One obstacle any social business project faces is getting users to actually log into it. Once they’ve done that they often find that they have a quick look round, don’t immediately find something of interest and then never log in again. No matter how much content you might have, and how carefully-crafted your enterprise social network might be, if people don’t use it, you’ve not succeeded.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a new user could be welcomed, encouraged to provide some simple details about themselves, and have the system recognise where they sit in the organisation? Once it has done that, it might recommend people that they would want to connect with, communities they’d want to join, and so on. That way, they would find something of interest in the system more quickly and be more inclined to get going.
The very clever guys at IBM Software Services for Collaboration have done just that. Their Connections TouchPoint solution enhances a Connections implementation to provide a guided start for new users:
It uses some advanced analytics and mining of profiles and communities to present relevant information to the user and to provide sensible suggestions about communities and colleagues to connect with.
With a small amount of information added, TouchPoint moves on to ask you about some of the things you’re known for, and are interested in:
Next comes the magic. Once you’ve supplied some info about yourself, TouchPoint recommends some people to add to your network:
And, based on your interests, seeks to hook you up with relevant colleagues in other parts of the organisation:
OK, so you’ve got some people to keep up with now, but how about getting into some communities and getting useful information from the social system?
Once you’ve followed these simple steps, TouchPoint fills out your profile, makes the connections and joins you to the communities you selected – boom, now you’re being social!
As I said, TouchPoint is a really nice way to making it easy to get over the initial resistance many users exhibit when presented with a social collaborative environment. The really cool thing is that you can try it out for yourself today, now in fact.
Go to greenhouse.lotus.com and sign up for an account, if you haven’t already. Then go to this link: https://greenhouse.lotus.com/ghouse.nav/labs/ConnectionsTouchpoint/touchpoint/ to get started!
