Socialtext wikis are enterprise pluggable

By Jeff Brainard | April 2, 2007, 5:04 pm | 0 Comments

The Socialtext wiki solutions are designed for plugging into the existing IT infrastructure and business process of enterprises. Whether by integrating with existing document management systems, portals, directories and search applications, or by creating flexibility for custom integrations through Web Services or extending wiki access to remote or mobile workers, Socialtext provides the industry’s most complete enterprise-class wiki offering. Key features of the Socialtext wiki that make it truly enterprise ‘pluggable’ include:

Easily export wiki content for integration with document management systems
Simplify authentication and create a seamless portal experience with directory services and single sign-on integration
Quickly use search to find relevant wiki content, plus use Google for advanced search requirements
Embed the best-of-breed Socialtext wiki within your existing Microsoft Sharepoint portal environment
Allow ‘anytime, anywhere’ access to wiki content with mobile and disconnected-mode access
Use standards & open APIs to integrate custom applications and content with your wiki

Exporting content from the wiki:

The Socialtext wiki allows content to be exported in a variety of ways, including as HTML, PDF and Microsoft Word formats, which can be valuable for integrating wiki content into an enterprise’s existing document management system, like EMC Documentum. This can help address compliance requirements around the central storage of business documents or to drive broader adoption of the wiki-generated content across the enterprise. People often want to author content collaboratively using a wiki, and then publish a finalized version of this information to a broader audience either within the business or possibly to external partners, supplier or customers. Wikis are an ideal tool for group collaboration, but better tools exist for presentation and formatting, such as Microsoft Word. Users can either export a single wiki page or select multiple pages for export. This might include wiki pages that share a common tag, are part of a common view (like what’s new), or are the results of a search query. Customers will find this feature valuable for packaging up multiple wiki pages as part of developing marketing collateral, gathering up competitive intelligence or research, creating a customer proposal for sales, or assembling technical documentation for support personnel.

Integrating with directory services & single sign-on:

For customers that require the wiki to work with existing enterprise IT systems, Socialtext provides a pluggable solution for directory services and single sign-on integration. Directory services integration is valuable for centralizing user authentication around one system, for example Microsoft Active Directory or any LDAP server, which gives IT a central point of control and allows users to have the same login/password credentials for access to multiple services on the network. By integrating with the existing directory services, Socialtext users have the ability to leverage information stored in the corporate directory, such as address book info related to fellow employees they might want to send email notifications to or invite to a new wiki workspace. In addition, Socialtext also integrates with an enterprise’s existing single sign-on model. By using cookies, this allows users to authenticate once, for example to the corporate intranet or extranet portal, and then have access to a variety of services within the portal, including wikis. This simplifies the end-user experience and removes the complexity of users having to authenticate multiple times.

Advanced search integration with Google & more:

Socialtext provides a variety of embedded and pluggable options for searching across content stored in the wiki. Included with every Socialtext solution is an open-source search tool from KinoSearch that provides keyword-based searching of content stored in wiki pages, as well as the contents of attachments This search feature is intelligent enough to perform functions like word stemming to detect variations of verbs with different tenses or both singular and plural nouns. For larger enterprises and more complex search requirements, Socialtext integrates with the Google appliance for indexing and searching of all wiki content.

Microsoft SharePoint portal integration:

To simplify the user experience and increase the adoption of Socialtext within the enterprise, customers will commonly want to integrate the wiki with existing tools the enterprise users are most familiar with. This is one reason why Socialtext has stressed tight email integration for publishing content easily via email to a wiki workspace, as well as providing notifications of changes to wiki content via email. Similarly, for enterprises with an existing investment in SharePoint for portal services, Socialtext offers a tailored version of the Socialtext wiki solution – called SocialPoint – that integrates seamlessly within SharePoint. This provides users with the same familiar access to SharePoint and its various file sharing and collaboration features, but adds the best-of-breed Socialtext wiki features and functionality within this framework. Additional integration, for example with directory and single sign-on integration, gives SharePoint users the ability to sign-in once to SharePoint then automatically authenticate and get access to SocialPoint wiki services.

Socialtext Miki & Unplugged:

Traditional web-based applications require a constant network connection for viewing online content and making changes. This creates a big challenge for the mobile workforce that may lose access to critical information when remote. With Miki, Socialtext addresses this challenge for wiki content by providing mobile access from devices, including Palm, Treo and Blackberry phones and handhelds, so users can access the wiki and collaborate wirelessly as long as a network connection is present. Socialtext further addresses this challenge for users that are remote (and where an Internet connection is unavailable) through its Unplugged capability. Socialtext Unplugged allows users to synch recent, relevant content from a wiki workspace to a laptop and then take this information with them. While disconnected, the users can browse this wiki content, make updates, post comments or add new pages. Once the user reconnects to the network, Unplugged automatically synchronizes the changes, so they are then represented online as part of the community wiki.

Application integration & Wiki Web Services:

Both Socialtext Unplugged and Socialpoint were developed upon Socialtext’s Wiki Web Services. Socialtext offers two different types of flexible Application Programming Interfaces (API) for development purposes —Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs. These interfaces can be valuable for integrating external content and applications with the Socialtext wiki without requiring knowledge of the inner workings of the architecture or advanced programming skills. Furthermore, customers can use these APIs to create tools that read and write wiki content in the language of their choosing using the languages common libraries. The SOAP API allows developers to create simple integrated clients which access the information in a Socialtext wiki. The REST API is a more powerful toolset, allowing developers to create full-featured applications using the information within a Socialtext wiki. Both APIs work remotely – the client accessing the information can be on any other system which can see the Socialtext system. Both APIs also support authentication using the user data within the Socialtext system.