Microsoft partners add wikis, RSS to SharePoint

Computerworld - SAN FRANCISCO -- Atlassian Software Systems Pty. and NewsGator Technologies Inc. today unveiled Wiki software and RSS technology, respectively, for Microsoft Corp.'s Office SharePoint Server 2.0. Both firms added SharePoint support for their products under an agreement with Microsoft announced Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit here.

NewsGator said that NewsGator Social Sites, a collection of site templates, profiles and middleware aimed at boosting the social computing capabilities in SharePoint 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, started shipping today.

Atlassian, which develops and distributes the Confluence enterprise wiki software, announced the availability of a set of plug-ins that can enable the bidirectional flow of information between Confluence and SharePoint.

"Social computing and its inclusion in SharePoint Server 2007 are changing the way businesses work and enabling organizations to harness the power of their social networks," said Derek Burney, general manager of SharePoint in a statement. "This has exponentially increased the communication and collaboration among employees, partners, clients and other key stakeholders."

With the NewsGator Social Sites, SharePoint administrators can bring in RSS feeds from outside the server without reinventing the wheel, NewsGator said. Social Sites allows users to mark calendar items, announcements, document links and other static items as read so they see only new items when they return, the company added.

Social Sites also allows users to click on a link for a content author or tagger to see a profile of the author and contact information, their blog or wiki entries, and articles and feeds they read, tag and recommend, NewsGator said.

Trapper Markelz, senior manager of application development at executive search firm Stuart Scott, said in a statement that Social Sites will help his firm better utilize SharePoint.

"It will allow us to present both internal and external information in a single team site with greatly enhanced navigation," he said. "Social Sites will also increase the visibility of these resources through notifications that drive users directly back to the lists that are most valuable to them."