NewsGator Social Sites 2.7 - A Few of My Favorite Things

Last week, NewsGator announced the release of Social Sites 2.7, which includes, among many other great features, a new innovation management capability called Ideas.  As someone who uses our product internally all day every day, I thought I would share my enthusiasm for the features that I am most enjoying.

• Ideas – this is the highlighted feature for this release and its utility is vast.  In the past, I would start a discussion to vet ideas.  Discussions are a great means for collaboration and I still use them heavily.  But, having the ability to easily and quickly start a brainstorming session within an existing community is awesome.    We are now vetting product enhancements from employees using Ideas in our Product Management community.    As mentioned, we used to do this in discussions, but find that we have more participation and can monitor support for any feature request by the number of votes it gets.    Perfect use case!

• Activity Stream Email Digest – my activity stream has become the component that organizes my daily connection to my colleagues, content and communities.  I am a self-proclaimed Activity Stream addict.    I use our pop-up desktop notifier when I am in the office to stay on top of activities.   On the weekends or when I am traveling, I turn on email digesting and can stay abreast of new activities on my iPhone. 

• Easy addition of blogs and wikis to communities – with an easy click on a checkbox, I can add a wiki or a blog to my communities.  As a result, I am now documenting best practices and usage guidelines in a wiki, which is a perfect choice for this use case. 

• NewsGator Usage Dashboard – I’m also digging this new addition to our reporting capabilities.  I can see a graphical representation of usage patterns for communities, users and overall activity for the last 7 days. 

Last week, NewsGator announced the release of Social Sites 2.7, which includes, among many other great features, a new innovation management capability called Ideas.  As someone who uses our product internally all day every day, I thought I would share my enthusiasm for the features that I am most enjoying.

• Ideas – this is the highlighted feature for this release and its utility is vast.  In the past, I would start a discussion to vet ideas.  Discussions are a great means for collaboration and I still use them heavily.  But, having the ability to easily and quickly start a brainstorming session within an existing community is awesome.    We are now vetting product enhancements from employees using Ideas in our Product Management community.    As mentioned, we used to do this in discussions, but find that we have more participation and can monitor support for any feature request by the number of votes it gets.    Perfect use case!

• Activity Stream Email Digest – my activity stream has become the component that organizes my daily connection to my colleagues, content and communities.  I am a self-proclaimed Activity Stream addict.    I use our pop-up desktop notifier when I am in the office to stay on top of activities.   On the weekends or when I am traveling, I turn on email digesting and can stay abreast of new activities on my iPhone. 

• Easy addition of blogs and wikis to communities – with an easy click on a checkbox, I can add a wiki or a blog to my communities.  As a result, I am now documenting best practices and usage guidelines in a wiki, which is a perfect choice for this use case. 

• NewsGator Usage Dashboard – I’m also digging this new addition to our reporting capabilities.  I can see a graphical representation of usage patterns for communities, users and overall activity for the last 7 days.