Social and ApplicationsTransforming IBM Connections into a Real Business Platform

Victor Toal / ToalSystems

Victor Toal aka “Dr. Vic”

20+ Years of talking tech

IBM Connections, Sametime, WebSphere, DB2,

Notes and Domino

victor@toalsys.com

Twitter: @TheToal

Skype: victor_toal

What will we be talking about?

• What is social and what does it have to do with

line of business applications?

• What types of “social apps” are there?

• How to implement, what pitfalls are there, what

realistic goals to set

3

Why “Social Apps”?

• Make use of existing platforms and capabilities instead of re-creating all of them new with every new all you buy/create

• Use of social software is a choice – you need it to be compelling for users to use it – a social app can supply the “raison d'être”

• Apps that are supposed to work in the social space need to be an extension of the social platform

• Line of business apps can help you with adoption of your social platform – either to kick it off or increase usage when it has plateaued

• Make users life easier by reducing the number of “places/sites” they have to visit to get tings done or just plain find things

• You can create a central place (IBM Connections) where you can find EVERYTHING

Social Apps – Strengths

• You have a built-in audience

• You can aggregate the information from many outside and inside apps into one place

• Social apps an add new features to existing applications and new ways of working with line of business procedures

• They can take advantage of Social software’s notification engine – this streamlines the amount and types of notifications users get

• Less sites to visit – depending on the integration

• Gives users another tool/capability to utilize for work

Social Apps – Weaknesses• You have a built-in non-audience

• Over-aggregation of information can be confusing “nobody can find anything anymore”

• Social apps differ from their other “normal” brethren in many ways – making apps social can be confusing to many users

• If users are not trained on how to train social software notifications they can quickly get overwhelmed with notifications – it can be worse than the full email inbox they are trying to flee from

• Less sites to visit – can mean less functionality (depending on the integration)

• Too much choice might turn many users off

The Challenges?The challenge is [choice] – each user has a choice they can make

Adoption, adoption, adoption ….

Training – but as the training tools and documentation can be in the same place there is a built-in advantage

Adoption, adoption, adoption …. (yes, again)

Change in processes needs training, training, training …

Mobile is still new to allot of users when it comes to enterprise

Making sure the client get it is an “and” proposition, not an “or”

Social Apps – All kinds of Types

There are many types of possible integrations:

1. Entry Level – The one that gets you started

2. Full fledged- built fully in Connections/java/on WebSphere

3. Partial Integration – outside App integrated in some shape and

form -> often just a Widget/iFrame in a community

a) Use IBM Connections for data storage and notifications

Entry Level Social Apps

What is out there?

The entry Level – what to do

• Oftne used at the start – as a means of IBM Conenctions adoption

• These are the apps that get you started – it’s about adoption

• Apply your magic to a business/work process ALL USERS have to do at

one time or another, such as vacation requests or other HR processes.

• Creates a built-in audience – everybody has to do it at least once a week

• Takes some work to convince the HR department and management but

well worth it

Social Apps Example

Full Fledged Social Apps

What is out there?

Full Fledged …What kind of common attributes?

• Usually built on the same platform (WebSphere) look like they are a try native part of IB Connections

• Interface only in Connections / often no “outside” interface

• Rare – works better in on-premise installs because of the better control over resources

• Requires a more mature user populace

• Weakness – can’t be accessed outside of Connections

• Strength – easy/easier to create a mobile app for it – this can be key

• Deeper security integration with Connections – (has advantages/disadvantages)

Full Fledged - Strengths and Weaknesses

• Built in WebSphere they have access to the same resources as IBM Connections apps

• Usually take advantage of IBM Connections APIs and often direct access to data (files/databases)

• Does not have to be part of a community, you can add a whole interface (see next screen shot)

• Takes advantage of all the notification features if correctly integrated

• Most “Native Look” of all integrations

Full Fledged - Strengths and Weaknesses

• Biggest in terms of effort to program and then upkeep

• IBM Connections version updates and ifixes all have potential to

impact functionality

• If running on WebSphere then you really need to architect your

Connections environment accordingly.

• Look & Feel (to integrate with Connections) can be challenging

Full Fledged - Example

Projexec – Trilog Group

Partial Integration

Or:

The Most Frequently found Pokémon

Partial integration . . .• Many different levels of integration – generally anything not built on the

same platform using APIs and resources

• Usually means the actual application logic resides outside of IBM Connections/WebSphere

• Often pre-existing applications that are integrated into IBM Connections or have part of their functionality added to/taken over by IBM Connections

• Can (but does not have to be) integrated into Communities using Widgets or simple iFrames

• Usually represents an organizations first foray into Social Applications

Partial Integration . . .

Try to use IBM Connections main Strengths:

• Search – its it is indexed it can be found

• Incidental Discovery: “I found it in my activity stream”

• Notifications: many ways of using the built in notifications and the

control is with the user

Partial Integration - Strengths• IBM Connections has two real strengths: Search and Notifications

• Users can control their notifications themselves:

• Follow (community, user, piece of data …)

• Email notifications: frequency and type

• Extend capabilities to external communities and collaboration ….

• Bring existing applications in without much changes necessary

• Some really good tools out there to facilitate integration

Partial Integration – Weaknesses

• Users need to be trained to use IBM Connections correctly

• Tagging is always an difficult concept and has allot of discussion

around it

• Watch out for notification overkill – native application email

notifications on top of Connections notifications

• Access to data: can be a bit difficult to reconcile between different

access models

Partial Integration - Some more

Challenges• Can suffer from “not being findable” in Connections

• Many different levels of integration – some can be so light they make no sense

• Starts with a simple iframe to bring you to the actual interface to full integration into

• Can integrate outside app to utilize Connections for notifications

• Often uses IBM Connections APIs to save files to Connections

How to start your Social App

Integration

Start Small and catch’em all!

How to start Social Integration?

• Existing line of business applications – can use IBM Connections to

either increase user base or give more avenues of access/usage

• You need to take the challenges that exist and turn them into

strengths / advantages (see next slide)

• Your aims should be to augment - do not follow an “either/or”

strategy but try to emphasize a big “AND” – you are not replacing

What Application and System

Weaknesses do you have?

• Your company lacks their equivalent of “google.com” – finding things

depends on their context

• Lack of knowledge of what is out there (relates to search)

• Inability to cross-collaborate among multiple, unrelated applications

• Little ability to save applications' results (whatever they might be) in a

common repository

Integration StrategiesIBM Connections has two key features it can lend to any good

application:

• Search/index of data – so many apps suffer

• Notifications – more than just emails

• Interaction with and sharing of the resulting data

• Incidental discovery – your best friend

Notifications – Some suggestions

Replace all email notifications of applications

• Post notifications to:

• Community status entries

• Forums

• As blog entries/Forum entries

• Activities

• Post directly to specific users’ notification stream

• Add configurable actions to notifications:

Notifications – continued• Post “on behalf of” specific users (“your vacation is approved” posted

by “user manager”)

• Create dedicated application entities that can post updates -> users

can choose to follow or not (check or security)

• Specific app accounts might have rights to post to external

communities -> send notification/emails/reports to external partners

or clients

Social Apps – The Client Discussion“Why – I don’t want to replace my apps”

This is a common discussion point. My answer is

“It’s not an [either/or], it’s an [and]”

Fact of the matter is not all users will like/need each level of integration

No social networking platform will likely ever reach 100% of the user

base, but it adds to the available tools -> I like to give users coices how

they want to access their work

How Do you get them to use it?• Depends on scenario: if it’s a “must-use” app that only exists in

Connections then it is simple, they will have to.

• BUT – you need to make it palatable to a larger set of users by giving multiple ways of getting to the app, and especially solid controls over notifications

• Adoption – it is not really different from how you work on adoption of IBM Connections as a platform – this is another facet

• If you do not already have some ongoing adoption strategy and training for users – you will likely have a hard time

Application Strategies - Adoption• Social apps can actually assist general adoption rates of IBM

Connections

• Social Media Software relies on “habits” – mainly the habit to regularly look at or visit even just one

• For social networking software to work you need eyeballs – the more eyeballs that look at it – for any length of time and any art of it – the better

• Eyeballs mean the opportunity for accidental (or purposeful) discovery or other features and data to interact with

Training your Users to Train

Connections

Some Thoughts to close …• Start small – integrate data outputs

• Utilize the notifications engine

• Build your internal Google.com – the one place to search and find it all – and the data is secured!

• Don’t replace – augment and improve, give new application experiences. Focus on the “and” not the “either/or”

• Find yourself a good toolset – I use mostly one: hs.crawler… it just works