Today, Cédric Blum from French mobile phone provider SFR presented on “a collaborative “issues library” has been created that enriches not only in scope the knowledge that customer service agents can depend on but also the way they create and use it.”

Tomorrow, François will present on the wiki he developed for Publicis Consultants.

François has an excellent roundup of notes from today’s presentations on his blog.

Gaining Momentum

As the first phase grew to a close, we had a bit of trouble finding groups for phase 2. It seemed that part of the problem was that the existing groups had their spaces restricted to only those in their group. That all changed once the WebCT Vista Knowledge Base came along in phase 2 and left their space (mostly) open to the world. All of a sudden the buzz started growing louder. Phase 3, which began in early October, marked the first time we had to turn away groups until January. It was amazing! The momentum was building faster than we had been expecting.

The Townhall Meeting

Another part of our approach came almost accidentally. At the request of a director, we set-up a Townhall Meeting where those who were using Confluence could share what they’d done. Show-and-tell. “What I did in my wiki.” Straight out of elementary school. We invited four spaces to present short demos of their space: the original three groups from Phase 1 and the Vista Knowledge Base guys. The feedback floored us. Everyone seemed to be furiously taking notes on what each of the other groups presenting had done and were eager to implement those features or hacks in their own space.

What was even more exciting was that these groups were a little more open to the idea of letting other Confluence users view their space as a way of collaborating and sharing ideas. Brilliant! The Townhall concept was such a success we decided to make it a quarterly event coinciding with the start of new phases. This would allow new groups to Confluence to get an idea of how others on campus were using Confluence.

Summary

Our approach to introducing Confluence on campus has been fairly successful. Despite only having 9 spaces, we’re finding that the number of people using Confluence is rapidly growing as more and more people get invited into spaces (thanks to the Custom Space User Management plugin) to collaborate. For us, success will not be measured in the number of spaces we create or the number of pages there are or people who edit them. Success will be measured by whether or not Confluence continues to be a useful tool to those who are using it.

Three: The recurring theme

Why the number 3 for everything? Support. The Confluence Pilot Project was given only enough money to purchase a license and expected to have zero to minimal impact on staff time. We felt that it would be easy enough to support three groups at a time with the hope that by the end of the three months, those groups would be self-supported by the power-users of each space.

The Interview: Why do you need a wiki?

The interview process was very informal. We’d invite the heads of the groups to sit down for a short chat about why they felt needed a wiki. What other solutions had they tried? How would they use it? Were they concerned about privacy? For us, it was a chance to understand how to support their needs. For the interviewees, it was an opportunity for introspection and really think about what a wiki would do for them. The best use of a wiki comes from a better understanding of your own business processes.

Sounds crazy, right? “Wouldn’t you want as many people to use Confluence as possible?”, you might be wondering. In short, “NO!” We’re from the pragmatic school of thought: right tool for the right job. It all began eight months ago… /begin flashback sequence

Background

In planning our approach for a Confluence pilot project, we decided to only allow a few spaces to be created at a time for a couple of reasons.

1. We were running on old hardware which featured a dazzling Intel PIII and 512MB of RAM. We later upgraded to 2GB of RAM as we quickly hit performance issues with Java.
2. We wanted to be able to observe and nurture the initial spaces we created. We realized that the success of these groups would be paramount in generating buzz on campus as well as proof that there was a need that Confluence could fill better than any other software solution we had.
3. We wanted people to think about why they needed a wiki. Wiki is a powerful buzzword right now and we didn’t want to dole out our incredibly limited resources to those that were not in it for the long haul.

Our plan was heavily influenced by Stewart, who was kind enough to make a day trip to Chico from San Francisco to talk to us. He detailed his experience with a previous higher education wiki rollout and definitely gave us a good idea where a lot of potential road blocks would be. As with any higher education institution, we each have unique areas where blockages can happen, so we tried our best to craft the plan with these in mind.

One of the recurring issues in discussions about enterprise 2.0 has to do with the relationship between new tools like wikis, and more traditional enterprise software. Should the new tools fully replace the existing ones? Can they? And even if they can, will organizations shed their investments in those existing tools and make a wholesale move to the new ones? I don’t think it’s a “one or the other” choice, and organizations that have invested in tools like SharePoint aren’t likely to just write off that investment.

So there has to be a “third way” that involves making the tools work together, and the SharePoint Connector is a good example of that. When tools like SharePoint and Confluence can work together, it helps organizations that already have SharePoint feel more confident responding to demand for a wiki like Confluence, knowing the two can work side-by-side. As Zoli said: “just removing the “we’re a SharePoint-shop” political obstacle in some major enterprise clients is worth it alone.” People can use the tool that’s best for their work, (Colin Toal left a good comment on Mike’s blog about this: “You deliver a tonne of value that is beyond simply locking out other products and the integration is slick.”) and not end up with problems like redundant, separately evolving sets of information housed in disconnected places.

Connections like this represent the best of what social media and enterprise 2.0 is really about: collaboration at all levels (including software makers), transparency and easy discovery of information regardless of the “place” where it resides, and a further evolution away from the material constraints that have hindered the effective use of information in organizations.

Here are the details:

• Search: Users can search SharePoint and Confluence content together from one place.
• Content sharing: From within SharePoint, users can embed Confluence page contents allowing users to blend content.
• Linking: Within Confluence, users can access SharePoint document facilities. By including SharePoint lists and content within Confluence, users, in a single click, can edit Microsoft Office documents.
• Single Sign-On and Security: With one login, users can access both systems while seeing only what they have permission to view.

You can download the beta here.

Updates:

• Atlassian Blog: Introducing the SharePoint Connector for Confluence
• Atlassian Website
• Atlassian Press Release (via BusinessWire)
• Microsoft Press Release
  “Microsoft’s relationships with Atlassian and NewsGator represent dynamic new opportunities for integrating social computing technology into a company’s business productivity infrastructure.”
• SharePoint Product Group Blog
• Jeffrey Walker: David Kisses Goliath: Confluence Connects to Microsoft SharePoint
  “Today, we release the SharePoint Connector for Confluence which is by far the deepest integration of any wiki with SharePoint, and is a testament to the connectivity of the .Net and Java platforms…We found Microsoft wanting to solve the same problem: remove friction between our technologies. And we found Microsoft easy to work with. Their product managers and engineers and ours even got Accenture on the phone to test out the requirements. Accenture is a partner of both our companies, and a large user of Confluence, so their feedback was important.”
• Mike Cannon-Brookes: On Acting Decisively: Confluence + SharePoint Integration
  “Today we’re making a big announcement and we think we’re in good company.

  Apple did it ten years ago…

  “We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft must lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win Apple has to do a really good job.” – Steve Jobs

  Novell did it last year…

  “CIOs want to focus on their business, and they want their suppliers to focus on improving operating system interoperability.” – Novell’s Open Letter To The Community

  Sun did it a few months ago…

  “Does it signal a strategic shift inside of Sun? No – we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Running, virtualizing and supporting Windows opens doors.” – Jonathan Schwartz

  We’re partnering with Microsoft and releasing the SharePoint Connector for Confluence.”

• Jon Silvers: A good day for collaboration
  “From my perspective, it’s also nice to have finally made the announcement. Now, hopefully Jonathan, Brendan, Zach, Mike and everyone else working on the product and marketing can get some sleep. ”
• Robert Scoble: Microsoft goes Web 2.0 with Sharepoint
  “Atlassian’s role in this? They are building a Sharepoint connector. Why do that? After all, Sharepoint has its own wiki service? Cause Atlassian’s is better and Microsoft’s customers were asking it to support Atlassian’s.”
• Richard McManus: Microsoft Partners with Atlassian & NewsGator – SharePoint Goes Web 2.0
  “This isn’t just another ‘we promise to work together’ type announcement – there is a new product being released today by Atlassian at http://www.atlassian.com/SharePoint, called the ‘SharePoint Connector for Confluence’. It’s a plugin that will be available for download on Atlassian’s website later today. This plug-in pulls content from SharePoint to Confluence and vice versa.”
• Dennis Howlett: Microsoft does the Atlassian pogo dance
  “Unlike the marketing partnerships we usually see, this one has genuine utility. The ability to connect between Sharepoint and Atlassian’s Confluence is real, providing single sign-on, search, content sharing and linking between the two applications. From Atlassian’s perspective, it provides the company with a market leading brand to which it can hitch its sales wagon.”
• Dan Farber: Atlassian, NewsGator hook into SharePoint
  “In the summer Microsoft approached us. At the same time every large customer was experiencing political friction between the Microsoft document/email-centric users and a growing group of wiki users, in our case Confluence,” said Jeffrey Walker, president of Atlassian. “Users want to search across both. Microsoft knew we were Java-based, but approached us anyway. Once we decided to do it, we found we were pretty like-mined and collaborated with Microsoft engineers.” In part, the solution was driven by shared customers, such as Accenture, Walker added.
• EuroInvestor.co.uk
• ScobleShow: Microsoft partners with Atlassian over Sharepoint Wiki
  “Atlassian builds enterprise wikis and is white hot.”
• eWeek|Darryl K. Taft: Atlassian, Microsoft Make Web 2.0 Connection
• Don Dodge: Atlassian and Newsgator bring Web 2.0 to Sharepoint”
  • It is a great example of how Microsoft works with partners to create great solutions for customers.
  • It shows that Microsoft will do this even when the partner product competes with our own functionality.
  • Microsoft will do it with a company like Atlassian that is “open source” and built in Java. It is all about meeting customer needs.
• Ross Mayfield: Sharepoint wiki was last year’s news
  “I should commend not only Atlassian, but our partner Newsgator for taking the step to integrate with Sharepoint.”
• Jevon MacDonald: Atlassian, NewsGator develop Sharepoint Integration Options
  “Atlassian and Newsgator are two established leaders in the respective markets. Both have significant market access, well tuned sales operations and strong product roadmaps. Atlassian specifically has fantastic developer relations, and have built a very pluggable and easily integrated product.”
• Cori Schlegel: “Big” news today in the Microsoft SharePoint space
  “…single sign-on and cross-platform search can be pretty important in the enterprise world. Plus the ability to embed Confluence (Atlassian’s wiki product) content into SharePoint pages and allowing Confluence users to edit SharePoint content directly are pretty big wins. It could also be pretty innovative for large existing SharePoint customers who are interested in using wikis for collaboration.”
• Computerworld|Heather Havenstein: Microsoft partners add wikis, RSS to SharePoint
  “Atlassian Software Systems Pty. Ltd. and NewsGator Technologies Inc. today unveiled Wiki software and RSS technology, respectively, for Microsoft Corp.’s Office SharePoint Server 2.0. Both firms added SharePoint support for their products under an agreement with Microsoft announced Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit here.”
• WebProNews|Robert Scoble: Microsoft Goes Web 2.0
• Yahoo! Finance: Atlassian Integrates Confluence Enterprise Wiki With Microsoft SharePoint
• Techmeme:Microsoft Partners with Atlassian & NewsGator – SharePoint Goes Web 2.0 (Richard MacManus/Read/WriteWeb)

Here’s what I commented to Bill on his post: “They needed a system where editing is immediate and very simple. It was more important to let people add content rather than worrying about what they shouldn’t do.”

So true – it’s good to hear that an organization is concentrating on the positive and taking an optimistic approach instead of wringing its hands over thoughts of bad things happening.

“…”Knowledge management, previously a big concern, has moved off the agenda for the time being.” That is because knowledge management became a byproduct of using the wiki and not a separate activity.”

Great point – true knowledge management happens when people are able to do it without fighting with the technology and seeing it as a separate activity. It scares me to think of how many organizations have ended up treating it as an after-the-fact burden b/c the tools haven’t made it easy.

This is a great case study – Nathan deserves a lot of credit both for what he’s doing with wikis at Janssen-Cilag, and for sharing this really comprehensive, detailed case study with us all. Bill, thanks for your added input as well!

By that time he started talking with the corporate communication department, which was also looking for a wiki for its own use, and the two decided to switch from DominoWiki to Confluence. Alek was able to secure funding from this, and he points out that using a free, open source tool allowed him to get things started and demonstrate the value of a wiki before spending any money. Bear in mind that this isn’t to say all organizations should start with one wiki that’s free, and then switch to another, because that can create its own set of issues. In fact, with the low cost of wikis in general, and the fact that you can often get a 30 day free trial, it’s fairly easy to start directly with the tool of your choice.

So where does NYK’s wiki/intranet stand now? “The Domino system isn’t going away because that’s NYK’s corporate comms standard. Instead, it is being used to prime the wiki project which Alek hopes will eventually reach about 2,500 employees.” This is a great example of two enterprise software tools coexisting, and the wiki is being used for its strengths in attracting and building a consistent level of collaboration. This is an excellent example for organizations to learn from as they think about how a wiki can become a succesful part of their computing landscape.