Freitag, 26. Juli 2013

I am following


A new feature in SharePoint 2013 is „Following“. Users can follow nearly everything in SharePoint 2013. Not so nice is the fact that you only can get an overview of WHAT you are following using your MySite. The WebParts / List used to store and aggregate that data are not usable in any TeamSite etc. First thought was that the new and hyped SearchDriven technique could be the way to aggregate all the content a person followed also outside the MySite. FAILED. The content for example stored under “Site contents -> Social” in every MySite cannot be found using search. Also the suggestion part of the Following Feature is not based on Search Analytics. More details about Suggestions in the context of Following can be found here: https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/eusp/Pages/SharePoint-Online-2013-Suggested-Sites-to-Follow.aspx

The facts that matters are:
·         Sites that are being followed by your colleagues.
·         Sites that are being followed by people you're following will tend to be recommended to you.
·         Sites that are being followed by a large number of people in your organization.
·         Sites that you have modified recently.

To get information about what a user is following we need to use a REST API call. MSDN documentation for this can be found here:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn194080.aspx

Using for example that method:
GET  http://<siteCollection>/<site>/_api/social.following/my/followed(types=15)

You get a JSON result set with information which documents, persons and sites the user fired the query is following.
Using this JSON result and some jQuery magic we can generate a WebPart containing this information in a list view:
Ore the same information as in METRO style:
For the jQuery Script to create that list go to: https://iamfollowing.codeplex.com/  That solution works with SharePoint 2013 only, on-prem or with O365 / SharePoint Online.
You can use other REST endpoints to feed the jQuery script to get other information’s, too.

DEMO @ YouTube:
 

Freitag, 5. Juli 2013