SharePointed

Overview

About 8 months ago, we posted a “How We Did It” guest blog entry here about Microsoft Academy Mobile, a community driven videocast/podcast solution that had been built on the SharePoint platform and continues to be used internally at Microsoft. We received a lot of feedback from customers, mostly in the form of “Hey, that’s very cool, but how can I implement it for my own organization?” as well as many inquiries from partners in terms of “Can I get the source code, so I can leverage it as a building block for my enterprise social media solution offering?”

  Well, we are very pleased to say, “Yes!” and “Yes!” to both questions by announcing the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint (PKS), available as an open source project at http://www.CodePlex.com/PKS. The PKS is an accelerator for social media, using podcasting and social networks to deliver the next generation knowledge management solution. Built on top of SharePoint Server 2007 and using Silverlight 2, the PKS delivers an integrated experience with a wide variety of devices including iPod, Zune, Windows Mobile phones, and other podcast capable devices. The PKS follows the same model and approach to open source community contributions and support as the Community Kit for SharePoint.

While the PKS is being implemented as a major upgrade to Academy Mobile within Microsoft, the following partners are ready to implement PKS-based commercially supported social media solutions for our customers.

• 3Sharp, as the primary developer of the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint, has very deep technical knowledge of the Kit and can effectively leverage it to quickly implement custom social media applications for the enterprise. 3Sharp’s specialty is to build and implement business solutions that help customers get more out SharePoint and Office.


• Accenture, the global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company, participated in the PKS pilot program along with several of our clients including British Telecom. Accenture is leveraging and extending SharePoint and the PKS to offer Enterprise 2.0 style learning and collaboration solutions to its clients. In addition to technology implementation, Accenture helps its clients drive measurable business value by addressing the strategy, people, and process components that are necessary to achieve high performance. For more info, contact thomas.w.hoglund [at] accenture.com.


• Nintex is an innovative provider of SharePoint value added tools and solutions. Nintex will leverage the PKS as the foundation for their next generation Podcast Server product.

Customer and Partner Excitement

 Peter Butler is the Head of Learning at British Telecom Group and chairs BT’s Learning Council, whose primary purpose is to maximize the ability of individuals, teams, and the organization as a whole to grow and transform in pursuit of the company’s strategic goals and objectives, has this to say about the PKS:

“British Telecom is very excited to be an early adopter of the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint. With Accenture’s help, we are launching a pilot project to help 4,500 program and project managers collaborate and share information. We believe these new technologies will be an important enabler to sharing knowledge, experience, and ideas across our business units and in helping our employees reach an even higher level of performance.”

 Tom Hoglund is a Partner in Accenture’s Talent & Organization Performance service line, which focuses on helping employees of client organization perform at a higher level through leveraging the tools of knowledge management, employee portals, collaboration, and learning. He has a global leadership role for Accenture’s practice in these areas and more than 25 years of consulting experience in leading numerous projects that have delivered millions of dollars of benefits to clients and touched hundreds of thousands of people. We’re very excited that someone like Tom is so excited about the potential of the PKS and has this to say about it:

“Corporate and public sector learning organizations have traditionally only addressed 20% of how employees learn. The PKS, combined with Accenture’s learning and collaboration experience, enables our clients to facilitate and accelerate learning, exactly when and where it is needed, independent of location or device. That’s a huge advantage.”

Solution Scenarios

Communications

• Corporate Communications: Stay in touch with your executives


• Multimedia Newsletters: Stay in touch with your colleagues

Training / eLearning 2.0

• Give your employees the freedom to learn relevant information on-demand- anytime, anywhere


• Allow your employees to share and learn from others

Partner Relationships

• Advertise and drive awareness about your partner relationships internally

Innovation

• Ask your most innovative people to find creative ways to share great ideas through audio and video podcasting

Digital Marketing / Advertisement

• Directly reach out to your customers and create a social networking community that will generate interest

Lectures / Courses

• Easily share, consume and publish lectures and training sessions in one centralized location


• Create a virtual classroom discussion via commenting and instant messaging

Community Building

• Stay connected with what’s new in the community to keep up-to-date


• Generate a team oriented environment

Feature Highlights

PKS Home Page

PKS Podcast Page

PKS Podcaster Page

Open Source Community Excitement

The following open source projects have already been spawned from the PKS project:

• EDEN Mobile RSS Client - Windows Mobile RSS client with podcast download queuing and resume.


• MTC VBG Application - MTG VBG stands for “Microsoft Technology Center Virtual Bubblegum Application.” This Windows Vista application provides a rich 3D UI for the PKS.


• Nintex Podcast Client 2008 - Podcast client for the PKS that enables podcast recording directly from your web browser.

To ensure that there will be even more PKS sub-projects in the near future, we have put aside some funding to subsidize turning the most compelling PKS feature ideas into actual functionality. Take a look at the PKS Discussions List for the current list of feature ideas and vote for your favorite(s), or you can add your own feature idea(s) to the list.

We Welcome Your Feedback!

We are very proud to be able to share the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint as an open source project with our customers and partners. We deeply believe in the potential of social media within the enterprise. At Microsoft, we’ve witnessed the following stats for the Academy Mobile application:

• 2,100+ total podcasts and growing every day


• 3,100+ registered podcaster accounts


• 3,700+ unique visitors in May, 2008


• 1,800 page views average per day


• 80,000+ downloads since July, 2007

We would love to hear about your enterprise social media success stories as well as any feedback on how we can work with the open source community to improve the Podcasting Kit for SharePoint. Please leave your comments under this blog entry or in the PKS discussion board.

Phil Morel, Director, Microsoft Academy, and sponsor of the PKS initiative
Ludovic Fourrage, Group Program Manager, Microsoft Academy and the PKS initiative
Paolo Tosolini, New Media Business Manager, Microsoft Academy and the PKS initiative
Lawrence Liu, Senior Technical Product Manager, SharePoint Product Group liaison to the PKS initiative