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The official blog of the Microsoft SharePoint Product Group
2012
July 31
The Social Spectrum
by   sharepointblog@live.com   on  7/31/2012 11:30 AM
Chris Slemp is a senior solution manager in Microsoft IT, and has been directing Microsoft's internal social business solutions for the past 3 years.

I hate Christmas cards. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the furthest thing from a Scrooge. But writing—and in some cases, even reading—those traditional summaries of the year that get mailed around is my least favorite part of the holiday. It’s devolved into bragging about overachieving kids instead of just being a good excuse to reconnect. It also bugs me because the medium doesn’t fit the purpose. I prefer to stay connected all year through snippets on Facebook, blog posts, or email. I call my grandma of course (though not as often as I should), and I try to pick non-holidays to do it so I can hear in her voice how she’s really doing.

Story two, and then I promise to get to the point. There’s this guy in my town—nice, well meaning—but he doesn’t know how to end a conversation. Despite the fact that he has my email address and is on Facebook, he insists on calling me for any question and taking 10 minutes for what should be a 60 second call. I’ve learned to spot him on the caller ID. We all know THAT guy.

Use the right tool

What do these stories above have in common? They’re about using the right tool for the job. Communication may be the most important activity in most of our careers, and being efficient and effective with it is the difference between mediocrity and wild success. The new version of SharePoint gives us more tools to add to email and IM, creating an opportunity to shift our collaboration habits to unlock a more transparent and efficient way to work.
I’m talking about newsfeeds, of course. But there’s two flavors of them in the new SharePoint: the public feed, and site feeds. We also have a new community site template. With so many options, our employees sometimes wonder which one to use. Hopefully, the lessons we’ve learned here at Microsoft will help your company too.

What’s wrong with email?

First, you often have to answer the question, “Why should I use any of this new-fangled stuff?” Email has its place as the most ubiquitous tool for targeting a message to a known group, but that’s not really what we’re after much of the time. Here’s a partial list of the benefits of getting communication out of inboxes and into the open:
  • Search previous conversations without trying to find, join and archive the “right” distribution lists in Outlook.
  • A wider, more diverse audience than you’ll find in email, as messages are potentially seen by more people.
  • Keep your inbox focused on your team’s deliverables instead of free-ranging conversations.
  • Influence at the office means not only being useful, but being seen as useful. Newsfeed posts and web forums are inherently more visible than email.

How to think about newsfeeds and communities

Next, we start to tease apart what each of these tools do best. Let’s start with the difference between the default Newsfeed view in SharePoint and the Everyone view. They’re both valuable, but the default view is like a manicured garden, sprouting conversations that you’re interested in because you’ve “planted the seeds” by following interesting people, sites, documents, and tags. The Everyone view is more like the wilderness: organic and unpredictable, filled with posts from anyone who wants to share broadly. But some of the unexpected conversations and people you’ll find there could prove invaluable, like the surprise of a scenic view as you come around the corner on a hiking trail.
 


Community sites, on the other hand, are about crowdsourcing: harnessing a large group of people that share a common interest to answer each other’s questions, curating and exposing all that hidden knowledge, or just providing a place to connect where you need more than just the conversation.

Comparing user features

The table below might help you figure out the strengths of each tool from the perspective of those using the tools. Will you have to a pull out a chart every time you want to communicate? Of course not, no more than you do now when deciding to email, IM, or pick up the phone. It’ll become natural after a while.



Notice that these tools are arranged into a “spectrum” that ranges from completely transparent on the left to very private on the right. It’s also a spectrum of social norms for response time, which on the far left could easily be never, and on the far right is almost instant (thus the name). We find these two factors, breadth of audience and urgency of response, to be really useful for people to place these tools in the context of tools they already understand: email and IM.
Some might say, “Then why is e-mail on the right? I admit it’s very private, but many of my emails never get a response!” Sadly, YES! That’s because in the past, we’ve crammed all the communication that belongs in the other tools into your inbox. Important email that needs a response is lost in a sea of “me too” reply-alls and chatter about a fascinating, but distracting TechCrunch article.  I’ve just counted the email that I processed from 8am-3pm, and I’ve only needed to keep and act on 14% of those 200 emails. Imagine if the other 86% had been in my newsfeed instead… I could’ve spent much less time deleting mail I didn’t need.

Comparing business scenarios

The next table is focused more on the aspects that business owners care more about: how easily will the “best” content be found, what’s the ability to integrate these tools into other experiences, or to lock them down for sensitive conversations.



Having more tools in the collaboration toolbox is a great thing. Knowing which tool to use for each scenario is even better. If there’s one thing I hope this post would do, it would be to eliminate forever those Reply All’s that contains one line: “Me too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better go call my grandma…  

Photos from Flickr: DavidK and SteveD

Permanent Link to Post | Email Post Link | Number of Comments 3 Comment(s)

Comments

WHAT'S MISSING

For an item in the newsfeed...

Follow-up - just like Outlook

File an item into a folder (or tag) - just like Outlook or Gmail

Sort newsfeed by date and person column - just like Outlook

Search within folder, inbox, sent, etc... - just like Outlook

Not sure if there is a private message feature

A list of everything I follow - tags, people, docs, communities, etc (which I think Sharepoint might have)

Also make lists eg like Facebook lists or Twitter lists

Filter newsfeed by object type - status update, community, task, blogs, etc...

At the moment you can only post status updates - I'd like a choice of what I can post from the newsfeed
- Post a status update, post an event, post a photo...so far that's what facebook offers...and also post an idea, post a task
...and additionally post any of these to a community (at the moment I think you can only post a status update to a community)

Most activitystream vendors fail in the "my stuff" category

In Outlook I go to my "sent" stream and it's done...it shows me everything I have sent.

In a newsfeed I expect to also have a link called "sent"
- this would display all my posts (blog posts, forum posts, status updates, comments I have made, ideas, events, tasks, communities...and to be able to filter by these object types and by date)

In Yammer, Facebook, Newsgator, etc...the notifications feature is very lightweight...yet in Outlook it's called the "inbox", and is centre stage

...I think the "notifications" stream (not sure if Sharepoint has one at this stage) could be called the "inbox".
Here you would see all your
- @mentions, private messages, comments on your posts, comments you made on other people's posts...and to be able to filter by these object types and by date or person (sender)

And perhaps the notifications or "inbox" needs to be the default page, rather than the "follow" stream...as this is where you go first thing in the morning to see if anyone has assigned you a task, replied to a private message, @mentioned you, commented on your post, commented on a post you have commented on)

Anyway if it had all the above, then I'd feel this is a "personal information database", which is the feeling I have for Outlook

..this would then rival email as our new productivity/personal database/communications/getting work done tool

Oh yeah, and rather than go to the web, an app (just like Outlook is an app) would be good
 on 8/8/2012 4:53 PM

Missing... the point?

THanks Chris for this article - it is a much needed input to discussing how enterprises will adopt the social capabilities they will eventually get in the very near future.

I think that the "Missing..." comment is actully missing the point a bit. Newsfeeds / Activity feeds are not a replacement for email at all. Social will both work as a new channel for communication that you are already doing - typically using Outlook/email - but also as a supplement to the stream of information you are consuming everyday; which is where I recognize that the 84%+ % inbox items that is not a specific action item, currently does not have an optimal distribution channel.

Newsfeeds should not replace email for formal communication. Newsfeeds should also not be used to send / maintain tasks. Outlook has good functionality for that - and SharePoint 2013 actually has some great new functionality for task management and visualization.

Newsfeeds WILL enable you to send your questions or requests out in the information universe of your company and enable you to get answers from sources that you didnt know existed. It will help you discover knowledge and resources that is not in your normal commandline and will open up new opportunities for you and everyone else using it actively.

One thing that may be an issue is the ability to find a post that you remember from months back. Well - one thing you CAN do, is to tag the post with your "personalized" tag - example "123456-Memory" (employeenumber and purpose - yes, I know it look lame, but for the purpose of understanding) and later you will be able to easily find it using search. Just another thing - I am pretty sure that SharePoint 2013 will actually not persist all of this data "forever" - so if streams are getting to be something you want to archive, again you might need to rethink the purpose. Can anyone from MS confirm this?

This - one more time - lights up the "SmartWorker" thoughts that were very popular a few years back, where we did some serious thinking about how to use Office tools in a more efficient way to communicate. The social functionality in SharePoint 2013 solves some of the issues, but will require a fundamental change of behaviour with "older" users to reach high adoption levels. This remains to be the biggest challenge...
 on 8/21/2012 9:07 PM

Interesting article

Interesting article
 on 8/30/2012 8:34 AM

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