Office 07 and MOSS 07, Better together
Today, while troubleshooting an issue with a clients exchange server, I was digging through the add-ins in my Outlook 2007. You do know how to see these don't you, it is different than in previous versions…
In Outlook goto tools->Trust Center… In the dialogue go to Add-ins on the left pane.
In there I noticed one I had not ever seen or heard or read about before, but it is really great: SharePoint Server Colleague Import add-in
So a quick Live search on the internet reveals this page: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/FX101153421033.aspx Scroll down to the bottom, the best seems to be last in this case…
SharePoint Server Colleague Import add-in
The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server Colleague Import add-in helps to identify your colleagues on your trusted My Site on the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. To generate a list of your possible colleagues, the add-in scans your mailbox to look for names on the To and From boxes in sent and received e-mail messages, along with the frequency with which these names are correlated with you as the sender or receiver. The add-in does not scan the e-mail content of your mailbox. The generated list only contains account names. It is updated periodically, and stored in the same location as the Personal Folders (.pst) files on your local computer. The list of possible colleagues is accessed by the My Site Add Colleagues page where you can choose the colleagues you want to add to your trusted My Site. This add-in is turned on by default when you install Office Outlook 2007. You can remove the add-in from the Add-ins dialog box in the Trust Center. For more information, see Enable or disable add-ins in Office programs. The add-in can be disabled permanently by the administrator.
Seems this thing works when Outlook and Moss are used together. It indexes who you are working with ALL the time, or at least frequently, and suggests those people to you in MOSS as being colleagues. What's so great about that? Well it is contextually building your 'social network'. We live in our circle, in our world everyday, and that's fine. But let's say you go and get amnesia, or more likely you're really, really busy!!! You don't think about your network, until you need something from someone, then, BAM! Who was that I was working with? Was it Steve, or Bill, or Kim, or Abbie, or Russell, oh yea I gotta email Russell about something, now what was I doing??? Before I know it I am off on something totally different, and the thing or person I was looking to talk to about that thing is forgotten. Keeping that social fabric together for me is invaluable.
Now admittedly, this probably is not that big of a deal in a small company, but let's switches the focus. What if you are a small church or some other not-for-profit? You don't see those volunteers daily or perhaps even weekly, due to differing schedules, different projects, whatever. But your business network is important when you need it, and this is another 'hitch' Microsoft has made to help us, but it's only effective when used together, Office 2007 and MOSS 2007.