In The Next Version

As the size of our social networks grow (meaning we connect with more people) it's important that the tools we use make it simple to interact with the right people at the right time. (context matters!) I've found that some collaboration platforms do this well, while others do not.

Here is a good example from Yammer.  Notice when I type "@k" it first suggests Kevin Young, he is not the only person in my network who's name starts with K, but he is person I interact with most frequently. The next two suggestions are based on last name's starting with K. Notice "Ku" is listed before "Ke", that's because I interact with Ganesh more often in Yammer than Brent.




Google+ takes this a step further, not just focusing on the names of the people you interact with most often, but prioritising names of people from the specific conversation. In the example below I've typed "@j", and even though "Je" comes before "Jo" and "Joa" would come before "Joh", notice "John Tropea" is the name that is first suggested. That is because John has already been active in this specific conversation.




Compare that to how poorly Facebook manages @mentions.  In the example below I've typed "@chr" and it brings up 3 of my friends named Chris, none of which have been part of this conversation. Yet "Chris Crummey" has been but his name is not displayed.  #Fail




Today most people use type-ahead to mention people, but some platforms are starting to make more object types accessible. For example, both Jive and Confluence do a good job of allowing people to type-ahead to link to pages.




So while social networks are not yet physic, they are getting better at making intelligent predictions, suggestions and recommendations.  I have lots of ideas for how they can still be vastly improved and am enjoying working with software vendors on this.
 
What are your favourite examples of products that do this really well or really poorly?



Tweet

Today SocialCast by VMware announced the new version of their enterprise social networking platform. The main new feature of this release is the integration of Social Task Management, which they are calling Socialcast Projects. As you know, I've been preaching about the benefits of Social Task Management for quite some time, so clearly I am happy to see Socialcast provide this new element to their product. With this new enhancement people using Socialcast will be able to more easily to organise, manage, share and complete the work they are doing.

Screenshot of the latest release




Things to consider:

1) While the addition of project management features is a welcome enhancement, it is not unique to Socialcast. Other enterprise social networks/collaboration platforms such as Atlassian, Jive (via the acquisition of Producteev), IBM Connections, Podio and many others also offer similar features.
2) Socialcast is not new to the Social Task Management space. In Sep of 2011 Socialcast introduced Strides, a stand-alone social task management service that was not integrated with Socialcast. The new Socialcast Projects is not the integration of Strides, but rather a rewrite from the ground up using the lessons they have learned during the time they have been developing Strides. The future of Strides is unclear at the moment, but my assumption is VMware will not continue to actively develop both platforms. I expect Strides customers to be upsold to Socialcast with it's more robust social networking features. Hopefully when this occurs VMware will provide a smooth migration path from Strides to Socialcast Projects.

Video of Socialcast, including Projects




VMware is better known to most IT professionals as a backend infrastructure company that specialises in server and desktop virtualization. However, over the last few years VMWare has attempted to get more into the end-user computing slide of things, acquiring SocialCast, Zimbra (email) and SlideRocket, the later of which they recently sold to ClearSlide. Zimbra has never really taken off as a large enterprise alternative to Microsoft Exchange or IBM Notes/Domino, but it does have some interesting features such as integrated unified communication, calendar and scheduling and Zimlets. Zimlets are small applications which offer integration into a variety of different systems, for example mapping an address or looking up the status of a package delivery. I'd like to see VMware integrate the calendar and Zimlet features into SocialCast.

This new release will be a welcome one for Socialcast customers, and provides some competitive differentiation versus other stand-alone enterprise social networking vendors.

Tweet

Today Tylr Mobile unveiled WorkinBox, an iPhone application designed to help sales professionals by bringing together email (via IMAP) and CRM (currently Salesforce.com) information.

Unlike so many of today's startups who pontificate about the evils of email, WorkinBox embraces the fact that email is a critical tool for Sales professionals. They recognise that the problem with email is that it does not contain all the information Sales people need about an account or opportunity, as that information is contained in their company's CRM system. To solve this, WorkinBox aims to eliminate the cumbersome processes of switching back and forth between the two. For example, when an email message arrives in WorkinBox, it tries to match the sender to the corresponding record in Salesforce.com.  You can then sort your inbox based deals and close dates rather than just message senders and delivery dates.




While WorkinBox's sorting and viewing features should prove quite useful, what impressed me most was the integration of actions and tasks that Sales Professionals can take right from within the application. For example, you can turn any message into a task, which will then sync back to Salesforce.com and be linked the appropriate record. Similarly, when you respond to a message you can use email templates from your CRM system and the replies are recorded back in the opportunity record.

The challenge for Tylr Mobile will be in proving to Sales Professionals that using WorkinBox (on their mobile phone) can help them close deals faster, be more responsive to prospects and be better connected to their contacts. They claim to have several large organizations already testing the beta version of the product. I look forward to seeing those companies become public references as WorkinBox moves from beta to its first release. Their product roadmap also includes future integrations with popular file sharing and task management platforms. I am sure Salesforce.com's acquisition team will be keeping a close eye on Tylr Mobile, as any product that can improve the quality of their CRM data is of great value.

Tylr Mobile was founded last year by CEO Ryan Nichols, previously from Podio which was acquired by Citrix. He has assembled a team of his former Appirio colleagues, all of which have excellent enterprise software experience.









Tweet

The following five minute video was recorded following my keynote on Purposeful Collaboration at Oracle CloudWorld Mumbai on April 2nd, 2013.

Note: the caption for the first question is incorrect, they asked "How has collaboration changed..." not "How has Constellation (where I work) changed..."



Tweet

The Rise of Purposeful Collaboration

From Simply Sharing to Getting Work Done

Collaboration tools enable people to discover and interact with, the content, colleagues and communities, that can help them get their jobs done.



Culture, Technology and Business Practices are evolving to adapt to today’s more social working environment.

The first era of enterprise social was about collaborating more effectively by working more transparently and increasing participating via “social software”.

With Purposeful Collaboration, “social” is built directly into the tools and business processes people use to get their jobs done.

Tweet

This week Google made two product announcements that generated a lot of press. The first is that it would be shutting down Google Reader on July 1, 2013. The second was the introduction of Google Keep, which people are referring to as the evolution of Google Notebook and a competitor for Evernote. (more on that below)



The closing of Google Reader has infuriated many people the tech community who have in turn stated they won't look at future Google offerings (like Keep) because they no longer have any faith that Google will maintain various (non-core) products. I understand and respect that position, but I don't share it. Google has a long history of shutting down products, perhaps most notably (among techies) Wave and Buzz. Just Google "Google Graveyard" and you'll find dozens of sites that track the vast array of products that are no longer being developed.

In my opinion Google has the right to shutdown any service (that people don't pay for) they would like, provided they do so in a professional manner. That means providing adequate warning and instructions on how to export your data. With Reader they are giving more than two months, and they are providing Google Takeout as a way to export your RSS feeds. Many alterantives are already jumping on the "Replace Reader" bandwagon. Personally, I use Zite on my iPad to get most of my news.

While I am not pleased that Google would shut down a product used (and loved) by so many people, it will not affect my decision to continue using Gmail, maps, Google+, Drive, and a dozen other products that I pay Google $0 for. I will take a look at Google Keep and future products, but do so with the knowledge that they may go away at any time. The need for long term stability is one of the reasons I pay for Evernote Premium, but still that's no guarantee.

So, getting back to Google Keep, my opinion is this is very early beta code, not nearly ready to replace anyone's use of a more powerful note taking tool like Evernote or OneNote. That's ok though, GMail was in beta for how many years? I am sure Google will get lots of feedback, release updates quickly and end up with a pretty good tool that integrates with many components of the Google platform.

The following are the issues I've had with Keep, listed as I discover them. I will continue to add items.

• Extremely simple, no rich text (tables, fonts, etc)
• Choose an image to upload does not provide an option to choose from your pictures from Google+/Picasa, it's only upload from computer
• When a new note is created the cursor goes into body field instead of title, which I find very annoying
• The icon to select the note colour is different on mobile (looks like a painter's palette) than on the web (it's a paint can)
• I created a voice note on mobile, but when I view it on the web, there is no embedded player (in Chrome at least), you have to download the file to listen to it
• You can't change the note colour from the main view, you have to open the note
• No folders/notebooks to help organize your content
• No tagging
• You can't reorder the individual items in lists
• In Keep the icon for "Insert An Image" is a picture of a mountain. In  Google+ it's a picture of a camera and uses the hover text "Add Photos". I'd like to see consistency across all products please.
• No way to sort notes.  (ex: title, created, modified, etc.) This is the biggest blocker for me so far.
• When I update a note, it does not resort to the first note

What do you think is missing and what would you like to see?  I imagine one of the first things they will do is enable people to share information in Keep with their Google+ Circles. You'll also probably be able to display Keep notes in Hangouts. The UI for Google Drive is quite "1990s file-manager-esque", so I'd like to see Drive evolve to have a Keep like UI, where you can see thumbnails of content. Stay tuned, I expect Keep will evolve quite quickly.

Have you looked at Google Keep, or are you staying away from Google due to lack of trust?  



Tweet

Here are just a few of the product stories that I noticed today.  I don't have time to write full posts about all of them, but I will try and cover a few of them in more detail in the next day or two. For now, I'll offer up a quick point of view on each.

IBM Notes and Domino 9.0 Social Edition - MyPOV: (more detailed reviewing coming) The biggest innovation here is the addition of (OpenSocial based) "embedded experiences" inside Notes email messages and applications. That means developers can add features to their applications that people can access directly from within their Notes client. For example, if a manager receives an email about an expense approval, they can take action on it right from the email message instead of having to switch to tool that sent it. IBM is providing embedded experiences for many of the features of their IBM Connections platform. For example instead of simply sending an email that notifies people when they are mentioned in a Connections conversation, that email contains the entire conversation (including embedded media like pictures and videos) and allows the person to reply to or Like the conversation right from the email. For those familiar with Google+ and Gmail this will sound very similar.

IBM Connections Suite V4.5 now includes IBM Connections Content Manager V4.5 - MyPOV: One of the strengths of IBM solutions is that they understand the business requirements of their customers. The integration of IBM Content Manager into Connections enables people to create and share content with advanced features like check-in/out and version control, which are not available in the standard pages features of IBM Connections Communities/Wikis.

LiveHive (collaboration platform) Launches. MyPOV: I like that rather than just being another Facebook clone using a chronological based activity stream, LiveHive (formerly known as Capture To Cloud) is taking a more FlipBoard or Pinterest like approach. LiveHive should not be confused with former collaboration vendor Hive Live which was purchased by RightNow in Sept 2009, who was then purchased by Oracle in Sept 2011.

Azendoo Social Task Manager Releases New UI and Improved Features - (translated from their French blog post) MyPOV: I really like Azendoo's integration with Evernote. With each release they continue to improve the user experience and the tools they integrate with, making Azendoo one of the leading stand-alone (meaning, not part of a larger collaboration platform) Social Task Management vendors.

Trello (Kanban based Social Task Manager) Release iPad App - MyPOV: While the Kanban approach to task management may be best known to developers and engineers, Trello makes it simple for beginners to get started and use to manage their projects. The drag and drop touch UI of the iPad is a perfect way to move tasks between stages. This is a welcome addition for Trello users.

Evernote for Mac adds new Quick Note feature - MyPOV: I love this. It's already made an impact in my productivity, especially with the built in screen shot feature.

DropBox Delivers A New Menu Bar - MyPOV: I've not tested this myself, but providing notifications of activity is an expected feature in most of today's applications.  If DropBox provides effective filtering and the ability to take action on the events, then this should prove to be a useful feature.

Egnyte (File-sharing) Adds Support For Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Microsoft Azure and NetApp StorageGRID - MyPOV: Each vendor in the very competitive file-sharing and sync market is looking for ways to differentiate themselves. Egnyte is focused on providing customers a choice of where their content is stored.


Tweet