Home > Articles

Using Lotus Connections: Social Software for Your Enterprise

This chapter examines how a typical user might use Lotus Connections for social networking and collaboration, incorporating its many components and features into the daily work routine.
This chapter is from the book

Lotus Connections is an enterprise social software suite of tools that can be used to address various common business challenges, such as finding expertise, sharing information effectively, and enabling teams to work together. The challenges Lotus Connections helps to solve are not new to businesses. Over the past several decades, companies have searched for ways to improve collaboration among their workers. Many trends in collaboration tools have been tried and tested. Some technologies (such as email) have stayed with companies, while other trends have been replaced or have fizzled out.

Social software brings a new element to the collaborative tools landscape that is not about the technology or the tools themselves but rather how people use them. Although first emerging as consumer technologies, public profiles, blogs, and social bookmarks all have a common element of sharing from the ground up. This appeals to users who gain value from these tools and share information they find valuable. While new forms of sharing emerged on the consumer side, enterprises quickly saw their value and began applying these technologies to everyday work practices.

Lotus Connections provides social tools to employees and can even create external communities for their customers and partners. It consists of several social tools packaged together in an integrated suite:

  • Profiles is a web-based company directory that displays status updates, basic contact information, job title, divisions, and geographies for every person. In addition, Profiles shows corporate structure, skills, background information, and photographs and is searchable by any of these fields.
  • Communities allow groups of people with similar interests to gather. When in the community, members can exchange information and ideas, share tasks, discuss topics, and more.
  • Files allow individuals and groups to upload and share files of any type publicly or privately.
  • Wikis enable people to collaborate around a document or coauthor pages specific to a topic or community.
  • Blogs provide a voice for people to express their ideas and have discussions despite organizational silos or time zone differences.
  • Social Bookmarks, formerly referred to as Dogear, is a service that allows Internet and intranet pages to be saved for future reference and shared with the company.
  • Activities is aimed at helping individuals and groups organize their work, no matter which or how many tools they use.
  • Home Page is the place that brings all of this information together.

For more information about Lotus Connections features, see Chapter 2, "Introducing Lotus Connections 2.5."

In this chapter, we'll examine how a typical user might use Lotus Connections, incorporating its many components and features into the daily work routine.

A Day in the Life Using Lotus Connections

Heather is a new employee at Renovations Inc. On her first day, she goes to orientation and fills out the standard new employee forms. She is urged at the end of the orientation session to fill out her profile on the intranet and get acquainted with the collaboration tools that are available. When Heather goes to her desk, she opens the intranet site to learn about what she can do with the tools available.

Searching for Expertise

First, Heather heads into the Profiles section of Lotus Connections. Here, she can search for people based on information she might know about them, including name, phone number, or email address (see Figure 6.1). Or she can browse and/or search based on a keyword or skill. A profile search looks at the information available in the About Me, Background, Tag, and even Contact Information sections for the right match. She runs a search on people who went to her college and finds Jasmine. From here, Heather can chat with Jasmine, tag her, leave her a comment, add her as a colleague, or view some of Jasmine's contributions in her communities, blog, social bookmarks, or activities.

Figure 6.1

Figure 6.1 A typical Lotus Connections profile

Learning About an Expert Through Content Sharing

Heather wants to learn more about what Jasmine does at Renovations, so she decides to check out her blog. Here Heather learns that Jasmine is interested in technology and social software. Heather can view the conversations that people have based on what Jasmine writes about. People from all over Renovations discuss topics in blogs no matter what department or geography they are in. Using tags, Heather can navigate around the blogs to learn about the topics people in Renovations are discussing the most, and even join in the conversation herself (see Figure 6.2).

Figure 6.2

Figure 6.2 Jasmine's blog

Now Heather decides to check out what Jasmine is sharing in her social files. Here people in Renovations can share their files of interest with others, publicly or privately, allowing others to download a file from a central place rather than emailing it around. Heather can view files that are being shared with her; files that she has shared; and collections, or groupings, of files (see Figure 6.3). Files can be rated and commented on to promote social interaction, and versions can be stored.

Figure 6.3

Figure 6.3 Social files being shared

Finding Like-Minded Communities

Now that Heather has used some of the social software tools available to her, she wants to join in the conversations and work with other people. One way she can do this is to find communities of interest to her. She goes to the Communities area and browses them based on their tags and their popularity. She can also look for communities based on keywords. In the community, people have discussions, share bookmarks and feeds, and can collaboratively author wiki pages, among other actions. One community she finds matches her interest in environmental issues, so she simply clicks the Join button to be added to the members for that community (see Figure 6.4).

Figure 6.4

Figure 6.4 A Communities home page

Bringing It All Together

One of Heather's first assignments at Renovations is to help with an environmental impact assessment they are conducting at the company to see where they should be cutting back on waste and improving energy usage. Heather's boss added her to an activity in which she and several others will be working on this assessment. In this activity, all the relevant emails, chats, files, and information is stored for the team to use to do their assessment. They use the activity to organize the information they need and plan the impact report they will all be building. After the report is complete, they can mark the activity complete as well, keeping it in their completed list for future reference (see Figure 6.5).

Figure 6.5

Figure 6.5 Overview of an activity

Using Your Daily Tools

One of the benefits of Lotus Connections is that it can be used from various tools instead of (or in addition to) the web interface. Lotus Connections provides a set of plug-ins to environments such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook, WebSphere Portal, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint, and more so that Heather can access relevant social data when she needs it from wherever she is. Organizations like Renovations can create extensions into their own environment using the Lotus Connections API. For example, they can add Lotus Connections data to their intranet search results or create plug-ins to custom applications.

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020