Tables are a powerful way to organize information and format the layout of pages. Begining with Socialtext 3.2, there is a new set of table-related toolbar icons, which allow you to:
The short video below demonstrates the new features.
Do you ever create pages for a repeated activity such as taking meeting minutes, or fill out a form that your company has a defined format for, such as submitting expenses or filling out a Helpdesk/Support ticket? Would you like to have the structure and default information for these activities entered automatically for you, instead of having to start each time with a blank page? Well now you can, by using templates to help you get started.
Starting with Socialtext 3.2, the New Page button has been enhanced with a Create Content wizard, which makes it easier than ever to create new pages. This new feature allows you to choose from a list of available templates, helping save you valuable time, by removing the need to manually enter information, or to copy and paste it from an existing page. Templates also help ensure consistency, as everyone can now easily create pages using the same format.
Any page in a Socialtext workspace can be made available as a template, simply by tagging the page with the word “template.” From that point forward, the page will be available in the list of templates when a person clicks the “New Page” button.
There are several templates already created in the Socialtext Customer Exchange to help you get started. You can copy any of these into your own workspaces for use at your company. To be notified of changes to a template’s design, simply choose to Watch the page, and you will be automatically notified any time the template is updated. You can also share templates that you create, by posting them in the Exchange for other Socialtext users to access. If you add a new page, don’t forget to tag it with the word “template.”
Please join us on Wednesday January 28, 2009 9:00 am Pacific Standard time, for a one hour webinar on Getting Started With Socialtext. This presentation is intended for people who are either new to Socialtext, or those looking for a refresher course on the basics.
This is a great opportunity for you, and your peers to get some great pointers on how to get the most out of Socialtext. There have been several new features delivered in the past few months that you’ll get to see, and you’ll have a chance at the end to ask questions. Please click here to register, and make sure to tell all the other people in your company or community. Better yet, post this invite as a new page in all the Socialtext Workspaces you belong to!
During the hour you will learn how to:
Discover and connect with people of interest in your company or community using Socialtext People. We’ll walk through filling in your personal profile, choosing the people you want to follow, and how to discover information in a person’s update stream
Organize and manage information that requires your attention using Socialtext Dashboard. We’ll go over the various components of your personal homepage, and see how you can discover information and people that can help you work more effectively
Create and share information with wiki pages and blogs in Socialtext Workspaces. We’ll look at items such as text, tables, links, attachments, and pictures. Well also look at Watchlists which make it simple for you to know when a page is updated.
Finally, we’ll discuss some of the ways you may want to use Socialtext, such as event planning, knowledge bases, documentation, and more.
Click here to register, and we looking forward to seeing you on January 28th.
Thank you,
Socialtext
This week net@night hosts Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte had a great talk with Socialtext founder Ross Mayfield.
You can listen to, or download the podcast here. The section with Ross begins 20 minutes after that start of the recording.
Ross Mayfield, Tracy Ruggles and I presented at the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. Ross gave a high level picture of some core social software principles of connected collaboration. Tracy and I talked about how we live those principles every day, using Socialtext tools to do distributed agile product development with Socialtext tools.
Social scientist Valdis Krebs has observed that a healthy social network has a strongly connected core, and a more weakly connected periphery. The densely connected core reflects a well-functioning collaborative process; while the weaker ties to the periphery enable the organization to respond to the the environment and learn.
In the clip, I describe how we use Socialtext’s wiki for tight, fast, iterative collaboration with product management, design, development and QA. The transparency and participative contribution fostered by the Socialtext toolset enables a broader network of weaker ties with customers and customer-facing folk in sales, marketing, support and professional services. The broader network of weaker ties helps Socialtext understand our customer’s needs, and the short development cycle lets the leadership team flexibly prioritize what’s needed for the business. A key principle of agile is adapting your process to the your current processes and needs, and a key principle of Socialtext is a set of tools that let you adapt your processes to be responsive to change.
In a presentation, the most interesting thing is often the questions, which aren’t in the video.
The video and slides are here. The distributed agile process that I talk about is a collaborative creation of the whole Socialtext product development team.
Since Alan Lepofsky and I spoke last month at Social Media for Government, I’ve been having a lot of conversations with beltway folks. There’s a ton of interest in social media in government. It all started back in 2006 when the intelligence community launched Intellipedia as a community-based forum for sharing vital information across intelligence agencies. I started getting involved with government uses of social media when I joined Socialtext in the fall of 2007. Since that time, the community has come a long way. Here are some trends I’m noticing:
Government folks are really jazzed about social media. Within all industries, there’s some level of excitement and passion for social software. In government, it’s off the charts. I think that’s because there’s such a high level of frustration with existing rules and restrictions. People are dying to talk to each other, and to free themselves from the restrictions that government processes have put in place. Intellipedia was an inspiration to many, many agencies and individuals.
It’s not just Intellipedia anymore. The government community is savvy about social software. It’s not just Intellipedia, and it’s not just wikis anymore: people are talking about and using blogs, wikis, social networking, and micro-blogging. They’re using proprietary tools for internal collaboration and social networking, and they’re using public tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Wikipedia to reach out to the world beyond the Beltway.
The interest has an hourglass shape. Senior government officials “get it”; they see social software as a way for government agencies to be more integrated with the communities they serve. Junior and mid-level staffers “get it”; they see social software as a way to cut through bureaucracy and work more effectively day-to-day. The obstacle I hear about again and again is upper-middle managers who have internalized the need for minimizing risk, while not yet adopting a strategic mindset around serving the needs of the agency’s external stakeholders.
People anticipate a major take-off with the Obama administration. Government staffers who use social software still feel like mavericks who are doing something that is, at best, grudgingly tolerated. A lot of folks I’m talking to think this will change with the new administration. The Obama campaign understood deeply the power of informal communities and was extremely sophisticated in mobilizing those communities. It’s a reflection of Obama himself, the man Rudy Giuliani so memorably mocked for his experience as a “community organizer.” A lot of people in D.C. now sense that social software is about to go mainstream in a big way.
On this blog, Socialtext staffers and customers explore how companies can gain the most business value from their use of enterprise social software, including microblogging, social networking, filtered activity streams, widget-based dashboards, blogs and wikis.
Find us on Facebook
Read blogs from our team members:
Archives
Recent Posts
Eugene Lee, January 26, 2012
Michael Idinopulos, December 9, 2011
Michael Idinopulos, December 1, 2011
Mark Sylvester, November 15, 2011
Michael Idinopulos, November 1, 2011
Alan Lepofsky, October 3, 2011
Sarah Dulak, September 28, 2011
Britta Meyer, September 22, 2011
Alan Lepofsky, August 15, 2011
Alan Lepofsky, August 11, 2011
Recent Tweets
Learn how Blue Man Group uses Socialtext to foster creativity among its 500 employees, how groups are working better and more effectively together and why they’ve seen an over 80% adoption rate since implementation.
In this webcast, Rob Koplowitz, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. and Vandonelio Williams, Sr. Director of IT at the NYU Stern School of Business discuss the emerging social layer phenomenon; how NYU is integrating Socialtext with applications to facilitate collaboration and connections among students, faculty and staff; and the business benefits being realized from building a social layer.
© 2011 Socialtext, Inc. All rights reserved.
On the Socialtext blog, staffers and customers explore how companies can gain the most business value from their use of enterprise social software, including microblogging, social networking, filtered activity streams, widget-based dashboards, blogs and wikis. Read all the posts, or sort by category: Application Development, Customer Success, Enterprise 2.0, News & Events, Product Updates, and Tips & Tricks.
Subscribe to our blog
Subscribe to our newsletter
Watch us on YouTube