How Edelman Has Leveraged NewsGator & SharePoint

Recently, NewsGator hosted a webinar -- "Delivering Web 2.0 Business Value with SharePoint" -- whose guests included Alina Fu, SharePoint Product Manager for Social Computing at Microsoft, and David Rosenberg, Lead Sharepoint Developer for Edelman -- a global PR firm with over 50 offices worldwide.  In particular, David discussed how Edelman used NewsGator to help them transition from their old Web 1.0 internet ASP platform to a robust SharePoint implementation.  His comments were revealing.

David explained how their "old intranet" was becoming seriously outdated: the start page was the same for every employee (i.e., there was no customization); there was no content aggregation; limited search capabilities; cumbersome sharing of documents and search for people within the community; no real collaboration tools; and the fact that IT intervention was needed every step of the way from creation of the intranet through administration of it.

By implementing SharePoint (which they internally branded as "Fusion"), Edelman gained a panoply of new features and functionality.  This new platform (as opposed to their previous "Web 1.0" intranet) included: detailed people search and advanced search functionality; document versioning and management; heavy RSS integration, including external feeds; email alert integration; virtual project groups (with no need for IT management); social groups; personalized home pages specific to the person who logs in; and detailed profile pages. 

In specific, David explained how they leveraged NewsGator's expertise to implement the following webparts: RSS content aggregation integrated directly into SharePoint; bringing SharePoint feeds out via subscription; site reading lists; and many social features including, among others:

• individual status updates
• groups
• mini social profiles
• activity streams (both internal & external)

According to David, by transitioning to SharePoint, with the help of NewsGator, Edelman was able to transform their old, "dying" intranet into a highly useful social computing platform that allowed for far more collaboration, social features, interaction, document sharing and, perhaps most importantly, a platform their employees actually were excited about and wanted to use.

You can access the webinar here.