Matthew McDermott, MVP

General ramblings from a SharePoint MVP about SharePoint and Microsoft technologies related to collaboration, web content management and productivity.

Recent Posts

Archives

Links

MVP Blogs

Notable Blogs

Administration,   Books,   Community Kit for SharePoint,   CSS,   Development,   Governance,   Just Wondering,   MVP,   My Sites,   Office 2007,   People who Rock,   Search,   SharePoint 2007,   Social Networking,   Speaking Engagements,   Tools,   Training,   Upgrade,   User Group,   Virtual PC,   Web Publishing,   XHTML  

Top Reasons for My Sites

The genesis for this post was a conversation I had during SPC following my presentation on Social Networking with MOSS. SharePoint offers many features that (when properly configured) enable and facilitate social networking "inside the firewall". The power and flexibility of SharePoint lends itself to providing a great platform for corporate social networking. The key is to have a plan and implement the user profiles correctly. If you do not pay attention to the user profile accuracy, all your efforts to implement the connections that come from the recommendations engine will be in vain. Your users will become annoyed at the inaccuracy and turn it all off.

Having said all that, here are my (and several MVPs to whom I owe beers) top reasons for implementing My Sites in no particular order. Remember that you can enable My Sites in phases, beginning with the profile page and moving to full personal sites with a quota for storage.

Top Reasons

  • Findability - Enabling your users to describe themselves to the organization increases there personal findability. People search uses the many user profile attributes to catalogue users and present them in the search results. (If only we could post the information back to AD!)
  • Audiences - You can use the properties of the user profile to target content and links to users. This personalization capability is underused and very powerful.
  • Social Interaction - My Sites are the center of Colleague tracking. Users describe who they interact with and on what level. As users navigate the personal pages and people search these connections are surfaced as Me, My Colleagues, and My Colleagues Colleagues. Visibility of the user profile properties are controlled by the user.
  • My Links - My Links offers central storage and collection of links that follow the user to all SharePoint sites they visit.
  • Personalization Site "Host" - Personalization sites are another underused and misunderstood site template. The personalization site enables "a personal department site", so for example, HR can create a personal site for employees with targeted links and audience related information. The navigation experience presents itself on the users My Site. Through the SSP you can permanently host the link on the My Site navigation.
  • Blog Host - Organizations can encourage knowledge sharing in many ways, I have found blogging to be a terrific way to capture and reuse personal knowledge. Hosting the blog from the personal site is an easy way to manage blog findability.
  • Personal Storage - This one is where I get the most push back from entrenched IT departments that are skeptical of SharePoint. My Sites can replace file shares and offer many features, like versions, check in/out, etc., that make storage on personal sites superior to file shares. Recovery of these sites may not be as easy as a file share, but with the addition of the Recycle Bin, you won't have to restore them as often.

I am certain that I have missed a few, so please comment and set me straight.

</matt>

Posted by Matthew McDermott on Monday, 17 Mar 2008 05:45
7 Comments | Filed under: My Sites
Bookmark this post with:        

Comments

On 31 Mar 2008 04:55, Anthony Poole said:

Hi Matt, You make a compelling case for MySites! They can indeed be a very powerful tool, but I think your point about the importance of a PLAN is absolutely critical - this needs to be detailed and extremely well thought out if you're going to succeed, and avoid creating a big mess. To my mind there are at least two reasons why the plan is so important: 1) In most cases, you'll be introducing a brand new dimension to the way your client's people interact. You mention pushback about file storage, but there is likely to also be pushback from both IT and the business about the concept as a whole, and skepticism as to whether you're going to introduce a new way for people to goof around! I know, I know... but very few organisations are progressive enough to embrace this kind of change with a positive attitude. 2) All those reasons you list are valid... but the number of them also introduces its own problem. There is a risk of introducing MySites for one purpose, and then finding they get used for all sorts of unintended purposes. The plan needs to be very specific about the features that are desired - and explicit about those which are not. A graduated approach works well, e.g. start off giving users a one-page profile site, and nothing else. Then introduce blogs once the technology is bedded in and people are more aware that MySites exist. Then the biggie - migration of file storage, which is by far the biggest headache. Thanks for the article! Anthony

On 06 Apr 2008 08:35, Matthew McDermott said:

I hear the "goof around" statement all the time, most often from individuals who don't collaborate and rarely use team tools. These folks consider "configuration and personalization" a waste of time. They think that IT can see into my mind and know how I want to work AND that the same configuration will work for every role (sales, developer, manager). Personalization leads to ownership, ownership leads to empowerment, I think that scares some folks. It is for this reason that I believe that IT alone cannot implement social networking for the enterprise. Don't get me wrong, IT is required to do it correctly, they just cannot do it alone. The business needs to be involved. You need to have requirements and the business needs to work with IT to implement a plan, driven by a business need. Oh! and the plan has to include governance for the enterprise and communication and training for the end users.

On 16 Apr 2008 10:15, Jen Davis said:

Matthew - I went to your class at the conference. It was wonderful! You mention in this article that you must have a PLAN. I completely understand this. Do you have anything documented? Anything I can refer as I'm about to implement 2007? Thanks jen

On 21 Apr 2008 09:12, Matthew McDermott said:

Jen - If you are planning a whole MOSS deployment I would start with the TechNet Planning documentation. It is updated from time to time, and is the best first place to start. If you mean specific to My Sites, I prefer to start with a list of questions that I pose to the business owners around what they want to achieve. I don't start with a list of features to implement as you will usually hear "Yes, we want that too." The best implementations begin with "What problem are you trying to solve?" and then look at "How does SharePoint support your vision?".

On 24 Jun 2008 11:33, Ian Hayse said:

Where would I find a link to the information you presented in June Austin SPUG meeting?

On 26 Jun 2008 09:42, Matthew McDermott said:

Ian, you can pull it from this post: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/matthew/archive/2008/03/05/csc-303-social-networking-and-user-profiles-for-business.aspx

On 10 Jul 2008 04:02, Mike Janeczko said:

Matt, One of the challenges I see with findability is the cogency of the claims people make. I am refering to the skills and interests portion of the profile. Imagine searching for someone who claims to be an expert at something. They may be an expert within their own mind, or perhaps within a very limited scope fo the topic. But after contacting them, I may find it was a waste of time contacting them, and not think they are an expert. I think adding a voting mechanism or rating scale would help lend validity to their claims. Just a thought...

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Url

Email

Comments

Complete this section to post your comment

 
Powered by Community Kit for SharePoint: Enhanced Blog Edition.