Drinking Coffee…Collaboratively!

 

Weird title huh?

Now that I have your attention, the idea of this blog is to share a simple real-life use case on how collaboration can help optimize various activities and in turn boost productivity.

Let me set some context first…

One of the important features for a social\collaboration product is to provide the capability to follow the various activities in the communities of choice and be notified about any activity in those communities. Notifications can be for all the activities or for selected few, depending on the individual user’s preferences. Activities are of multiple types, uploading a document, asking a question, posting a microblog, starting a discussion etc. are some examples. These activities in turn can relate to one or more topics around Technology (SharePoint, ASP.Net, J2EE), HR (New Hire, Events) Finance, Sales etc. and can be tagged appropriately.

Meet Joe, the coffee enthusiast…

Joe, is a great performer and the performance goes to the next level if he keeps getting the regular coffee boosts. He has been with the organization for a while and has developed few like-minded friends from various disciplines who are equally passionate about their work and of course coffee. Creating a community for coffee drinkers would be their dream-come-true, but the corporate IT policies are pretty much strict about the governance and would only allow a new community until and unless there is a strong business justification behind it.

There is a public (everyone in the organization has access to it) community though named HR Events, which is built and owned by HR. The community is built around and for the various internal events and allows people to share some general content for e.g. pictures, small videos, conversations around the current topics etc.

As there is a wide variety of content being exchanged in this community around a wide array of topics, the users typically pick and choose selective notifications on a weekly frequency so that they get a weekly digest of the activities and are in the loop rather than being spammed on each and every activity.

The coffee buzzer…

Leveraging the “Follow Tag” feature, Joe and his friends come up with a simple but effective idea…introducing the Coffee Buzzer!!!

A tag named “Coffeezzz” is created in the HR Events. Joe and his friends all follow the tag; whenever someone makes a fresh pot of coffee they post a short microblog with a mention of the “Coffeezzz” tag in it. No sooner the post is made, the subscribed users get an email notification about the same and if interested they can join in for another engaging conversation along with a hot cup of coffee. The word spreads and more coffee enthusiasts join in the group.

Is it only about coffee?

Coffee can be replaced with any other topic of interest around Technology, HR, Sales, and Finance etc. as shared earlier. The key point here is the ability to have a platform which allows the users to selectively choose and follow the tags and be notified so that they can engage in those relevant conversations.

Since the user is not chasing the information but on the contrary the information is being pushed to the user at the right time, the user can focus on other important items and not be worried about losing something important. In a public community like the one mentioned, it sparks great ideas when people from different disciplines with varied perspectives engage in conversations.

The same concept can be carried to more controlled (private or secret) communities, where the content as well as the audience can be restricted to the required level and still facilitate collaboration.

Would love to hear from you what platform has been put in place in your organization to meet the business collaboration needs…and in return we would love to talk about how SocialXtend has helped us as well as our customer’s to empower & engage employees at different levels.

 

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