SPTechCon SF: Scott Jamison on ‘Social Computing Best Practices in SharePoint 2010’

SPTechCon SF: Scott Jamison on ‘Social Computing Best Practices in SharePoint 2010’

by | Feb 9, 2011 | SharePoint 2010

For my final SPTechCon session here in San Francisco, I opted for Scott Jamison's presentation on social computing best practices in SharePoint 2010. Social SharePoint sessions are always among my favorites at any given conference, and Scott's session proved to be no exception.  What I couldn't have foreseen, however, was that Scott's session would prove to be almost as information-packed as the advanced admin session of Michael Noel's that I ended the day with yesterday.

One reason for that is that although Scott referred to his session as providing the "top ten" social computing best practices, that designation actually proved to be a misnomer.  You see, while Scott had certainly organized his presentation around ten social aspects of SharePoint, he offers multiple best practices for each of those aspects, leading to dozens of best practices recommendations (or "tips" as Scott refers to them).  Consequently, since Scott has generously made his slide deck available, I'm going to recommend that you go directly to the source to soak in all of the best practices goodness contained therein.

Outside of the best practices recommendations which were, of course, the bulk of Scott's presentation, I did note a few additional items during the session, which began with Scott saying that "Social computing brings people together via software … and really why wouldn't you want these things in your company?" 

Referring to the sharing options available with commercial social computing offerings such as Facebook, Scott said that in a business setting, "You want that same kind of sharing, but not consumer-based because then you can secure it and keep it internal."  SharePoint 2010, of course, provides the social features as well as the peace of mind that comes with security.  As Scott said, "Enterprise collaboration plus social computing equals what Microsoft refers to as communities."

During his discussion of best practices surrounding user profiles, Scott recommended the whitepaper he authored on the subject for detailed guidance on the subject: Planning and Deploying SharePoint Server 2010 User Profiles for My Site Web Sites.

Scott pointed out that all of the social functionality of SharePoint 2010 "works just fine without My Sites,"  so there is no requirement to roll out My Sites if your organization deems them undesirable.  Scott also clarified that you can still have profiles without My Sites, and that you can just enable profiles if that's your wish. 

One "social feedback end user gotcha" that Scott demonstrated is that it's possible to "Like" an entire library (which isn't terribly useful to anyone) if you neglect to select the checkbox next to whichever specific document(s) in the library that it was actually your intention to "Like."

And with that, I'm going to suggest that you now proceed directly to the slide deck of Scott's presentation, and start digging into the bounty of best practices recommendations he provides.

 

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