Socialtext and Lotus Integration 101
Earlier today I presented on Socialtext, with a slant towards the Lotus crowd. I'm PISSED that the Webex session did not record properly. I am sure it must be user error, but it did record 1 minute, so it is not like I did not start the recording! Don't tell me that I should have used Sametime Unyte. I can't until there is screen sharing for Mac. Anyway...
The first 30 minutes was a demo of Socialtext Dashboard, Socialtext People, and Socialtext Workspaces. I presented a general overview because so many people in the Lotus Community have asked me for details about what Socialtext does. I tired to explain things in terms related to what they would be in the Lotus world. It is a bit hard, because Socialtext provide a mix of what you'd get from Notes Teamrooms, Discussion databases and Document Libraries or Quickr Team Places + Quickr Content Libraries, + Connections Communities and Connections Profiles. This was not about "move your Notes apps to Socialtext" like some other vendors are trying to pitch. The second part of the presentation was on integration points between Socialtext and Lotus.
Since the recording was lost (grrr), I'd ask that you take a look at these two videos to get a quick overview of Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People, but below I'll highlight a few things I want you to know.
Are you struggling to keeping track of changes in all the Notes databases, Quickr Team Spaces, or Lotus Communities you belong to? The Socialtext "My Conversations" widget (shown below on the left) automatically display updates to all the pages inside Socialtext that you have an interest in. That means any time a change is made to a page you either created, edited, commented on, or tagged you can easily see it here. This saves you from going to multiple places to keep up with information. You can even subscribe to the feed via RSS. The "My Colleagues" widget (shown below on the right) is similar, but instead of showing pages you have a stake in, it display any actions that the people you are "Following" in your Socialtext social network have taken. For example, when they update a page or start following a new person. This helps you easily discover new content and new people that could be valuable resources in getting your job done. I often find out about new content my coworkers have created, by seeing the information displayed here.
Above I mentioned Following people. Similar to Facebook (or other), within Socialtext you can choose the people you want to keep up with. The people you follow, and those that follow you are displayed on your Socialtext Profile.
When you view someone else's profile, you can see who they follow, and who follows them. This allows you to get a better understanding of the working relationships inside your company or community. Gone are the days of just working within the structure of your corporate org chart. Now people form ad-hoc groups containing the subject matter experts that they find valuable, no matter what part of the company they may work in. Socialtext makes it simple to surface these relationships and gain value from them.
Socialtext makes it extremely easy to access the profiles of the people you follow, by providing a drop down list that is present at the top of every page.
Another extreme useful Socialtext Dashboard widget is one that displays a list of all the Workspaces (wikis) you belong to. Think of this as similar to your Notes desktop, where each Socialtext Workspace would be analogous to a Notes database or list of Quickr Team Sites. (not exactly, but close enough!) However, with Socialtext there is no need to manually add or remove icons, instead each time you log on the list of automatically displayed. One of the things I really like is that you can create a new wiki page from here, you don't have to first be inside the wiki itself.
In several future posts I will highlight many of the key features available in Socialtext Workspaces, but I want to wrap this post up with showing the Lotus integration points I mentioned.
The first is how you can easily however over a name link on a wiki page and have a Lotus Connections business card pop-up. In this case, I am using the BleedYellow Connections site.
The second item is the actual integration of Socialtext Wikis and Lotus Connections Communities. (this was announced at LotuSphere 08) Lotus and Socialtext worked together to create seamless and secure integration between the two products. Below you can see that within a Lotus Connections Community you can integrate a Socialtext wiki. The pages from the wiki are displayed, and the actual Socialtext page can be accessed by clicking on the title.
Finally, I showed how every Socialtext Workspace is emailed enabled automatically. Using the excellent Notes 8.5 multiple address feature, I created a contact in my personal directory than contains the email addresses of the wikis I use most often. This allows me to send content right from my email into a Socialtext wiki page. The subject line becomes the name of the page. If a page of that name already exists, the context is appended to the bottom. This is extremely useful for things like updating lists.
This includes attachments, tags, etc.
There is sooooooo much more I want to cover, but that is what future blog posts are for. ;-)
Tweet
The first 30 minutes was a demo of Socialtext Dashboard, Socialtext People, and Socialtext Workspaces. I presented a general overview because so many people in the Lotus Community have asked me for details about what Socialtext does. I tired to explain things in terms related to what they would be in the Lotus world. It is a bit hard, because Socialtext provide a mix of what you'd get from Notes Teamrooms, Discussion databases and Document Libraries or Quickr Team Places + Quickr Content Libraries, + Connections Communities and Connections Profiles. This was not about "move your Notes apps to Socialtext" like some other vendors are trying to pitch. The second part of the presentation was on integration points between Socialtext and Lotus.
Since the recording was lost (grrr), I'd ask that you take a look at these two videos to get a quick overview of Socialtext Dashboard and Socialtext People, but below I'll highlight a few things I want you to know.
Are you struggling to keeping track of changes in all the Notes databases, Quickr Team Spaces, or Lotus Communities you belong to? The Socialtext "My Conversations" widget (shown below on the left) automatically display updates to all the pages inside Socialtext that you have an interest in. That means any time a change is made to a page you either created, edited, commented on, or tagged you can easily see it here. This saves you from going to multiple places to keep up with information. You can even subscribe to the feed via RSS. The "My Colleagues" widget (shown below on the right) is similar, but instead of showing pages you have a stake in, it display any actions that the people you are "Following" in your Socialtext social network have taken. For example, when they update a page or start following a new person. This helps you easily discover new content and new people that could be valuable resources in getting your job done. I often find out about new content my coworkers have created, by seeing the information displayed here.
Above I mentioned Following people. Similar to Facebook (or other), within Socialtext you can choose the people you want to keep up with. The people you follow, and those that follow you are displayed on your Socialtext Profile.
When you view someone else's profile, you can see who they follow, and who follows them. This allows you to get a better understanding of the working relationships inside your company or community. Gone are the days of just working within the structure of your corporate org chart. Now people form ad-hoc groups containing the subject matter experts that they find valuable, no matter what part of the company they may work in. Socialtext makes it simple to surface these relationships and gain value from them.
Socialtext makes it extremely easy to access the profiles of the people you follow, by providing a drop down list that is present at the top of every page.
Another extreme useful Socialtext Dashboard widget is one that displays a list of all the Workspaces (wikis) you belong to. Think of this as similar to your Notes desktop, where each Socialtext Workspace would be analogous to a Notes database or list of Quickr Team Sites. (not exactly, but close enough!) However, with Socialtext there is no need to manually add or remove icons, instead each time you log on the list of automatically displayed. One of the things I really like is that you can create a new wiki page from here, you don't have to first be inside the wiki itself.
In several future posts I will highlight many of the key features available in Socialtext Workspaces, but I want to wrap this post up with showing the Lotus integration points I mentioned.
The first is how you can easily however over a name link on a wiki page and have a Lotus Connections business card pop-up. In this case, I am using the BleedYellow Connections site.
The second item is the actual integration of Socialtext Wikis and Lotus Connections Communities. (this was announced at LotuSphere 08) Lotus and Socialtext worked together to create seamless and secure integration between the two products. Below you can see that within a Lotus Connections Community you can integrate a Socialtext wiki. The pages from the wiki are displayed, and the actual Socialtext page can be accessed by clicking on the title.
Finally, I showed how every Socialtext Workspace is emailed enabled automatically. Using the excellent Notes 8.5 multiple address feature, I created a contact in my personal directory than contains the email addresses of the wikis I use most often. This allows me to send content right from my email into a Socialtext wiki page. The subject line becomes the name of the page. If a page of that name already exists, the context is appended to the bottom. This is extremely useful for things like updating lists.
This includes attachments, tags, etc.
There is sooooooo much more I want to cover, but that is what future blog posts are for. ;-)
Tweet
