The Microsoft Office Blog - Connect your Inbox to Facebook and Windows Live with the Outlook Social Connector

The Microsoft Office Blog - Connect your Inbox to Facebook and Windows Live with the Outlook Social Connector
Starting today, you can plug Facebook and Windows Live right into Microsoft Outlook through the Outlook Social Connector. You can view your social network as you look through your email to stay connected with your friends, family, and colleagues.

Up to Speed with PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer - PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer - Microsoft Office

Up to Speed with PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer - PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer - Microsoft Office

PerformancePoint Dashboard Designer is a tool that you can use to create powerful, dynamic dashboards that are hosted in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. This video series is designed to help you learn how you can use Dashboard Designer to create dashboards in your organization.

Social Media Revolution 2

How to Ride -- Not Fight -- the Social Media Wave

How to Ride -- Not Fight -- the Social Media Wave
The boundary between where social networking for an employer stops, and personal networking begins keeps getting fuzzier and fuzzier.

To Block or Not to Block (Social Media Sites): That is the Question

To Block or Not to Block (Social Media Sites): That is the Question

Enterprise Social Computing

Enterprise Social Computing
Collaboration trends are changing the way people work together. Social tools are essential to the daily lives of many people. The proliferation of social software demonstrates that users find value in this new generation of tools. Employees are now demanding this same value be delivered from their organizations. They want to engage socially with the people they work with and build stronger relationships within their companies. Traditional content management and collaboration solutions are incorporating new features to satisfy the social and information sharing demands of the enterprise. Microsoft’s latest release of SharePoint delivers a platform with an integrated approach to social computing.

If You Build It, They Will Come: Driving End User Adoption

Presenter: Scott Jamison – Managing Partner – Jornata

The Challenge of Adoption

Scott started with the analogy of VHS vs. Beta and how VHS was adopted over Beta and achieved the critical mass.

SharePoint Adoption can be hard…even Steve Ballmer indicated in his keynote address that he still gets asked “What is SharePoint?”…the problem is, it is EVERYTHING.  Another reason that the adoption of SharePoint can be difficult is that users do not necessarily “have” to use SharePoint (i.e. they can use file shares and email instead).

Some of the new functionality in SharePoint 2010 (for example Social Computing) will most likely take 18-36 months, as it is something new to the organization.  The Adoption Curve of Awareness, Trial and Adoption was discussed.

User Enlightenment Stages  - Based on Perceived Value and Conquered Skills and Confidence

• Clueless
• Skeptic
• Aware
• Productive
• Advocate – These users are required to tell everyone else in the organization how great SharePoint is.  Advocates must be identified and “championed” to speak to the organization.
• Inventor

What Users Want

• The ability to Connect and Understand SharePoint’s ability to Solve Business Goals – Outcomes not requirements
• Elegant Solution Design – Don’t make users go through five screens to do one task
• WIIFM – What’s in it for me? – Users need to understand how they benefit from what they are entering into the system (e.g. metadata entry, records, document management, etc.)

Must-Have Elements in Your Adoption Strategy

The following items MUST be on your Project Plan for implementing SharePoint

• Communication Plan
  • Identify and Leverage Experts and Champions – Perform a Pilot, spread the word via peers
  • CEO Memos – Someone in the organization understands and agrees with the vision
  • Town Hall Meetings
  • Break Room Posters – One example of a company was mentioned that put the posters on the back of doors in the bathroom…your results may vary
  • Online Scavenger Hunts
  • “Birth” Announcements
  • Launch Parties

NOTE: Make sure you have an ongoing plan for continuous communication (it’s not a one-time event).  Especially since most organizations roll-out separate pieces of functionality over time.

• Training Plan
  • Not just for Developers and IT
  • Power Users / Site Owners – Maybe even establish an internal “certification” program where the developers walk the end users on what to DO and what NOT to do.  This could also be a video to save time.  Also, there is a Microsoft “Buzz” kit that can be accessed and downloaded online.
  • Visitors
  • Members
  • Web Content Contributors
  • Workflow Approvers
  • Remember: “Just-in-time and just enough”

• Content Conversion Plan
  • It’s critical that important information gets moved to the new system, there are basically three options:
  • 1. Clean and Migrate everything
  • 2. Migrate nothing; Index the old content – New content only in the new system
  • 3. Clean and migrate recent content only
  • Remember: Don’t Migrate without Cleaning!

• User Support Plan
  • Have a “Contact Person” for every page
  • Establish Internal Site Owner User Groups – empower users to help each other
  • Get the IT Help Desk on board
  • End-User Feedback Loop – Metrics Based (number of users, rating scale, etc.) or Anecdotes Evidence (gather good/bad experiences and get quotes and self promote the site)
  • Provide End-User Resources (guides, training tools, help, etc.)
    
• Incentives and Reward Plan
  • Answer the WIIFM question – show (with their real data) why something will work
  • Make it fun!
  • Provide Recognition for Content Contribution – Money Talks; so do Titles & Certificates
  • Have a Fantastic User Experience – Invest in an Information Architecture