Planning to implement Social Networking in your MOSS environment? Does the term “Requirements Gathering” have you running for the hills?

Requirements gathering is something nobody really wants to do, but when it comes to implementing Social Networking there are some decisions that must be made up-front.

1. Decide what information will be useful. This means getting feedback from multiple places within the organization.

2. Figure out where the information will come from. Does it already exist? Will users need to enter it themselves?

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3. Ensure the information you want to capture and display will not expose the organization to any legal consequences.

Take a look at the public profile page (Person.aspx) to use as a starting point during brainstorming. Then add and remove content from there. All the information on this page is stored as Profile Properties in the profile store in MOSS. I have created a workbook that helps ensure that you capture all the necessary data for additional Profile Properties.

The first worksheet in the workbook contains information and instructions for use. Also, the Profile Fields worksheet contains a list of the Profile Properties that MOSS creates by default as well as all of their settings to get you started. Below is a link to the file in Excel 2007 or Excel 97-2003 format.

Excel 97-2003 Version

Excel 2007 Version

Requirements are not easy. If they were everyone would get them. Hopefully, this workbook will help ease the way.