Enterprise Microblogging – so what ?

A couple of weeks back we started an internal project called !sweet to pilot an Enterprise microblogging service.
We defined following project objectives

  1. Learn how to apply microblogging in an enterprise200903301809.jpg
    • Technical: how easy would it be to integrate such a service ?
    • Business: what should we do with it ?
  2. Build an internal open source community
    • motivate people to participate in an internal open source project
    • capture ideas from various teams and implement it quickly
  3. Have some fun :-)

It took us about 3 weeks to get the pilot up and running and since about 4 weeks we are running the pilot.

Lesson learned so far

  • internal micro blogging is about “What are you working on” and not “What are you doing ?”
  • integration into existing social services is key (SunSpace, Enterprise search)
  • ease of use and ease of access is key (email, SMS, microblogging clients)
  • Microblogging has to be a complementary service -not just a “new tool/toy”
  • user want to access this service from the Internet – not from the Intranet

!sweet is based on Laconica and has following features (bold are own extensions)

  • Corporate LDAP integration and SSL support
  • Dynamic user profile creation
  • Twitter gateway ( 2 buttons :-) )
  • SMS-out
  • email-in
  • Micro blogging clients support like twhirl
  • Badge support
  • Enterprise search integration
  • Regular expression engine
  • Smileys support
  • RSS and ATOM feed extensions (userID and tags for search integration)

Entry page


Timeline.png


SunSpace integration (Badge)

badge.png

SunSpace integration (feed)


feed.png

Search integration

  • !sweet as a search collection
  • show last three !sweet’s in the persons search result