Building Social Business Applications

Clint Oram

Board Member, OpenSocial Foundation

CTO & Co-founder, SugarCRM

&

Mark Weitzel

President, OpenSocial Foundation

Director, Platform & Ecosystem, Jive Software

ABOUT ME• Board Member, Open Social Foundation

• CTO & Co-Founder, SugarCRM Inc.

• @sugarclint

• linkedin/clintoram

• clint@sugarcrm.com

• slideshare.net/sugarclint

8,700

5,000

• What is a social business application?

• Why are open standards important?

• Patterns of social business applications

• Social platforms & apps in the wild

Objectives

What is a social business application?

A cloud based service that leverages social context as a fundamental underpinning

of its business logic.

At a high level…People

Friends

Activities

In an enterprise setting…Profile ~ Base set of info, extended based on business context

Relationships ~ Org chart, group membership, content

Activity Streams ~ Flow of information about relationships

Understanding Social Context

Add a collaboration layer not part of your existing platformGraphical editingCo-worker Recognition External system quick reference and lookupsProject Management

Integrate data silos: ERP, CRM, HRS, CMS

Turn “systems of record” into “systems of engagement”

Why build a Social Business App?

Why are standards important?

• Competition: Facilitates the growth of an ecosystem around a common programming model

• Cooperation: Enables community involvement and organic growth

• Adoption: Drives interoperability and portability

• Choice: Formalizes the social platform and application model

Why are open standards important?

• Open standard for building cloud based social applications

• Platform APIs for providing social context to applications

• Shindig ~ reference implementation

What is OpenSocial?

OpenSocial has been adopted by top enterprise vendors like:

IBM, SugarCRM, Jive, SAP, eXo, LifeRay,Tibco, SurfNet, Vivo

• Information about the app

• What “features” i.e. additional JavaScript to include

• How the app will be rendered, i.e. the views

• What’s necessary for a nice market listing,

screenshots, etc.

Defining a social business app ~ app.xml

A. Request is made to render a page containing an app

B. Jive looks up the app definition

C. Processes the definition to render HTML

How OpenSocial Apps WorkIt’s as easy as A, B, C

D. App makes a request

E. Platform “proxies” the request to home server

F. Home server process request and returns

How OpenSoical Apps Work… and D, E, F

• Use osapi.http.get() to…avoid cross domain issuesprovide the container control of outgoing requests

• Sub-domains in the browser when multiple apps on the same pagePub/sub model for secure messaging between apps

• OauthTwo LeggedThree Legged

What about security?

Patterns of Social Business Applications

• Don’t be a “One Click Wonder”

• Social context is king

• Dashboards are dead

• Social applications delivered through markets

Patterns of Social Business

• An app that simply ‘iFrames’ in an existing UI

• User wonders, “Why didn’t I just click a link to the

app’s web page?”

• Poor user experience that hits the wall

• This is the portal model, and portals are deadNo social context!!

Don’t be a “One Click Wonder”

Two Key Idioms

• Pass social information to be used

in business logic (Proxied Content)

• Add social context to the app as

it’s rendered (Data Pipelining)

Social Context is King!

• Proxied Content

Use social context to dynamically render an app’s view

<Content href="http://myhomeserver.com/canvas" xmlns:os="http://ns.opensocial.org/2008/markup"> <os:PeopleRequest

userId="@viewer" groupId="@friends" fields="name “

key="ViewerFriends"/><os:HttpRequest href="http://www.someserver.com/someinfo"

key="someInfo" /> </Content>

• Pass social information and

remotely fetched data to app

(Data Pipelining)

Use social context to dynamically render an app’s view

• Data Pipelining

Use social context to dynamically render an app’s view

<script type="text/os-data"> <os:ViewerRequest key="vwr" fields="name "/> <os:DataRequest key="mydata" href="http://developer.com/api"/> </script>

• Forces user navigation

• Generic, non-contextual interaction

Use the Activity Stream

to deliver context and interaction to the user!

Dashboards are dead!

OpenSocial “Embedded Experience”

OpenSocial “Embedded Experience”

• Web hook to application

• Can be signed

OpenSocial Activity Streams Extension: Action Links

• Directed to a specific person

• Great for notifications about behavior “Your employee just won a deal!”

OpenSocial Activity Streams Extension: DeliverTo

• New paradigm for enterprise application delivery

• Purpose built apps vs. monolithic application suite

• On demand vs. pre-selected

• Market economics

Application Markets

Wrapping it up

• Only industry driven standard for building social applications

• Community driven innovation

• Broadly adopted in the industry

• Multiple open source projects

OpenSocial: The Social Business Application Platform

www.opensocial.org

@sugarclint

linkedin/clintoram

@weitzelm

linkedin/weitzelm

THANK YOU!