Learn how your business can benefit from social collaboration software

1. Social Collaboration
with HyperOffice
Learn how new social
technologies can transform your
business
HyperOffice © 2013

2. Contents
Connecting the dots _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _2
Day to day benefits_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _3
Introducing HyperOffice Social_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 4
HyperOffice Social Features_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _5

3. Connecting the dots
What is social collaboration? What does
it mean for my business?
Ultimately, every technology should be
analyzed through a single prism – how does it
contribute to business goals? Social
collaboration applies the concepts of social
media to the core business problem,
collaboration, or, the alignment of everyone’s
efforts with business objectives.
Social collaboration applies the concepts of social
media to the core business problem of
collaboration
The pandemic-like success of social media
tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in
our everyday lives has rightfully spurred
interest in the applicability of social concepts
These tools are so much more intuitive that it
to business. Their success is not merely a
encourages people to communicate, connect,
consumer fad, but a drastically new approach
engage and share information in
to information design.
unprecedented ways. Facebook’s more than 1
billion users is testimony. These outcomes are
profoundly relevant to business, and indeed,
the outcomes are the end purpose of
traditional business tools as well – email,
intranets, project management, document
management and so on.
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4. The day to day impact
Specific benefits of social collaboration
Easy to use. Intuitive.
Business software is notorious for treating users
like second class citizens – that’s why no one
uses them! Social software has been designed in
the wilds of the consumer market. If someone
doesn’t like your service, they switch instantly.
Anyone with basic internet smarts can quickly
get up to speed with social tools.
Break silos and encourage sharing.
Traditional collaboration tools create scores of
silos across the organization. Information in Social media tools are profoundly democratic.
each silos – an email, a document folder, an
intranet group – is forever hidden from the rest
Social media tools are also profoundly democratic.
of the organization. “Activity walls” in social tools
Users are the contributors of information, and not
push relevant information to people, rather then
passive consumers of dictums coming from the
expecting people to chase information across
management. With people connecting, contributing,
silos. Plus, social software is geared for sharing
communicating, you end up releasing trapped
information across networks. We all know how
organizational knowledge, while bypassing slow
easy it is to share a link, a video, or an article in
traditional channels (email).
Facebook or Twitter.
Dynamic view of business.
People Centric.
Traditional collaboration software have the data
People are right at the center of social software.
needed for work, but users need to find it across
Social profiles allow people to view other
scores of silos - “pull” design. Since things are
people’s details and drop messages. Others can
constantly changing, you often miss a client meeting,
“follow” them and keep up with what’s
or overshoot a project deadline. Social software gives
happening in their world. This encourages
a dynamic view of business, and “pushes” information
speedy people-to-people connections where
to a user’s activity wall whenever it becomes relevant.
you can bypass hierarchies, find skills and
If a project which you were working on changes, or
expertise, and share your knowledge.
the document you submitted was reviewed, you are
informed right away on your activity wall.
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5. Introducing HyperOffice
Social
The first coming together of social and
collaboration software
Collaboration software & social media
are not either/or
Some see social media as a replacement for
collaboration software. This is naïve. The “network
effects” of social media in the consumer world are
undeniable, but businesses are very different:
- Structured data. Information in the corporate
context is voluminous and structured – files,
customer records – while consumer content is
unstructured and low volume – status updates,
links, wall posts.
- Collaboration vs. Sharing. Consumers “share”
information, but typically there is limited need to
work together or “collaborate” on information.
- Policy control. Consumer social media
HyperOffice Social achieves a delicate balance encourages free and viral sharing. In businesses
between collaboration and socialization, social however, the freedom of sharing needs to be
sharing and policy control balanced with policy controls.
HyperOffice has invested significant research to
achieve a delicate balance between collaboration
and socialization, social sharing and policy control.
We combine the best of both worlds - the social
layer acts brings organizations the benefits of
network effects, while collaboration tools serve
specific collaboration needs.
The result is HyperOffice Social.
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6. HyperOffice Social Features
Social Sharing
HyperOffice gives users the ability to access
collaboration tools and data right in the “flow” of
social conversations. Social messaging and
activity walls are a vastly quicker, easier, and
more intuitive way for people to converse.
Further, people can pull and share the exact data
and collaboration tools, exactly when needed in a
business conversation. Therefore, business
information always has context around it. A few
examples:
- Jill sends Tom a social message about an
upcoming client project. She attaches the
project from the projects module containing a
detailed breakdown of activities. Tom replies The following are some things users can do:
asking for the details of a contractor who will
help with the project. Jill attaches the contact - Attach and share documents, projects,
record from the contacts module in her reply. calendars, contacts and links from across
HyperOffice right on group or user activity
- Beth and Sam, remote members of Charles’ walls.
team, are working together on a document.
- Access collaboration tools, edit and
They initiate a social conversation about the
collaborate on data right from the activity wall
document, attach the document, and also
collaborate on the actual document right there. - Have elaborate conversations around specific
Beth, Sam and Charles all have a transparent documents, projects, calendars etc., through
view of the evolution of the document, and the comment threads.
tools to collaborate on it in a single place.
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7. My activity stream
HyperOffice Social gives users a real-time view - “Follow” users and groups or even specific
of activity across their network through activity information of interest across the company –
streams. Traditionally, employees are blind to documents, contacts, or projects – and get
changes of relevance to them, as the changes real time updates
are reflected in silos (a folder, a document, a
- Have conversations and create context
project) or have to depend on email
around every update through comment
notifications, which get lost in a sea of internal
threads
and external emails. Activity streams invert the
equation, as changes are pushed to the - Navigate to users, groups or specific
attention space of the user as soon as they are documents, contacts, projects and other
relevant. Further, users have the powerful data right from your activity wall
ability to keep track of any person, group or
data of interest to them across the network.
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8. Business social networking
Business social networking is an incredibly - User Activity. Every user’s profile also has a
powerful tool which allows for the discovery of streaming display of all of the activities they
skills and competencies across the organization are involved in. This gives other users not a
and fosters people-to-people connections. Every description of their organizational role, but a
user has an external facing “profile” with a real time view of their company activities.
summary description of the user, a stream of
- Connections. Connections are a powerful tool
that users’ activity, as well as the ability to
for users to add other users to their network,
message users right on their “Profile”. Business
and get streaming updates of that user’s
networking functionality includes:
activities. Users can add other users to their
connections with a single click “follow”.
- Profiles. Every user has a profile which
- Social Messaging. Users can post messages
summarizes their skills, organizational role,
right on the profile pages of others, which are
group memberships, ongoing projects,
transparently visible to everyone else.
connections and so on. Other users can search
Everyone can have conversations around
and browse through profiles, and discover the
these messages with comment threads. Users
people and skills they are looking for across
can also send private messages.
the network.
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9. Group profile and group activities Group profiles for collaboration. In addition to
Intranet and extranet pages may be ideal for providing a real time view of group activities,
displaying which doesn’t change much. Group Profiles may be leveraged as a powerful
However, most groups might want to have a tool to gather team members and collaborate.
dynamic view of ongoing activities. HyperOffice Rather than sending emails back and forth,
Social extends the concept of profiles and multiple team members can get together and
activity streams to groups. Each group has a have communicate and have involved
page with streaming updates of that group’s discussions using group social messaging and
activities – project updates, documents that comment threads. Further, they can access
were changed, new events and so on. data and collaboration tools at the exact point
they are needed as the conversation proceeds.
This provides a completely transparent and
contextual view of every collaborative effort
from inception to conclusion.
Group walls can be used to manage
collaborative effort from inception to
completion, and have that information
available for reference for all times to
come
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10. Tagging and social search Policy controls
HyperOffice Connect brings the concept of As mentioned before, the exciting possibility of
tagging to HyperOffice. A tag is non-hierarchical creating network effects within your company
meta-data information that can be associated needs to be counterbalanced with a complex set
with specific objects. Tags are a rich layer of of policy controls in organizations. Companies
metadata, which offer a more efficient way to get want to encourage people to share, but at the
to information than hierarchical structures same time ensure that sensitive information is
(navigating through folders/groups to be available only to specific groups or
subfolders/subgroups) and full content search, individuals. HyperOffice Social is fully integrated
which returns a mass of useless information. with HyperOffice’s multi layered permission
Since it is so easy to tag objects, it is users who control system. This means that the
contribute a rich layer of metadata to objects administrator’s policies about what information
and information. users (or group of users) can access (and level of
access) fully applies within the rich sharing
environment of HyperOffice Social.
The future of HyperOffice Social
The first version of HyperOffice Social combines
collaboration and social features in powerful
ways, and allows organizations to reap the
n benefits of the social revolution. But we are
definitely not letting it rest at that. We recognize
that socialization is here to stay which is
reflected in our grand plans for the future of
Notifications HyperOffice Social. With a solid core in place, the
Traditionally, people have depended on email to future cuts of HyperOffice Social will allow
be notified of changes to information of organizations to bring external networks into
relevance. However, it requires you to keep their fold in unique ways, and even tap into the
checking email, plus there’s always the power of public networks like FaceBook,
possibility of notifications being lost in a flood of LinkedIn, Twitter and more. Stay tuned for more!
other emails. Notifications within HyperOffice
Social are a visual tool which allows people to
reduce dependence, and keep on top of activity
of high relevance at a glance. Notifications
include a quick shorthand view of changes
across your network, and allow users to navigate
to specific information with a single click.
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