The Social Digital Experience that
is provided by the IBM social business platform includes social websites
with social content, social networking, and social analytics. All
these areas are provided secure and in context of enterprise management
and governance.
Deliver social capabilities from
IBM® Connections by using
the following features:
Integrated social capabilities enable your portal users to respond
faster and more effectively to improve customer satisfaction and organizational
effectiveness.
Social rendering
Social rendering
improves IBM Connections integration
by using IBM Web Content
Manager features
to query and render IBM Connections content.
Social rendering enables IBM WebSphere Portal page editors to
feature social data that is hosted on a remote IBM Connections server
in the context of portal pages.
Page editors can define social
lists. A social list shows the results of a specific query for social
data from IBM Connections.
For example, the social objects can be lists of blog posts, files,
or discussion topics. Page editors can control the visual appearance
of the social objects in the query result list. They do so by selecting
the formatting component of choice from a predefined, yet extensible
set of formatting components.
Site designers provide the formatting
components and define them in a style that is consistent with your
portal pages. They can also customize and extend this set of formatting
components. This way your page editors do not need to know the markup
generation and CSS styling details of the formatting components. Even
without that knowledge, they can still choose from a rich, but consistent
set of visual designs for your lists.
As a result, the page
editors can focus on assembling meaningful portal pages that are
enriched by social data. They select the appropriate content for the
individual portal pages and the social lists. They can use inline
editing capabilities to select the visual appearance of the social
lists. They can also adjust the selection logic of the social lists.
For example, they can show the most recent blog entries that are created
in the IBM Connections community
to which the current page is associated. Page editors can select individual
social lists from a set of predefined social list definitions and
drop them onto portal pages. When a page editor drops a social list
onto a portal page, the corresponding content item that represents
the social list definition is copied to the page. The page editor
can then modify it independently of other social lists on the same
page or other pages.
Social rendering provides you the following
components and features:
- A set of social list definitions
- Two formatting components for visualizing the social lists in
two different ways: a condensed simple list design and a comprehensive
list design.
- Support for desktop, tablet, and smartphone form factors
- One single federated Tag Cloud for site visitors to find all public
tags in WebSphere Portal, Web Content Manager, and other systems.
You can use the provided sets as starting points for creating
your own list definitions and list designs.
IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for WebSphere Portal
You
can use the Digital Data Connector to
integrate data that is hosted on external servers on your WebSphere Portal pages. The Digital Data Connector uses the Web Content Manager presentation components.
For example, you can render social content that is aggregated on
your IBM Connections server
in the context of your portal pages. The use of Web Content Manager presentation components
ensures a consistent user experience for your portal site visitors.
The
Digital Data Connector can integrate
data that is hosted on external servers on your
WebSphere Portal pages. The benefits
are as follows:
- You can integrate items of different content types from multiple
sources and mix and aggregate them on your portal pages. For example,
the content can range from simple static content to applications,
job offers, and workflows.
- You can provide a role-specific personalized view on your enterprise
application and web content to your users by using a single entry
point. You can provide all relevant content on a single portal page
and target it to the appropriate user profile. This way, you can serve
your specific business requirements and help site visitors, customers,
or employees to pursue their individual goals more efficiently. For
example, site visitors can make faster and better decisions. Employees
can complete their individual job tasks more quickly. Site visitors
can more easily find target information and applications according
to their preferences.
- Your web designers, content authors, and page editors can efficiently
integrate the content into your portal. They can use all Web Content Manager features to present
the integrated data without coding skills.
Community pages
You can associate
a community in
IBM Connections with
a portal page. The community is then associated to all portlets, files,
and other content on that portal page. Links enable the user to go
from the community page to other content that is also associated with
the community. You can assign access permissions as required. Community
pages have the following benefits:
- You can infuse IBM Connections social
content within the context of personalized content and applications.
- You provide core social engine and social content capabilities.
They include files, profiles, blogs, wikis, forums, activities, bookmarks.
- You place the Social Digital Experience where
and when it can most influence communication and productivity.
- You can add social lists to your pages that show social information
that is related to the page context. In addition to the lists, you
can add details pages to your portal and use details portlets to show
selected items and provide basic interactions with them. As usual,
you can add other non-social portlets as well.
- Community pages and ad hoc portlets provide seamless experience
for portal site visitors by blending web content, applications or
transactions, and social capabilities in a unified interface
- The portal Search Center presents federated results across Portal
and Connections.
IBM Connections integration
portlets
The IBM Connections 4.5 integration
portlets show IBM Connections content
in WebSphere Portal. These portlets
deliver a rich set of 13 social software services for use in a portal
environment. They make it possible to surface social tools, such as
blogs, profiles, communities, and the activity stream in the appropriate
context. Website designers can integrate these activities, blogs,
bookmarks, communities, forums, profiles, and wiki applications of IBM Connections into WebSphere Portal. They can also
include the Tag Cloud portlet for quick filtering in composite applications.
This way, they bring the appropriate cutting-edge social tools to
the appropriate website visitor context to build exceptional web experiences
and customer satisfaction and loyalty. These social tools also increase
the potential of customers to receive the help and answers they need
without having to call a customer representative. This way, you can
save on call center costs.
The new release of the
IBM Connections integration
portlets includes the following new and updated capabilities:
- The Activity Stream portlet, which brings the IBM Connections Activity
Stream experience to your WebSphere Portal pages
- Enhancements to Ideation Blog support in the Blogs portlet
- Support for IBM Connections 4.5
servers.
Social Media Publisher
Use Social
Media Publisher for
Web Content Manager to
further socialize your content through external networks such as Facebook,
Twitter, and LinkedIn. Social Media Publisher is an extension to
Web Content Manager that allows businesses
to promote their web content on social networks. It provides the following
benefits:
- Social Media Publisher integrates with external social networks.
It supports IBM Connections,
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
- Social Media Publisher also provides some basic statistics about
the promoted content.
You need to enable the Social Media Publisher before you
use this feature. For information about how to enable and use the
Social Media Publisher, read Social Media Publisher in
the product documentation.