SDL Tridion: Summary of the Content Management and Delivery Cpabilities

Content Management

Templating

Templates in Tridion are modular and granular. There are templates at the component level (reusable piece of functionality) and the page level. The templating framework separates content, design, and application logic allowing for a better separation of concerns and collaboration between designers and developers. The modules, or building blocks, comprising templates are supported by BluePrinting, which allows for easier management and implementation. These building blocks can be assembled and debugged in Template Builder for functional and performance testing.

The way templates are design in Tridion will cater well to empowering the business and reducing IT’s involvement in regular everyday business tasks.

Tridion supports a number of standard industry tools for building templates including Dreamweaver and Visual Studio.

Workflow

Workflows can be designed using Microsoft Visio. Workflows can then be associated with any manageable asset.

Content Publishing and Delivery

SDL Tridion offers multi-channel support for better content reuse, synchronization, and management of source of records. The architecture enables the concept of “author once, publish many”, where the same piece of content can be published across different channels (Web, e-mail, print).

Tridion offers advanced audience targeting and personalization. It has is the ability to create and manage contacts and build group profiles. It enables content managers to personalize content based on audience characteristics (such as profile information or click stream), and measure effectiveness of content based on audience responses.

Another feature that Tridion offers is WebForms. It’s a tool that enables business users to create and update online forms quickly and easily and have them integrated within pages. The highly reusable modular architecture allows for these web forms to be reused across the site.

Given some of the limitations of the web content management systems, you often find numerous forms that have been built and deployed with little to no oversight, resulting in hundreds of duplicate forms that are unmanageable. The WebForms offering from Tridion would help in alleviating some of these typical issues with web forms management. As technology is only an enabler, the business would need better processes in place for web forms and lead generation management. Remember that forms can be a critical piece of a lead generation process. Solutions such as Eloqua serve the same purpose with a lot more out of the box for lead nurturing and gated and/or progressive profiling.

Localization and Internationalization

Content in Tridion is stored in Unicode. APIs and GUIs are Unicode compliant. Content can be managed and published in double-byte and bi-directional languages.

The Translation Management System (TMS) provides Tridion with full translation management and a language repository for reuse of previously translated content. Business rules and workflow can still be applied (with role-based security giving users access to authorized functionality only).

Blueprinting and the reusability of components and content will allow for better management of brand and message, while enabling local regions to localize that message.

It is also worth mentioning that SDL Tridion has a number of sites in their portfolio that clearly demonstrate these features.

As companies look to expand their global footprint, especially in emerging markets in south east Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, the translation and localization capabilities of Tridion would be a corner stone to our success.

User Interface and Usability

Content managers can use a variety of interfaces to manage content and assets. SiteEdit allows for client-side/browse-based for quick content editing and publishing. Content Manager Explorer is another browser-based tool for advanced users. Office applications (Word) and Adobe Dreamweaver can also be used to create templates and manage content.

Tridion’s interfaces can be extended to provide more functionality (such as custom screens to manage integrations with other line of business applications).

Despite its feature-rich interface, Tridion’s interface (Content Manager Explorer, to be specific) is overwhelming and very demanding (system resource-wise) of the end-user’s machine. It is memory-intensive (given all the code that runs client-side) and it is often the case that end-users have to restart their browsers. This was experienced by Tridion presenters on site as well and was highlighted in the CMS Watch report as one of the weaknesses of the platform.

It is therefore important to understand the minimum system requirements for the potential business users to avoid any dissatisfaction with the system and its responsiveness.

SDL Tridion: An Impressive Web Content Management (WCM) System - Part 1

I did a quiet in-depth analysis of the SDL Tridion platform a while back. I'll be sharing my assessment over a number of blog posts. I'll cover the architecture, content management, content publishing and delivery, content migration methodologies, search, analytics, documentation, and extendability aspects of the platform, so stay tuned!

Architecture

The underlying architecture for SDL Tridion is modular, de-coupled, and based on industry standards (underlying technologies and protocols) and best practices.

Tridion supports both .NET and a Java-based deployment.

Content is stored in XML for better reusability and separation between content and presentation. The use of XML Schemas allow for more flexibility in structuring content. XLink manages relationships between schemas and documents. XSLT can be used to render content in native formats (HTML, PDF etc.). This XML foundation is the underpinning for Tridion’s content reusability and modularity.

Tridion also supports Web services for reuse, extension, and integration with other platforms.

Content delivery is decoupled from content management. This decoupling allows for easier content distribution, better demarcation of logical and physical architectural components, and more flexibility in how the platform is deployed and scaled.

Tridion supports standard application servers such as IIS and WebLogic. The Presentation server provides storage management (published content and related assets and their metadata), link management (across all assets to prevent broken links), and cache management (for better performance).

As for publishing models, SDL Tridion provides 5 models with the ability to combine them (for example, pages with high hit rate can be static, while areas behind the login can be dynamic and personalized). These models give us extreme flexibility in how we design our physical architecture.

One of the unique features of SDL Tridion is BluePrinting. It’s a modeling mechanism for content and processes. It provides the ability to separate the management of content, layout, applications, and profiles. This allows for better alignment to functional roles and the ability to reuse or localize content without compromising the corporate branding standards.

SDL Tridion has a developer community and a framework for developers to submit components for other SDL Tridion customers to use.

In summary, the product’s architecture is truly impressive and manifests a great technical aptitude on the Tridion engineers’ part. It lends itself well to potentially any physical architecture requirements and will likely meet most of your functional and technical requirements. But remember, there is no silverbullet with WCMs; you can never find a platform that meets ALL your requirements. Custom development should be expected.

Note: I relied on published documentation from SDL Tridion as well as meetings with their architects.

Social Computing: Building Contexts for Interaction (Part 4 and last)

By: Adnan (AD) Al-Ghourabi

Enterprise Architecture, IHS

9.    Selection of Technology

The technology aspect of a social-computing implementation compliments the social/cultural aspect and is also critical for a successful adoption.

There are three principles that define a good implementation:

1. Beneficial actions
2. Responsiveness
3. Simplicity

Tagging is a great example to explain these three principles. Using AJAX, the process of content tagging becomes extremely simple and light-weight. A sound user experience design complemented by the responsiveness and the ease of interaction encourage further engagement from end-users. As more content is tagged, all users benefit from this action as it makes content discoverable, organized, and helps identifying interests, credibility, and expertise. [4]

10.    Available Solutions

10.1    External

The following solutions are the most common platforms of external social networks:

1. Jive Software
2. Blogtronix
3. KickApps
4. SocialText
5. Telligent

10.2    Internal: NewsGator

Newsgator is at the forefront of social computing and the most elaborate solution with respect to integration with MOSS.

 The proposition of Newsgator’s Social Sites 2.5 is to introduce a Facebook-like social community for the enterprise to allow bottom-up innovation and increased productivity by driving “knowledge-sharing”, an evolution from collaboration and organization by “project-teams” or geography to communities based on areas of interest or focus. [7]

One of high-profile adopters is McCann, a global media company that helps companies like J&J, Coca Cola, and MasterCard in their digital strategy, consumer insight, and media planning (about $13 billion in annual billings with 90 offices in 66 countries, all using MOSS and Newsgator). [6]

It’s important to mention that McCann has taken this solution to the next level by allowing customers to access to these communities and contribute, hence providing a different perceptive. [9]

10.2.1 Summary of Features

 1) Colleague activity feeds, network building, social network graphs (recommendation, introductions, associations).

2) Content discovery by surfacing relevant information, tagging, and tag clouds for emphasis of “frequent” tags or topics of interest.

3)      Allow creation of ad-hoc communities with support for social bookmarking (shared bookmarks), rich discussion and collaboration capabilities, all based on an interest or a focus.

4)      Enhanced profiles (that extend My Sites).

5)       

10.    Samples Online Communities

10.1    By Topic - Thomson-Reuters

The Thomson-Reuters online communities are one of the most successful implementations of “business-oriented” social networks the author has come across. These communities offer the following features: [11]

1)      A Community is centered on one topic of interest, such as Carbon Market.

2)      It highlights announcements, events, sponsorship advertisements, jobs postings, top stories. It also promotes editors picks and most discussed postings or news.

3)      E-mail newsletters include snippets of content to drive traffic to the community. It’s apparent that navigation paths and click streams are recorded (how links with e-mail messages are crafted).

4)      The top section is reserved for promotion of premium content (shop). It also allows users to navigate to other communities.

5)      A survey section to elicit feedback and ideas.

6)      A user profile displays connections, education, and work history. It shows other members or colleagues with similar profiles and interests and offers the ability to send and receive messages.

7)      A user can invite others, create posts, subscribe to alerts, participate in surveys, ask questions, vote on or rate content.

8)      Each member can have a blog. Thomson-Reuters postings are promoted and can be easily identified. Any content can be voted and commented on and members can contact the author of a post.

9)      Cross-promotion is prevalent: “content you might like”.

10)   Featured contributors.

11)   Mash-up of related news from the Web or Reuters.

Note: built on Blogtronix.

10.2    By Product - ATG

The ATG community is a good example of a community that’s centered on a product. Some of the features it offers are: [12]

1)      Discussion forums around technology, business, or for feedback

2)      Ability to share documents, create a post, create or join a group

3)      Highlight of top participants, popular discussions, popular tags

4)      Track of things users read for easier access later on

Note: built on Jive Software

11.    Future Trends

11.1    Fremium: The New Business Model

Despite the fact that most of the social computing offerings are available free of charge, businesses have managed to create tremendous business value and generated new and sustainable revenue streams. Welcome to “Fremium.” [1]

Fremium is a business model that consists of “free” and “premium” offering. Another name that has been used to signify the importance of Web 2.0 and how business models are adapting to it is “Business 2.0” (there is a magazine with this name now). [1]

The way these models work is by providing a free service for the community at large while generating revenue from “value-add” services from a number of streams. These streams cover the costs of the free service offering.

11.2    Semantics Web: Web 3.0

The following excerpt is taking from: Social Semantic Web: Where Web 2.0 Meets Web 3.0 [14]

Emerging Web 3.0 applications, driven by semantic web technologies such as RDF, OWL and SPARQL, offer powerful data organization, combination, and query capabilities.

The social web and the semantic web complement each other in the way they approach content generation and organization. Social web applications are fairly unsophisticated at preserving the semantics in user-submitted content, typically limiting themselves user tagging and basic metadata. Because of this, they have only limited ways for consumers to find, customize, filter and reuse data. Semantic web applications, on the other hand, feature sophisticated logic-backed data handling technologies, but lack the kind of scalable authoring and incentive systems found in successful social web applications. As a result, semantic web applications are typically of limited scope and impact. We envision a new generation of applications that combine the strengths of these two approaches: the data flexibility and portability of that is characteristic of the semantic web, and the scalability and authorship advantages of the social web.

The following excerpt is taken from: Wikipedia 3.0, the end of Google [15]

The Semantic Web requires the use of a declarative ontological language like OWL to produce domain-specific ontologies that machines can use to reason about information and make new conclusions, not simply match keywords. However, the Semantic Web, which is still in a development phase where researchers are trying to define the best and most usable design models, would require the participation of thousands of knowledgeable people over time to produce those domain-specific ontologies necessary for its functioning.

Social Computing: Building Contexts for Interaction (Part 3)

By: Adnan (AD) Al-Ghourabi
Enterprise Architecture, IHS

6. Potential Obstacles

According to the Burton Group, one of the major obstacles for implementing social networks is the uncertainty with regards to the business case and ROI.

From the research they have done, most of the discussions were mainly around the business case, metrics, policies, roles, participation, and cultural dynamics.

Perception of the intended solution is very important to the success of the initiative. Some companies have shied away from the term “social” altogether or used terms such as “online communities” or “corporate social network”. [2]

Another obstacle is the change in the mindset. In order for such initiatives to be successful, individuals need to be actively participating to keep the content fresh. This may seem as “yet another system to access to do my job.” [2]

The Burton Group report stressed the importance of making these initiatives relevant to the business and presenting them in a way that garners people’s support. This requires a careful management of perception and the engagement of other groups earlier in the project. “Governance should be outlined from the beginning. Policies need to be established or updated. Usage procedures need to be agreed upon. Groups such as HR, Legal, Compliance, and Security are vital in ensuring the success and the sustainability of such projects.” [2] Having them engaged early would create a sense of ownership. It may even be wise to underscore the value such solution may bring to these groups and have them become one of the earliest adopters.

In any case, such an undertaking requires multiple sponsors across the organization. As the benefit of social networks or online communities can be hard to ascertain, a proof of concept may be critical in providing tangible results for SMART goals; specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

7. Ensuring a Successful Adoption

7.1 Before Implementation

As people are the consumers and will guide the requirements process, the technological solution is more about providing the right tools for the desired context. [3]

The following is a list of best practices for successful social-network implementations (internal and external):

1. The need to engage legal, HR, security, and compliance teams earlier in the process to address any “loss of control” concerns but without stringent policies and guidelines that will discourage participation. [2]

2. Garner acceptance from management by providing a business case and articulating scope, goals, and purpose.

Note: it’s often hard to quantify the return of investment (ROI) in internal social network implementations. Metrics, such as adoption rate, number of active (and also passive) users, or reduction in e-mails (numbers and size) is often used to gauge the success of such an implementation.

EMC, for example, is using an internal implementation on Jive software to gain the expertise for launching an external-facing community. [17]

Another metric for measuring value is how much such an application would help process improvement.

3. Finding the first champion.

As a white paper by NewsGator puts it, the champion provides “the needed push at the beginning of the project to keep usage up and discover more advocates among users. The champion needs to keep helping and encouraging users until this initial base of power users is created.” [3]

A champion can also be very influential in putting together the business case. As possibilities for process improvements are identified, a business case will be much easier to put together.

4. Identifying the initial group of adopters, such as a research group or customers of a product.

Amy Shuen, the author of Web 2.0 Business Strategies, describes the initial adopters as those who “provide the critical momentum that powers the whole system.“ [1]

5. Setting modest expectations. [17]

6. Providing tools that are easy to use to contribute content and establish channels for providing feedback.

7. Encouraging openness of communities and knowledge sharing between employees and avoiding “gated communities.” [17]

Internal implementations have some unique criteria for success: [2][3]

1. Tackle the business and cultural issues that may be raised and create a positive perception based on analyzing inhibitors, advantages and the perceived-value of such an implementation.

2. Encourage “self-monitoring” and develop a policy for inappropriate content without impeding adoption. This would likely be different for customer-facing implementations.

3. Understand the need for an “element of enjoyment” to encourage adoption within the enterprise.

4. Looking at existing business processes used by internal adopters and how the social-network implementation aligns with it.

5. Integrate with existing systems so it doesn’t appear as yet another system or task than employee has to access.

6. Considering new incentive systems to encourage and recognize participation.

7.2 After Implementation

One interesting observation about social networks is that they are self-evolving and provide persona-driven content. The more content there is (and participation), the more relevant content is surfaced, and the more meaningful relationships and associations are deduced and introduced, which further drives adoption and more knowledge-sharing over the life span of the community.

The Sustaining Communities of Practice white paper succinctly puts the characteristics of a community in the sustained performance phase as:

1. “Measurable progress against community objectives or creation of new objectives when launch objectives are met;
2. Changes in measures such as member numbers, content numbers and other quantifiable issues;
3. Activity that demonstrates learning;
4. Work processes being modified to take advantage of knowledge sharing and collaboration capabilities;
5. Taking action on lessons learned, forum topics and comments to knowledge objects to keep community content fresh;
6. Communications to community membership;
7. Shifting focus to knowledge innovation—better answers to new and tougher problems;
8. Articulating community value through success stories;
9. Knowledge sharing behaviors recognized in people development; and
10. Active and involved leadership.” [4]

In addition to the above, in order for the community to remain effective, it requires a dedication of resources (people, time) and support (management, adoption).

Social Computing: Building Contexts for Interaction (Part 2)

By: Adnan (AD) Al-Ghourabi
Enterprise Architecture, IHS

4. Significance of Social Computing
4.1 Why Social Computing?

The true value of communities stems from the collective intelligence of participants and the on-going interaction and collaboration. “People are no longer just consumers of content and applications; they are participants, creating content and interacting with different services and people,” said Betsy Palkowsky, a senior strategic marketing manager at IHS.

4.2 Collective Intelligence

Collective intelligence is “the knowledge found in employees’ heads and in the databases and unstructured documents found across the organization.” [1] This is absolutely critical for an organizations with a large number of employees, partners, and customers.

As more people contribute their knowledge, be it by tagging, providing feedback, or adding content, more people will embrace these solutions. Participants become the owners of key knowledge even as “individual experts and content providers come and go, reducing the potential danger of demographic shifts or business cycle changes.” By having that information available, productivity can sharply increase as “people can quickly find critical information and subject-matter experts.” [1]

4.2.1 Examples of Collective Intelligence

4.2.1.1 Stumpmedia
Stumpmedia: http://www.stumpedia.com/

Stumpedia.com, as indicated on the website, “is a social search engine that relies on human participation to index, organize, and review the world wide web.” [19]

4.2.1.2 Twine

Twine: http://www.twine.com/

“Twine is a new way for you to collect online content – videos, photos, articles, Web pages, products - and bring it all together by topic, so you can have it in one place and share it with anyone you want…it helps you collect information in a new, highly personalized, convenient way. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company.” [20]

Amongst the features of Twine are: [20]

Uses semantic understanding to “get to know you.” It automatically learns about your interests and makes connections and recommendations tailored to you.

It organizes your content by topic for easy tracking and sharing.

Find other people with similar interests.

Personalized recommendations.

5. How can Social Computing Help?

5.1 Internally
5.1.1 Capture Knowledge

The knowledge that employees, past and current, have about business processes, projects, or practices is very valuable. Documentation in its traditional sense has always been lacking and it’s always difficult and frustrating for new employees to get up to speed.

Surveys in the industry have shown that “70% to 80% of executives at large companies are worried about the coming brain drain from retiring workers.” According to the same surveys, “fewer than 20% [of these executives] have done anything about it.” [Fortune, July 19, 2006]

It’s therefore, important to encourage adoption of social computing tools and integrate them as part of a daily process for the benefit of current and future employees.

5.1.2 Expertise Location

The Burton Group summarizes that as “who knows what and who knows whom.” [2]

Employees tend to look for external resources for assistance (search engines, blogs, discussion forums, or network of professionals). This often involves a substantial amount of time and cost in searching for a solution or implementing a solution without the knowledge of an expert (who may already exist within the same company). [3]

Having a knowledge pool to draw from and the ability to easily identify experts becomes critical. Social computing tools, by virtue of captured metadata or deduced patterns from users’ actions, can easily help in identifying these experts.

Navigation paths, click-streams, and feedback provided by users (comments, tags, forwarded links etc.) can also provide an indirect and accurate way to locate expertise.

5.1.3 Innovation

As more users are contributing and collaborating on content, whether actively by adding content or passively through click-stream feedback, content can be indexed and quantified for other purposes such as marketing, complementary service, and products. As more people share their insight and add new knowledge to the pool of existing knowledge, geographical and organizational boundaries will become less visible, which further drives innovative solutions.

5.1.4 Collaboration and Community Building

Social networks provide an excellent means for interaction and fostering relationships.

There is empirical evidence that social networks can increase productivity and efficiency. A Baseline article (Social Software’s Culture Clash – February 21, 2008) lists a 25% reduction in email attachments at one company and a 10% increase in productivity at another company based on implementing wikis. [3]

These networks take collaboration to the next-level where users can start sharing their insight, best practices, and past experiences. The knowledge captured will not only help in building relationships that transcend geographical or organizational boundaries, but also help new colleagues adapt to their new roles.

5.1.5 Recognition

One of the reasons employees would contribute is the desire to be discovered and recognized. It helps project managers and executives to discover new ideas and identify people with passion about certain subjects. [1]

5.2 Externally

There are numerous benefits for offering online communities for our partners and customers:

1. Directly elicit feedback from our customers.
2. Serve as a promotion vehicle for existing or new products and services.
3. Analysis of passive contribution (click-streams and navigation paths) can provide insight into our customers’ interests.
4. Create new sources of revenue by providing premium services.
5. Once a model is built and tuned, it can be easily replicated and adapted for all products and services.
6. Help reduce product support costs by having customers help other customers and providing a knowledge-base.
7. Allowing users to add meta-data around our offerings can greatly enrich the value of our content.
8. These communities can serve as a testing ground for new releases.
9. Customers can share stories about our products and services that may drive purchases from other customers
10. Customer voting on content can give us direct access to our customers’ pulse and may give us insight into usage patterns and valuable information on what products should be further enhanced.
11. Communities may become a great source of attracting talents.
12. And finally it’s another way to gauge customer delight.

Social Computing: Building Contexts for Interaction (Part 1)

By: Adnan (AD) Al-Ghourabi
Enterprise Architecture, IHS

1. Executive Summary

From the research the author has done in this discipline, few companies have fully embraced social networking. Companies, however, have a vested interest in becoming a leader in providing other venues for collaboration and interaction with colleagues and customers.

Social computing allows organizations to capture the collective intelligence of internal and external customers and augment the value of their offerings in a way that will lead to innovative solutions, increased productivity, and will enhance their ability to empower customers and provide them with insight that impacts world markets and shapes companies’ future.

The challenges that lay ahead of such initiatives would likely not be IT-related, but rather ensuring that the right processes are put in place, the right teams are engaged, and that constituents have a common understanding of objectives and expectations, with articulate scope and achievable goals. It’s likely that the strategy for internal versus external communities will be different, although the underpinning principles are the same.

The concept of social networks is straight-forward and the potentials are, indeed, endless. And so, as we move from Web 2.0 to the Web 3.0 technologies in the next 5-10 years, it will be imperative that organizations put forth a vision and a strategy that will realize their potential. Social networks are indeed a “growing necessity”, said John Oechsle, CIO at IHS.

2. Introduction


With the advent of the Web 1.0, if such versioning is appropriate, where establishing internet presence (profitable and non-profitable) and making information discoverable, be it by SEO, marketing, or other means, research has continued to explore new ventures and create exciting opportunities that change the way we live, work, and interact.

The new Web, Web 2.0, is about users and what they have to offer. It’s their collective input and the spirit of sharing that’s the trademark of the new Web. It has opened the doors wide-open for businesses to adapt to and adopt these technological and social changes.

While collaboration tools were an evolution to e-mails and hallway conversations, they often suffered from a short-life span where collaboration sites become stale content repositories and fade away as soon as projects conclude.

Some of the popular Web 2.0 tools are blogs and wikis. Blogs have transformed to become a source of documentation, support, or a means to establish authority and credibility. They have remained more of a one-way information-delivery vehicle with minimal interactions. Blogs are here to stay and can certainly continue to serve as a means of communication and information dissemination.

Wikis are an informal community-owned documentation where a number of users can co-author or co-review text. Wikis have served as knowledgebases with collective ownership.

Despite the great advantages these tools offer, they are lacking the networking element. Social networks transcend geographical and organizational limitations and connect individuals, groups, and content in communities where knowledge is reserved and new ideas are born and shared.

3. Web 2.0 and Social Computing


3.1 What is Web 2.0?


According to Tim O’Reilly (who is credited with coining the term), Web 2.0 is “the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.”

Web 2.0, as was pointed out in the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in 2004, is about building contexts for interactions rather than applications. [1]

3.2 Social Computing

Social computing and social networks are one of the manifestations of Web 2.0. These concepts are seen as an evolution to collaboration tools. According to Wikipedia, it’s defined as “an area of computer science that is concerned with the intersection of social behavior and computational systems.”

Networking sites, content tagging and filtering, picture-sharing, online auctions, and prediction markets are all examples of social computing. [18

Given the plethora of solutions available, management teams have realized the benefit of such tools within the confines of the enterprise, or as an offering to customers. “I want Facebook for the Enterprise” or “Can we use Facebook?” is a common starting point and it signifies the awareness and the need for a context for interaction for colleagues and customers alike.

All enterprise social network solutions comprise individuals, groups, content, and the relationships among those three. Individuals, the adopters, are central to social computing. Their active participation is a cornerstone for the success of any social-based implementation. [3]

Individuals organize in groups with common interests, goals, or expertise. Existing groups invite individuals to partake in the conversation and the level of activity expands virally.

Content is represented by the contribution of individuals and groups, such as documents, shared bookmarks, or discussions. This content is where the business value lies.

3.3 Tagging as an Example of Social Computing


Tags are, in a way, a form of metadata; descriptors and pointers by which people can find content easier. In some cases, tags are as important as the content itself and tend to augment the quality as it helps to drive search.

Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Flickr, emphasized the importance of tags as: “The job of tags isn’t to organize information into tidy categories. It’s to add value.” [1]

Tags, whether done visually through a set of existing tags (aka guided tagging), or by allowing users to add their own, significantly improve the quality of service provided to end users. It improves the quality of search and allows for better categorization of data, a process that continues to improve as the acceptance and participation levels increase. As an example, 85% of the photos on Flickr have user-added metadata. [1]

References

1. Shuen, Amy (2008). A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and Strategies Behind Successful Web 2.0 Implementations. O’Reilly Media, Inc.

2. Gotta, Mike (2009). The Burton Group. Field Research Study: Social Networking Within the Enterprise.

3. NewsGator (2008). Social Computing in the Enterprise.

4. Vestal, Wesley (2006). Sustaining Communities of Practice.

5. Engmann , Brad (2008). Blogtronix. Communities & Education: Connecting People, Sharing Knowledge & Driving Interest.

6. SharePoint Magazine. NewsGator Social Sites. Retrieved 12/21/2008:
   
   http://sharepointmagazine.net/products/newsgator-social-sites

7. NewsGator. Webminar. Delivering ‘Facebook for the Enterprise’ with SharePoint. Webminar. Viewed 12/21/2008:
   
   https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/playback/Playback.do;jsessionid=5ED52AD41DCF13B50D485F6EF4F7B57E.lax11
   

8. Network World. Firm builds a social network woth SharePoint, NewsGator RSS. Retrieved 12/21/2008:
   
   http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/080108-firm-builds-a-social-network.html
   

9. Conversation with Christy Schoon, NewsGator Marketing, on 12/22/2008.

10. ZDNet. Atlassian, NewsGator hook into SharePoint. Retrieved 12/21/2008:
    
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=6627

11. ATG Community. Retrieved 03/18/2009:
    https://community.atg.com/index.jspa

12. Carbon Market Community. Retrieved 03/20/2009:
    
    http://communities.thomsonreuters.com/Carbon/

13. Gavin , Scott: Meet Charlie: What’s Enterprise 2.0. Retrieved 02/28/2009:
    http://http://www.scottgavin.info/
    

14. Social Semantic Web: Where Web 2.0 Meets Web 3.0. Retrieved 03/27/2009:
    
    http://tw.rpi.edu/portal/AAAI-SSS-09:_Social_Semantic_Web:_Where_Web_2.0_Meets_Web_3.0
    

15. Wikipedia 3.0, the end of Google. Retrieved 03/27/2009:
    
    http://evolvingtrends.wordpress.com/2006/06/26/wikipedia-30-the-end-of-google/
    

16. Facebook Announces Facebook Connect for iPhone. Retrieved 03/26/2009:
    
    http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Facebook-Announces-Facebook-Connect-for-iPhone-215329/
    

17. Conry-Murray, Andrew (2009). Can Enterprise Social Networking Pay Off?

18. Social Computing. Wikipedia. Retrieved 03/28/3009:
    
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_computing

19. Stumpmedia. Retrieved 03/13/2009: http://www. Stumpmedia.com

20. Twine. Retrieved 03/13/2009: http://www.twine.com/

Upgrading to iPhone 3GS: What you need to know

OK. I just upgraded to the new OS (3.0) after a number of failed tries.

First, the fact that I needed to back-up my iPhone first ticked me off. It took iTunes more than 12 hours and by the morning it was just half-way done. Since I can't live without my iPhone, I was looking for a way to skip this step.

So how do we by-pass backup? Apparently, I just needed an insider tip :)

Before we start, please make sure you have iPhone fully synched up with iTunes (you'll see why at the end)

1) Close iTunes.
2) If you have windows Vista, navigate to C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes.
3) Make a copy of iTunesPrefs.xml.
4) Open the original fle in a text (or XML) editor (no WORD or wordpad!).
5) Search for "user pref".
6) Under the first DICT for the User Preferences section, enter the following:

<key>DeviceBackupsDisabled</key>
<data>
dHJ1ZQ==
</data>

7) Save the file.
8) Open iTunes and connect your iPhone if you haven't already.
9) Assuming you have already downloaded the latest OS file (about 230 MB), install the software.

It took me about 15 minutes to finish the upgrade.

Here are the gotchas (so you don't get scared):

1) When you start your iPhone, you'll notice that all your applications are GONE! Fear not, as all your apps are still available on subsequent pages (note the white dots that indicate the number of dashboard "pages" you have). If they are still not there, you just need to synch your iPhone with iTunes.

2) If you look under Messages (used to be SMS), you'll notice that you just see phone numbers, no names. If you go to Contacts, you'll see that probably most of your contacts are gone! Just be patient and let iPhone finish synchronization :)

Good luck!

MOSS: Render Failed Error for Custom View

I recently created a custom view in MOSS with a column using the Checkbox (Yes/No) data type. The view was filtering on that column (is equal to Yes).

I later changed the data type to Choice and provided Yes and No values. The view failed to render and displayed the error:



I modified the view (the filter was changed to "is equal to 1") to change the filter to Yes again and that fixed the issue.

I've never seen the render error before, so here you have it.

Building My MOSS Farm: Part 1

Few months ago, I bought a serious Intel Core 2 Quad (4 cores, that is) with 2.83Ghz and 8GB of ram. It's a 64 bit machine with 120GB of 10,000 rpm for the C drive (makes all the difference, believe me) and additional 500GB drive. The plan? Not a nuclear bomb, but to build out a 4-server MOSS farm.

In these series, I'll chronicle the build and configuration process.

1) I will be using my MSDN subscription for the software.
2) I decided on installing Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 (64 bit, of course).
3) I am going with SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition.
4) MOSS 2007 SP1 + February update.
5) I will be using VMWare to host my farm. So why not Virtual PC 2007?

Reason 1: Although it's free, I was so disappointed that 64-bit guest machines are not supported. Are you kidding me?!
Reason 2: VMWare just rocks. You'll see why soon.

Approach

1) Build a base machine with all updates and patches + .NET framework 3.5 SP1.
2) Clone this machine for the 4 servers in the farm.

MOSS Farm

Server 1: App server, i.e central administration + indexing role
Server 2: Database server
Server 3: Web server 1 + query role
Server 4: Web server 2 + query role

To be continued...

MOSS: Deleting Web Application in Central Administration Fails

If you have a Web application in MOSS (or WSS) and you try to delete it from Application Management --> Delete Web Application, you get the following error:

This operation uses the SharePoint Administration service (spadmin), which could not be contacted. If the service is stopped or disabled, start it and try the operation again. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication.UnprovisionIisWebSitesThroughAdministrationService(Boolean deleteWebSites, String[] serverComments, String applicationPoolId) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebApplication.UnprovisionIisWebSites(Boolean deleteWebSites, String[] serverComments, String applicationPoolId) at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.DeleteWebApplicationPage.BtnSubmit_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) at System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

Reason? The user logged in is not an administrator on the Web server. Check out this KB article.

Resolved: Installing Silver Tools Beta 2 with Visual Studio 2008 SP1

If you have Visual Studio 2008 SP1 installed and you are attempting to install Silverlight Tools Beta 2 (silverlight_chainer.exe), you may have run into the following error:

The installation failed with the following message: Fatal error during installation. Click the Finish button to exist.

If you open the log file and scroll to the bottom, you may find an error similar to this:

Original exit code: c:\a50aad885dc5172be00e9656bfb3\Silverlight.2.0_Developer.exe returned non-MSI error code: 0x5de - The event log file is full.

If you attempt to run that executable, you will likely get an error that a newer version already exists. The interesting part is this executable is trying to install the "developer" version of Sliverlight (which allows for debugging as I understand).

I went to Control Panel --> Add or Remove Programs and removed Silverlight. I then ran that executable again and voila, it worked.

I then ran the silverlight_chainer.exe again.

Surprise surprise! It worked!

--------------

I just found out that there is a Silverlight release for Visual Studio 2008 SP1.

Using Workflow with ASP.NET: Setting up a database

I will be writing a series on using Workflow with ASP.NET. For now, I will just be adding tidbits on how to set things up.

First, you will need to persist (and track) your workflows to a sql server database. To do so (taken from MSDN), create a new database and run the following scripts:

%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Workflow Foundation\SQL\EN\SqlPersistenceService_Schema.sql

%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Workflow Foundation\SQL\EN\Tracking_Schema.sql

%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Workflow Foundation\SQL\EN\SqlPersistenceService_Logic.sql

%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Workflow Foundation\SQL\EN\Tracking_Logic.sql

Visual Studio 2008: Error When Opening Workflow Designer

You may run into this error when you upgrade to Visual Studio 2008 and attempt to view a workflow in the designer:

there is no editor available for [..] make sure the application for the file type (.cs) is installed

I first attempted to reset settings for Visual Studio and that didn't do it. I re-installed Visual Studio 2008 and kept getting the same error. Little did I pay attention to the output window! It was already telling me how to fix it:

The Microsoft.Workflow.VSDesigner.DesignerPackage, Microsoft.Workflow.VSDesigner, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35 ({FD526733-BD72-4F81-BEEC-BEB06E2AF59F}) did not load because of previous errors. For assistance, contact the package vendor. To attempt to load this package again, type 'devenv /resetskippkgs' at the command prompt.

And so, I ran that command (if you don't have your system variables set up, you may have to browse to folder where the IDE executable resides. For example: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE).

SQL Server and "User Instance" Error: The user instance login flag is not supported on this version of SQL Server. The connection will be closed

If you attempt using the membership/role providers with the .NET framework 2.0, you may get the following error:

The user instance login flag is not supported on this version of SQL Server. The connection will be closed

There could be a number of reasons:

1) You have not run the aspnet_regsql (in the C:\Windows\Microsoft .NET\Framework..) folder to register the required stored procedures for the membership and/or role providers.

2) You are not using SQL Server Express and your connection string has User Instance=True.

3) You downloaded a starter kit and trying to point it to a SQL Server 2005 instance and haven't modified the default Web.config (or forgot to remove User Instance=True in the connection string).

What's the User Instance flag used for?

It is only supported for the express edition of SQL Server. It allows running applications under a least-privilege user account (LUA).

It allows the creation of a separate SQL Server Express instance (spunned off the parent instance) that runs under the security context of the current user. You can read more here.

Rebuilding the master DB for SQL Server 2005

I was starting the SQL Server 2005 instance. The service failed to start.

I checked the event log and found the following error:

Error 2(The system cannot find the file specified.) occurred while opening file 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\DATA\master.mdf' to obtain configuration information at startup. An invalid startup option might have caused the error. Verify your startup options, and correct or remove them if necessary.

I went to that folder and sure enough, the master database does not exist. So how do you build one? It appears that you have to change the installation in order to do that.

Control Panel --> Add/Remove Programs --> Microsoft SQL Server 2005.

Click on Change. You should get a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Maintenance dialogue.

First: Component Selection --> Select the troubled instance.

Next.

Second: Feature Maintenance --> I selected Database Engine.

Next. That should start a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Setup Dialogue.

Changing the owner of tables

Taken from: http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/archive/2004/01/30/65229.aspx

The below helps changing ownership of tables (not database. You can follow the same principle to change other types of objects). Please note running the below would could limit access to these tables.

DECLARE @old sysname, @new sysname, @sql varchar(1000)
SELECT
@old = 'OldOwner'
, @new = 'dbo'
, @sql = '
IF EXISTS (SELECT NULL FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE
QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA)+''.''+QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME) = ''?''
AND TABLE_SCHEMA = ''' + @old + '''
)
EXECUTE sp_changeobjectowner ''?'', ''' + @new + ''''
EXECUTE sp_MSforeachtable @sql

Changing database owner when dbo is associated with a sql or windows account

You may have run into a situation where the dbo role is associated with a sql or a windows account (as you create objects under that identity). The problem? If you attempt to delete the account or remove its mappings (User Mapping under the properties of that account), you will get the following error:

Drop failed for User 'dbo'.

...

Cannot drop the database owner. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 15181)

The best way that I have found to go around this is to re-associate dbo with "sa" by using the sp_changedbowner stored procedure:

EXEC sp_changedbowner 'sa'

(Note: make sure you use "USE databaseName" or run the SP in the context of the database)

Search request was unable to connect to the Search Service

The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service.

Resolution: make sure the correct ports are open between server if you have your index and query servers on different boxes within your MOSS farm. Also, the correct roles need to be selected for each of these servers in the central administration.

The language is not supported on the server - Office SharePoint Server2007 installation

I got the following error while trying to create a list based on a custom template:

The language is not supported on the server - Office SharePoint Server2007 installation

I came across this post but that did not seem to resolve my problem even after restarting the server.

Comparing other servers in the farm, I noticed that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0 was actually missing InstalledLanguages.

So I saved the following to a .reg file, double-clicked and voila! It worked like a charm:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\InstalledLanguages]"1033"="12.0.4518.1016"

SharePoint 2007 (MOSS): DST is the root of all evil!

I'm leading a project to convert our MCMS implementation to MOSS. Migrations have been working great until recently. What changed, one might wonder?

It's this time of the year where daylight savings reeks havoc! The issue is the Windows Sharepoint Timer Service (you can find it under Admin Tools --> Services) could take an hour or longer to run your jobs.

So if you create Web applications, for instance, in a farm, it would take MOSS an hour to actually provision these sites. So before you drive yourself crazy, here are some tricks (if you don't want to take the risk of applying SP1, or MS hotfixes, which are often unreliable!):

Look at the job definitions under Operations and verify the job in question is listed.

If it is, then you can force it by running the following command:

"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\stsadm.exe" -o execAdmSvcJobs

Remember that you need to run this command on all your Web servers in the farm.