Quest Software, Inc. (now a part of Dell) today introduced new advice on how to maximize the deployment of the social functionality in SharePoint 2013 to accelerate user adoption. In addition, the company unveiled Quest® Social Hub – available now on the Microsoft SharePoint Store – a new companion tool to Quest Web Parts for SharePoint that enables users to integrate external social media networks within SharePoint.

Much has been made about the advantages offered by SharePoint 2013, including shredded storage, HTML5 UIs, new APIs and a cloud-friendly application model. But these new capabilities alone will not drive adoption because end users simply don’t care about features designed for engineers and developers. The key feature in SharePoint 2013 is social ─ geared for end users and transforming the collaboration experience, which, in turn, can drive SharePoint adoption.

Why IT should care about social in SharePoint 2013

The social enhancements in SharePoint 2013 enable organizations to greatly improve the work experience for users. New features include:

• A community site template with rich capabilities expected in vibrant communities
• Newsfeed support including the ability to add comments, tags, links, and pictures
• #Tags and @target support, which brings common social media functionality used in a variety of other mediums into SharePoint

And, while there’s a reluctance to bring social into the enterprise, there are significant benefits for today’s globally distributed workplace in adopting a “social mentality.” These benefits include the ability to accelerate collaboration across geographies and time zones, as well as improved end user engagement, which leads to adoption and the better information control that is critical to good governance.

Quest helps organizations leverage SharePoint 2013 social to revolutionize end user experience and accelerate adoption

• Traditional SharePoint information architecture is based on a classic “top-down” hierarchy. To revolutionize the user experience and, thereby, increase usage and adoption, Quest recommends IT turn the SharePoint 2013 information architecture upside down to leverage its powerful social technology.
  • Start with My Site as the default home and entry to SharePoint, followed by community, team, department and portal sites. When users enter SharePoint through their My Site, they immediately have places to store files and share them using @targets, and can find other colleagues, sites, content and #tags to follow on their newsfeed.
  • The portal/home page then becomes a common index to everything available on SharePoint, and is placed at the bottom of the hierarchy.
• Despite the powerful additions to social features in SharePoint 2013, there is no out-of-the-box option to integrate external social media feeds within SharePoint. Quest® Social Hub enables users to integrate external social media networks within SharePoint.
  • Users can view and/or respond to Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds from within a single SharePoint interface, immediately upon entering their My Site.
  • By bringing external social feeds into SharePoint, organizations can keep user collaboration inside the enterprise and further enhance the user experience.

Supporting quote:

Chris McNulty, director, product management, SharePoint business unit, Quest Software

• “SharePoint 2013 brings a full bag of social goodies such as sharing, newsfeeds, badges, and buttons that will transform the user experience and accelerate SharePoint adoption. We recommend that organizations build their information architecture so that My Site is the SharePoint home page, making the collaborative social features available to users at the entry point. Collaboration can happen outside of SharePoint, but, by bringing social media collaboration into SharePoint, IT can keep sensitive information inside the enterprise, enhance the end user experience, and increase SharePoint usage and adoption.”

Supporting Resources:

• More Quest news: http://www.quest.com/newsroom/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/quest
• Facebook: http://www.quest.com/facebook
• LinkedIn: http://www.quest.com/linkedin
• Quest TV: http://www.quest.com/tv/

About Quest Software (now a part of Dell)

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. Quest, now a part of Dell’s Software Group, provides simple and innovative IT management solutions that enable more than 100,000 global customers to save time and money across physical and virtual environments. Quest products solve complex IT challenges ranging from database management, data protection, identity and access management, monitoring, user workspace management to Windows management. For more information, visit http://www.quest.com or http://www.dell.com.

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