3. Microblog / Streams
• Easily share status messages
• @mention colleagues or group
• Post an idea
• Ask a question
• Automatic Stream pause
4. Broadcast message
4
Enable executives and leaders to broadcast important announcement to all members of
the community via Email, In-App or Mobile alerts. Broadcast messages can be
configured to persist for a preset number of days
5. Custom Streams
5
To help organize information from Socialcast we recommend using Custom
Streams. Custom Streams allow you to filter information in your community in a
way that is personal to you.
There are two types of custom streams: keyword/tag streams and people
streams. Keyword/tag-based Custom Streams filter content by a list of specific
tags. People-based Custom Streams filter content to posts by a list of specific
people.
6. Thanks
It’s easy to recognize the contributions of co-workers as they happen using Socialcast
Thanks. Send a congratulatory badge and custom message to publicly recognize
outstanding performances by individuals or groups. The recipient’s manager will be
notified of the Thanks by email.
7. Organization Chart
The organization chart graphically displays the manager and direct reports associated
with each user. If your community is set up for LDAP, Socialcast will use data imported
from LDAP to generate the org chart. Otherwise, Socialcast will use the Manager value
in each user’s profile to establish hierarchical relationships among members.
8. Adding Helpful Links
In the upper right corner of every group or stream page, the community administrator
can display a list of links for company documents, applications, or other useful web sites.
You can add, delete, and edit new links. You can also reorder links by clicking on the
icon to the left of the link name and dragging the row to the desired position.
9. Public / Private Groups
Connect with people who share your interests, who work with you on a
particular project, or who are in your department. Groups can be a public or
private workspace where you can take part in discussions and keep up with
group-related activities.
10. External contributor groups
When you work with contractors, vendors, partners, or customers on a regular
basis, you may find it useful to include them in your Socialcast community.
You can invite them to participate by creating externally facing groups where
they securely can interact with employees without having access to the entire
community.
Available in Free and Paid Communities - The external contributor feature
is available in all communities. If you are a Premium customer and prefer not
to use the feature, you can contact your Socialcast account manager to
disable it.
12. Private Messages
Socialcast Private Messages allows you to have private conversations with one or more
people in your Socialcast community without resorting to email or IM, so all your
conversations are conveniently in one place
13. Projects
Socialcast Projects allows teams to keep track of deliverables and due dates without
spreadsheets, emails, or status meetings. Keep everyone up-to-date on a project by
sharing the project timeline and who is responsible for what.
14. Challenges
Challenges is an ideation feature that provides a simple and social way to crowd-source
ideas to engage co-workers to improving processes, or discovering and voting on new
ideas.
15. Town Halls
Town Halls allows you to connect executives and employees in a virtual company
meeting where management can communicate corporate goals and employees can
voice their opinions and ask questions.
With Town Halls you can enable
Moderators and Speaks to manage
the flow questions and answers
during an interactive discussion.
16. Town Halls enhancements
Add polls to Town Halls Easy access to files shared
during a Town Hall meeting
Add scheduled Town Halls to Calendars
17. Reply with Email / Socialcast Integration
17
Socialcast allows you to post new messages in your community by sending
an email using the E-mail Dropbox feature.
Using any email client, send an email to share@socialcast.com to post a new
message in your Socialcast community. The subject line will become the title
of your post, and the body of your email will become the “Details” portion of
your message. You can attach files, include tags and links inside your email
which will be automatically added to your post.
18. Share
18
Users can now Share a Message or Broadcast from Socialcast with their
Followers, in a Public / Private Group, or in a Private Message. These shared
messages will include the original post along with any links or attachments.
19. Skill Finder
19
One of the key strengths of Socialcast is the ability to tap into the collective
knowledge and expertise of the organization. Skills can now be defined by
administrators. Users can choose Skills to add to their profile from the admin-
defined list.
Admin defined skills Employee selected skills
22. Outlook Socialcast Integration
22
Outlook Add-On
The Outlook Connector allows you to integrate your Socialcast community
with Microsoft Outlook. Messages posted in Socialcast will be delivered to
dedicated Outlook folders, where you can read, respond and share
information directly from your inbox.
23. Workday integration with Socialcast Thanks
Synchronize Socialcast Thanks badges into Workday employee pages. The Workday
Feedback tab will show who sent the Thanks badge, all provided feedback, and date
received.
24. Socialcast Reach
24
The real power of Socialcast comes from integrating community features into
the business systems that people use every day, essentially adding a
collaborative layer on top of every user’s workflow. With Reach Extensions,
companies can embed message streams, Like buttons, and even community
trend information within critical business systems such as Microsoft SharePoint,
Salesforce.com, Atlassian’s Jira, and others.
31. Theme Builder
The new Theme Builder functionality allows Community Admins of premium communities
to customize the look and feel of the Socialcast Web Application.
32. SSO - Self-Service Single Sign-On Feature
Socialcast now offers a self-
service SSO configuration option
to all our premium customers. As a
standalone service provider,
Socialcast will be able to consume
information directly from your
Identity Provider, as long as it
supports SAML 2.0. This simplifies
the SSO configuration process,
reduces maintenance costs, and
allows community admins and IT
teams to easily implement SSO
without dependencies on VMware
Professional Services.
33. Community Legal Options
• Location: Admin > Legal > Settings
• Socialcast allows each community to maintain their own privacy policy and terms of
service. The three options at the top of the page allow the community administrator to
notify users when there are changes to the privacy policy and/or the terms of service
and require users to accept these documents the next time they log in.
• We also let you customize the text for the following settings: Custom Privacy Policy;
Custom Terms of Service; Custom Disclaimer
34. Socialcast adoption in our organization
34
• How many users are active on our Socialcast community?
35. What are people doing on Socialcast?
35
• How many messages, web feeds, comments and likes?
36. What are people talking about on Socialcast?
36
• Bubble chart of all public conversations by date, headline, jump to actual
message
41. Overview of devices used to access Socialcast
41
• What apps are my employees using to access Socialcast?
Notes de l'éditeur
Location: Admin > Tools > Send Broadcast Messages
Using a broadcast message, a community administrator can send an announcement to every user in the community. Socialcast posts broadcast messages in the company stream and notifies every member by email, even if the member has turned off email notifications. Members using the Socialcast mobile application will also receive a message if they have turned on push notification.
Broadcast messages that appear in the company stream have a unique visual appearance that sets them apart from the other messages.
Custom Stream blog entry
http://blog.socialcast.com/custom-streams/
The Thanks feature allows community members to recognize others for exemplary work. Socialcast provides a dozen different types of Thanks, ranging from Work Ethic and Problem Solver to Customer Satisfaction and Mentor. Each type of Thanks has an icon and descriptive phrase that Socialcast displays in the company stream when one community member sends Thanks to another. The community administrator can decide how many Thanks each user can send during a certain time period. The fewer Thanks each user can bestow, the more prized the recognition will be.
Viewing Thanks
Any community member can click on a Thanks icon to get more information about how the community is using that particular type of Thanks. You can see a complete list of all recipients, as well as the names of the top recipients and senders.
Sending Thanks
A community member can send Thanks to another user in the same way they can share an update. First, select the Send Thanks option above the Share box:
Then, click on the Select who you would like to Thank link. The Send Thanks to dialog will appear (see below). In the upper right corner you can see how many Thanks you have left to send. If you have used up your quota of Thanks, the Thanks icons will appear grayed out.
Enter a name at the top. Socialcast will offer name suggestions based on the first characters you enter. Select the type of Thanks you want to send and click the Attach Thanks button to continue. Socialcast will add the information to the Share box:
Enter details about how the community member earned your Thanks and click Send to post the Thanks in the company stream:
If your company uses another system to create and manage an org chart, the community administrator may want to turn off the organization chart feature within Socialcast. Instead, you might want to add a link (Admin > Customize > Helpful Links) to an external org chart.
Public Groups are discoverable by anyone in the company
Private Group content is visible by invitation only External Facing Groups allow external contributors access and participate with group content
LDAP managed Groups lock membership and access to an external active directory
Groups include activity feeds, aggregated files, and connect with Projects
Email Drop box feature allows for responding to messages by sending an email
To join a public group:
Hover your mouse over Groups in the left-hand navigation panel and click “Explore Groups” at the bottom of the pop-up window. This will take you to the Groups Directory.
Find a group that’s relevant to you.
Click “Join.” This group will now appear under “Groups” in the left-hand navigation panel.
If the group you’re looking for doesn’t yet exist, create it! Hover your mouse over the Groups
button and click on the small plus (+) sign in the upper right hand corner of the pop-up menu.
Public Groups are discoverable by anyone in the company
Private Group content is visible by invitation only External Facing Groups allow external contributors access and participate with group content
LDAP managed Groups lock membership and access to an external active directory
Groups include activity feeds, aggregated files, and connect with Projects
Email Drop box feature allows for responding to messages by sending an email
To join a public group:
Hover your mouse over Groups in the left-hand navigation panel and click “Explore Groups” at the bottom of the pop-up window. This will take you to the Groups Directory.
Find a group that’s relevant to you.
Click “Join.” This group will now appear under “Groups” in the left-hand navigation panel.
If the group you’re looking for doesn’t yet exist, create it! Hover your mouse over the Groups
button and click on the small plus (+) sign in the upper right hand corner of the pop-up menu.
Community Admins would have the ability to:
designate External Contributor Admins
provision External Contributors (with expiration date)
create External Contributor Objects (EC Groups, EC TownHalls, EC Projects, EC Challenges)
Beef up User Management section of Admin to show them what areas of the application an EC has access to
External Contributor Admins
create External Contributor Objects (EC Groups, EC TownHalls, EC Projects, EC Challenges)
allow community members of an externally facing Object to invite External Contributors
these members would have External Contributor Admins rights for the current Object
invite External Contributors (with expiration date)
ability to audit / view analytics for the Object you created. (This includes EC usage)
Allow for Blackberry like 1:1 or 1:many private conversations
To use Socialcast instead of email for private conversations:
• Hover your mouse over Private Messages in the left-hand navigation panel and click the + sign to start a private real-time conversation with one or more co-workers.
• Attach files or links to a private message as needed.
• Look for the gear icon in the top right of any message box to send a private reply.
To start a team effort with Socialcast Projects:
• Hover your mouse over “Projects” on the navigation panel, and click the + sign.
• Give the project a title, and start adding team members.
• Click “Add Objective” for each major effort or deliverable.
• Enter tasks under each objective, set a due date, and assign it to yourself or others.
To capture and manage ideas using Challenges:
• Hover your mouse over “Challenges” on the navigation panel, and click the + sign.
• Describe your Challenge. Give it a name and include an eye-catching image to make it stand out.
• Invite people to participate, moderate voting, and watch the best ideas rise to the top.
Submitting ideas
Posts in the Socialcast community that are designated as Ideas provide a very simple way to capture yes or no votes on a single idea, whereas Challenges engages employees in coming up with multiple ideas to solve a specific issue and evaluating submitted ideas collectively.
Click on any Challenge from the list to open it. You will be at the Idea window.
Click What’s your idea? to submit an idea for the Challenge.
In a public Challenge, any Socialcast community member can submit ideas. You will see a Join button to click to join the Challenge. In a private Challenge, only those who have been invited can submit ideas or even see the Challenge.
Type your idea in the prompt box (shown below), attach files (optional) and click Enter.
Your idea is submitted. You’ll see the message “Idea accepted for further investigation.” Now others can vote on your idea.
Voting or commenting on ideas
To the right of each idea is a vote tally box. To vote “Yes” on an idea, click the up arrow. To vote “No” on an idea, click the down arrow. The tally of votes adjusts in real time. To withdraw your vote, click on the up/down arrow depending on how you’ve voted.
Choosing notification preferences
Mouseover the gear icon to the right of your idea.
You can also access the Comments window by clicking Comment located next to Thanks on the left navigation bar of the Socialcast main page.
At the dropdown menu, you can manage all message activity including editing, deleting, selecting your message to be displayed in a pop-out, exporting it as a PDF, following all message replies, and opening in a new tab.
Select Follow message replies to be notified of any activity involving your idea in your stream.
How It Works
Socialcast makes an announcement in the company stream whenever a public Town Hall is scheduled. Community members can click on the link to view the home page for the Town Hall:
Your executive team gets increased visibility and employees have the opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with management. Although each Town Hall occurs at a specific time, the host and the attendees can interact in advance, allowing everyone the chance to mull over topics, resulting in a more interesting and thought-provoking exchange of ideas.
How It Works
Socialcast makes an announcement in the company stream whenever a public Town Hall is scheduled. Community members can click on the link to view the home page for the Town Hall:
Your executive team gets increased visibility and employees have the opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with management. Although each Town Hall occurs at a specific time, the host and the attendees can interact in advance, allowing everyone the chance to mull over topics, resulting in a more interesting and thought-provoking exchange of ideas.
The E-mail Dropbox feature on a Socialcast On Premise cluster must be configured using the Socialcast Cluster Management Console (SCMC) before members can post messages or replies via email.
To setup the E-mail Dropbox feature:
Access the Socialcast Cluster Management Console at https://your-community-url:8003/system_config/edit.
Log in using the administrator account credentials.
Scroll down to Email Dropbox (IMAP) Settings and enter the relevant information for your system mailbox:
E-mail Dropbox Host – The FQDN (full hostname) of the mailbox server
E-mail Dropbox Port – The appropriate IMAP port for the configured host
Note: The standard port with SSL is 993, and the standard port without SSL is 143.
E-mail Dropbox Account – The log in username for the email account.
E-mail Dropbox Password – The password for the account.
E-mail Dropbox Address – The full email address of this mailbox account.
If you are using SSL, select the Communicate to IMAP server over SSL? option.
Click Save Changed and proceed to deploy your latest configuration.
After the deployment completes, the E-mail Dropbox is ready to use. Socialc
Outlook blogpost
http://blog.socialcast.com/full-compatibility-for-outlook-2010-like-comments-other-general-improvements-socialcast-ease-outlook-plugin-update/
The Thanks feature allows community members to recognize others for exemplary work. Socialcast provides a dozen different types of Thanks, ranging from Work Ethic and Problem Solver to Customer Satisfaction and Mentor. Each type of Thanks has an icon and descriptive phrase that Socialcast displays in the company stream when one community member sends Thanks to another. The community administrator can decide how many Thanks each user can send during a certain time period. The fewer Thanks each user can bestow, the more prized the recognition will be.
Viewing Thanks
Any community member can click on a Thanks icon to get more information about how the community is using that particular type of Thanks. You can see a complete list of all recipients, as well as the names of the top recipients and senders.
Sending Thanks
A community member can send Thanks to another user in the same way they can share an update. First, select the Send Thanks option above the Share box:
Then, click on the Select who you would like to Thank link. The Send Thanks to dialog will appear (see below). In the upper right corner you can see how many Thanks you have left to send. If you have used up your quota of Thanks, the Thanks icons will appear grayed out.
Enter a name at the top. Socialcast will offer name suggestions based on the first characters you enter. Select the type of Thanks you want to send and click the Attach Thanks button to continue. Socialcast will add the information to the Share box:
Enter details about how the community member earned your Thanks and click Send to post the Thanks in the company stream:
To create your own theme, begin by specifying the colors for your link, navigation icon, and background color. You also have the option to upload a background image and control its properties, such as its positioning, tiling, and scrolling. There will be an interactive mini display that mocks up your selections. You can also hit the “Preview” button to view the new theme, which only you will be able to see. Once you are satisfied with how your theme looks and feels, you must hit “Save” to apply the theme for the entire community.
Custom themes can be removed or overridden with a new theme from the “Choose your theme” section. This includes customers that already have an existing Custom Theme created by our designers. You can continue using that Custom Theme Name/Code until your theme is migrated over**.
*Any theme adjustments will only affect the Socialcast Web interface at this time.
**For customers that currently have an existing Custom Theme, we will be migrating your theme properties (hex color codes and background) to our new theme builder format over the next few months. Alternatively, you can update your theme using the new “Create your own theme” option at any time.
To setup a new SSO configuration for your community, go to Admin Settings > Security > SSO Configuration. Enabling a new SSO configuration will override any existing configurations. Further documentation, including step-by-step instructions, can be found our Developers site here: Configuring SSO/SAML
http://developers.socialcast.com/admin/single-sign-on/configuring-ssosaml/