SharePoint 2013 – Social Networking Capabilities

SharePoint 2013 has Introduced new Social Capabilities and I am here introducing some of the cool features and main areas where you can use them.

Main Features Introduced – Microsoft in SharePoint 2013 Introduced new Social capabilities for better collaboration in the company. New Features added are –

• Community Site
• MY Sites
• Newsfeed
• Follow people
• Follow Sites

Let me explain these features one by one, so you can understand how to use it.

Community Site:

In SharePoint 2010 has discussions list in sites to facilitate discussions. SharePoint Server 2013 continue to provide this Discussion list, but also expand on the discussion concept by introducing two new site templates named Community Site and Community Portal.

How to create a new Community Site:

In the site Content of a site click on “new subsite” (See below screen – at bottom ‘new subsite’ is selected). We are trying to create a discussion board here.

Next select the Community site template and then click OK.

Newly created community site would look like as below:

Let me explain you what change we have in this site.

Replacement to Discussion boards : Community Sites are a Replacement to Discussion boards.

Community Tools :  Tools for managing this site, like you were presented in Discussion boards and blog posts (You can see in above image).

Reputation model : Apart from creating discussions you can create a employee or user reputation model based on participation in community social activities. By this you can assign badges (Achievement levels) to users and give them points for the activities (Member achievements point system) that user performs for example creating Posts, Replying to discussions etc. All these options are set by Admin of the site using “Reputation settings” Below screen will give you an idea.

Likes and Reply : Users can like the discussion and reply on it.