There is a lot of talk about the next generation Internet – Web 2.0 and how it might impact different types of internet users. My interest lies in its possible application in improving collaboration – both inside a company and also between companies and even between companies and their clients.
One of the keys to Web 2.0 is interaction and working together to improve things – and this is also a key to collaboration.
Since Web 2.0 emphasises interactive tools like Wikis, and to a lesser extent blogs (not as interactive) its theses sort of facilities that are going to help grow collaboration into the mainstream. This all goes along with discussion groups and shared libraries of documents and images. Of course none of this is really new – newsgroups, for example, were well established on the Internet as a way of interactively sharing information before the “Web” took off.
What has changed is the availability of these tools and their ease of use and more recently with the advent of platforms like Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and the Office 2007 suite, the integration of these tools. Currently people use one tool for blogging, one for Wikis, one for shared areas and so on – the result is messy for people to contribute too and even harder for readers to make much sense of. Integration is the thing that will make this all easier.
Of course collaboration is not just a matter of the tools there is a large element of culture and personal factors to take in to consideration, basically around what’s in it for me or my company. But added to that is the effort barrier. Even if I am inclined to collaborate or even if my company is prepared to reward successful collaboration in some ways, if it is just too hard or too much effort to do it then I probably won’t bother. It is therefore important that tools used in the collaborative space make it easy and convenient for me. It should be no harder to save a document to a shared area than to my C: drive – it should be easy for me to write a blog using Word and just post it straight to the blog site. Well this is the direction that Office 2007 and SharePoint are taking. An example is the feature in Word 2007 called Publish – which allows me to publishing to a Document Management server, some shared workspace or just as easily to a Blog –these are all SharePoint 2007 features in the background – but as a user I don’t need to worry about that – I just choose what is appropriate.
Wikis (and indeed blogs) are now a standard feature of SharePoint 2007. Wikis are very useful way of evolving and changing content so that it gets better the more people use it, again a Web 2.0 tenet. While it may not be the greatest Wiki tool – it is by no means the worst – but it is the integration that counts – it’s not just some off-shoot loosely coupled tool it is a part of the collaborative interactive framework
Email is another great (or terrible) collaborative tool. It is just so easy for me to add a name to an email - just in case they may be interested. Filing it then becomes their problem – not mine. This is all well and good - until months pass and no one remembers where that information went. Certainly there are better desktop search tools around, for example those in Vista, but that should not always be the first resort. If people want to use email wouldn’t it help to give them an email address that would file the information centrally? For example if a team is working on a particular project, that has a SharePoint 2007 site already set up to store relevant documents, it would be great if you could add an address to the project email address list that send emails and their attachments directly to the SharePoint site for filing. Well MOSS 2007 now offers that feature. (Those of us who have been around awhile might be reminded of Lotus Notes email enabled database!!) Again it’s all about reducing the effort and thinking required to ensure that information is stored. Of course there is the risk that too much is captured – but better that than vital information goes missing.
The integration of CMS functionality into SharePoint 2007, also opens up the possibility of greater flexibility of your intranet. This begins to blur the lines between intranets and websites, bringing all of the functionality of an intranet with the fluid look and feel, and content management provided to public facing web sites.
Of course the integration with Instant Messenger/Live Communications giving me presence information as well adds greatly to my ability to quickly interact with colleagues to get or give quick answers to questions. If I am working on a shared document on a SharePoint server my “Document Management Task Pane” on the right hand side of my current Word document can tell me who is on-line without ever leaving Word.
Web 2.0 also implies exploiting more devices such as mobile and handheld ones. Again it’s a convenience thing – being able to see and interact while on the move – given the obvious limitations still associated with these devices. Again SharePoint 2007 now considers Mobile devices as a standard target for “views” of lists and supports variations of content that allows information to be correctly formatted for smaller devices.
Intranet 2.0?
Is this time for people to re-consider their Intranets? The noise surrounding Web 2.0 is causing companies and particularly retailers to rethink their websites and to make them more interactive. Well the same can be said about many, if not most Intranets out there. “Intranet 1.0 “meant mostly flat non –interactive sites – possibly allowing people to search and download policies and other useful documents. But really intranets could be the platform for more interactive feedback and comment – a place to share tips and best practices. In the past this has been too hard to do – but with the Web 2.0 drive and the arrival of more interactive platforms such as SharePoint 2007 perhaps now is the time for companies to think ahead. Sharing information with partners and customers is great – but perhaps collaboration should start at home!