored in SharePoint databases, and information about the people, interests, and activities a user is tracking. My Sites have three distinct views:

A My Networks page that shows the people, interests, and activities that a user is tracking.
A My Content page that lists shared and personal documents, shared pictures, and libraries, lists, discussion boards, and surveys that a user owns.
A My Profile page that shows personal profile information.

For more information, see My Sites overview (SharePoint Server 2010).

Plan for My Sites

To effectively plan for My Sites, you must determine the following:

A logical architecture design to deploy My Sites in a server farm
Users who you want to have a My Sites and the appropriate permissions for those users
The user profile information that you want to synchronize with directory services or business systems
The My Site features that you want to enable
The policies that will be applied for viewing user profile information in the public profile

For more information, see Plan for My Sites (SharePoint Server 2010).

Social tagging helps users categorize information in ways that are meaningful to them. Social tagging can improve the quality of search results by filtering against specific tags, and it can also connect individuals who want to share information with other users who have like interests.

For more information, see Social tagging overview (SharePoint Server 2010).

Social tagging is a subset of a more comprehensive social media strategy that an enterprise can develop. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 includes the following social tagging features:

Social tags, which allow users to save items of interest, organize all information for a project, and connect to others who share their interests.
The Note Board, which allows comments to be tracked in a central location.
Ratings, which allow users to assess the value of content against a scale, for example, one through five stars.
Bookmarklets, which enable users to add tags and notes to pages that are outside of the SharePoint environment, for example, Web sites that are external to an enterprise, and then have those tags and notes appear on the Tags and Notes tab of their My Site.

This article contains information to help you plan for using the social tagging features of SharePoint Server 2010 in your enterprise, and includes key steps to follow in the planning process.

For more information, see Privacy and security implications of social tagging (SharePoint Server 2010).

Enterprise Wikis overview

An Enterprise Wiki is a publishing site for sharing and updating large volumes of information across an enterprise. If an organization needs a large, centralized knowledge repository that is designed to both store and share information on an enterprise-wide scale, consider using an Enterprise Wiki.

For more information, see Enterprise Wikis overview (SharePoint Server 2010).

Enterprise Wiki planning

An Enterprise Wiki is a large-scale knowledge repository designed to both store and share information in an enterprise. You can use an Enterprise Wiki to share and update information on a larger scale than a wiki, library, or team site. Planning for an Enterprise Wiki includes the things to consider when you are determining if an Enterprise Wiki is the best solution for your organization, the preparation steps for setting up an Enterprise Wiki, and planning access to the Enterprise Wiki.

For more information, see Enterprise wiki planning (SharePoint Server 2010).

Collaboration site planning

Collaboration sites are SharePoint sites that teams or groups of users can use to share information or collaborate on projects. You can associate these sites with a particular portal site collection or make them part of a publishing site collection. Collaboration sites can also be stand-alone sites. Planning for collaboration sites explains how to define specific and additional paths, and how to determine the number of collaboration sites that are needed in your organization.

For more information, see Collaboration site planning (SharePoint Server 2010).