NewsGator’s social debut

NewsGator has debuted a new version of Social Sites, its comprehensive enterprise social computing solution, which relies on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 foundation. NewsGator claims Social Sites 2.5 gives organizations new insights into their enterprise social networks in order to fine-tune them for increased business benefit.

Through Version 2.5’s dashboard, administrators can oversee user, group, tag, community and feed activity, with the option of drilling all the way down to the article level. A new On-Boarding Wizard enables users to quickly associate tags (keywords) with themselves based on their roles and professional focus.

The company further reports Social Sites 2.5 improves search results within an enterprise social network, making it easier to establish more valuable connections with individuals, communities and content. Additionally, Social Sites 2.5 includes SharePoint Webparts, which enable organizations to leverage the SharePoint Search Center to discover communities, people, content and tags established within Social Sites. In fact, NewsGator Social Sites interoperates with any search solution based on the emerging Open Search standard, enabling organizations to use the enterprise search engine of their choice.

Social Sites 2.5 is also said to enhance organizational awareness by giving users a single, unified view for staying updated on colleagues, communities and SharePoint activity. Version 2.5 captures colleagues’ activities in real time as they tag themselves or an article, rate content, report their status or perform more than 20 other types of actions. Users can also subscribe to colleagues’ external feeds—from a blog, Twitter, Facebook or any designated source—if the originator wishes to offer the feeds to others. Administrators can determine which activities are trackable.

NewsGator Social Sites 2.5 enables users to create a community discussion around any article, document or blog post created in SharePoint. Content can be rated on a five-point scale within Social Sites to enhance discovery by other users. In addition, users can privately tag content to prevent conveying sensitive information.