How We Did It: Integrating Telligent Community Server Evolution 2008 with SharePoint Server 2007
Overview
During the past several years, Telligent’s customers have used Community Server to address their Internet facing social media and collaboration requirements. Recently, with the rise of enterprise social computing requirements inside the firewall, our plan is to seize the opportunities in this space by positioning Community Server as a complement to SharePoint and providing several key integration points.
This blog entry explains the “how” and “what” in terms of bringing the best of SharePoint together with the best of Community Server via something we call Evolution.
The “How”
Understanding the “how” requires some basic knowledge of these two .NET-based platforms. To enable the integration scenarios of having Community Server functionality seamlessly integrated with the SharePoint user experience, we make use of the REST API that is an integral part of the new Community Server 2008. This REST API provides full access to all Community Server application and administrative functionality.
Community Server also allows users to leverage several authentication mechanisms that are supported by SharePoint (Active Directory and ASP.NET Forms Authentication being the most popular). Because the two applications can share authentication systems, users can be automatically registered and carry their authentication from one application to another.
Finally, Community Server also provides an e-mail gateway that allows users to participate in and archive discussions without leaving their e-mail client (such as Microsoft Outlook). The e-mail gateway works by making use of an account subscribed to an e-mail distribution list within your company’s e-mail system.
On the SharePoint side, we’ve developed a set of Web Parts that can be configured to leverage any Community Server installation. These Web Parts make use of our REST API as well as the following SharePoint extensibility points:
- Feature and Solution Deployment – provides SharePoint administrators at the farm, site collection, or site level with direct access to precisely the features they’d like to provide to (i.e. activate for) the users.
- Web Parts – allow administrators to customize existing SharePoint pages with new functionality that leverages the power of Community Server.
- Web Part Pages – provide a complete end–to-end Community Server experience from directly within the SharePoint user interface.
- Event Receivers – enable user activities in SharePoint Lists and Document Libraries to be detected and added to the social streams in Community Server.
- Search – provides indexing and searching of content that is stored in Community Server. This feature is enabled via federated search and is currently in development.
The “What”
The initial version of our integrated social computing solution is currently in preview and will be finalized this summer. It addresses four key customer scenarios:
- Common authentication and single sign-on will allow users and administrators the choice of working directly with both Community Server and SharePoint without having to re-register or using the two products as separate applications.
- Keeping track of discussions, documents, and blogs from your colleague’s social stream aggregates all of the important activity in one place, a la a Facebook-like news feed.
- You’ll be able to take advantage of Community Server’s robust blogs & forums either within SharePoint or without leaving your mail client.
- Have your company’s archived discussions searchable alongside SharePoint’s document and enterprise search.
The following screenshots explain these scenarios in more detail.
The following SharePoint site has been configured to show the site’s social stream on the home page. This stream is configurable to show your activity, your colleague’s activity, or simply site-wide activity. Also note that the links in the SharePoint navigation have been added to the Community Server forums and blogs.
By clicking on a link, you can check out a thread posted in the Community Server forums from within SharePoint. In the screenshot below, notice that we implemented the breadcrumb control so that users can stay within SharePoint but also navigate back up the hierarchy of forums.
We are rendering Community Server functionality within a custom SharePoint Web Part rather though the SharePoint iFrame Web Part, which doesn't provide true integration. Because of this, you’ll notice that as an Administrator, the UI is very configurable (as shown below in the Web Part configuration screen):
Finally, notice that by using the native SharePoint rich text editor, you can reply to the thread without ever leaving the SharePoint application!
A similar integrated user experience is provided for Community Server blogs within SharePoint as shown below.
This is just a quick tour and brief explanation of how we’re bringing the best of Community Server together with SharePoint. We are very excited about the benefits of having a seamlessly integrated user experience of Community Server functionality within the SharePoint environment. We have a bunch of other Web Parts in the works, which will be included in the final release Community Server Evolution 2008. Go to http://communityserver.com for the latest news and information.
Josh Ledgard
Director of Program Management, Telligent Systems
