Microsoft Launches SharePoint 2013 as a Social Collaborative Platform
Research has shown that business owners will be using social networking tools rather than email in 2014. Therefore, it makes complete sense for SharePoint to add more social and mobile features. These features are described in the article.

Email as Social Media
There is a lot of ongoing debate on whether email is a form of social networking. After all, a distribution list is shared amidst a group of people. This starts a conversation. There are different types of applications that are available including the email, instant messaging and social networking, all of which designates the need of a single page plan that details which applications should be preferred in what business scenario. For example, if the copy machine has failed for some reason, what are the preferred ways of communicating the same, is it via the email or social networking?

Features in Share Point 2013
All these features are an integral part of the ongoing evolution of SharePoint 2013 development. In 2007, it focused its need towards social collaboration and thereby offered blogs, wikis and My Site. In 2010, the platform moved towards social tagging, microblogs and NoteBoards. The 2013 version saw its focus on social media, and integration of mobile tools and Community Sites. When choosing the SharePoint platform one should make these decisions. The Community Sites also provides forums that are necessary for knowledge sharing and discussion. The Newsfeed displays items from other users in the reverse chronological order. The search feature of SharePoint has been improved to take advantage of these social capabilities.

For the enterprises in search for integration with social tools, they need to begin by tailoring the communication towards the platform that is most appropriate. They need to take into account the sensitiveness of the information that needs to be shared. Some details may not be appropriate to be shared across everyone in the enterprise. It is imperative that information require specific user permissions to view or access it.

To ensure the success of any platform, the technological projects should solve all specific business problems and support the requirement. More than 50 percent of the companies have had activity streams with micro blogging. 70 percent of the enterprise social initiative needs to be dominated by the IT infrastructure. Everything related to IT should be driven by business needs and SharePoint is no exception. If it is driven by IT, it may fail. No enterprise can begin social collaboration projects just by having them. They need to be reclined towards the purpose and championed by an internal sponsor. The goals should be clear.

Despite the popularity of the platform in various enterprises, it has never been able to be successful as the top notch social computing tool. However, Microsoft hopes to change for the better with its new advanced versions as the business collaborative software.
Though the 2013 version still does not have any official release date, it is available as preview in the Office 365 Enterprise. The new package is found by Adapt-India.com is to include the Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity applications. It also includes the hosted version of Microsoft’s Server Lineup which includes the following:

 

• Exchange Server
• Lync Server
• SharePoint Server

Microsoft is deliberately promoting SharePoint 2013 as the platform that is all about collaboration in the enterprise.