Companies and organizations are slowly waking up to the enormous value that knowledge networking and social collaboration can unlock in the enterprise. With Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and 2013 Collaborative Knowledge Management has become an approach to enable organizational intelligence in small, mid-sized and larger companies or organizations. Knowledge Management, Social Networking and Search are key components to establish a new way of working together. As Forrester Research and also Gartner noted in their studies, ready-to-use 3rd party solutions like the Knowledge Management Suite developed by Gold Certified Microsoft Partners like Layer2 can close still existing gaps with SharePoint Knowledge Management and add even more value to the already existing platform to increase benefits, reduce risks of customization projects and highly improve end-user Adaption.
Layer2 highly improves SharePoint Metadata Management
Centrally managed metadata or enterprise taxonomies are the key to success with knowledge management projects based on SharePoint. The Layer2 Taxonomy Manager for SharePoint improves the default metadata management features with advanced import, export, update and deployment features for term sets. To make use of commercially available taxonomies the widely used XML-based SKOS format is fully supported for data interchange and integration. The solution also adds content classification rules to terms managed in the SharePoint Term Store as a pre-consideration for content categorization.
Automatic content classification and categorization with SharePoint
The Layer2 Tag Suggester for SharePoint makes it as easy as possible to add metadata to SharePoint items or documents. Content classification rules managed directly in the Term Store are used to make content-based suggestions to guide users while manually assigning metadata. The Layer2 Auto Tagger for SharePoint goes far beyond this: Content is classified completely automatically with metadata, based on classification rules, existing content properties, item context and also document content for almost any document type, e.g. Word or PDF. This is a great step forward for companies that have to classify large document sets, for example after migration to SharePoint. The Auto Tagger V3 comes with lots of new features including list-based auto-tagging in real-time during document upload and change, and also bulk-tagging, e.g. to finalize migration projects.
SharePoint Metadata Navigation Benefits from Content Classification to Better Findability
Out-of-the-box SharePoint already provides great features to profit from content classification, e.g. metadata-based list filters or facetted search drill-downs.
The Layer2 Tag Navigation Web Part for SharePoint adds additional navigation options to the SharePoint default. The tree-structured enterprise taxonomies can directly be used for content discovery. Users can simply browse all the corporate knowledge - independent of the item’s storage locations.
The Layer2 Tag Directory Web Part for SharePoint offers some kind of index or glossary of corporate keywords based on the Term Store. This type of index is well-known from technical books, now also available for SharePoint. “The Layer2 SharePoint Directory can help employees to find a common corporate language and understanding based on enterprise taxonomies. The automatically built index of terms also allows to easily find and share content alphabetically – a must-have for any SharePoint portal”, Frank Daske, Product Manager at Layer2, explains the features and benefits of the add-on.
The Layer2 Related Content Web Part for SharePoint - as a next generation of search-driven SharePoint applications, our SharePoint content search web part displays related content completely automatically, depending on page context and metadata assigned. Most users might know this feature from Amazon or other B2C portals. Responsible contacts, related documents, similar news, further links etc. can be presented automatically always up-to-date and easily be managed by editors and found by any users with one click.
External content seamlessly included in SharePoint Knowledge Management
Using the Layer2 Business Data List Connector for SharePoint or the Layer2 Cloud Connector for Office 365 it is possible to seamlessly integrate and synchronize almost any external enterprise data sources like file shares, database records or ERP/CRM items with the new SharePoint Knowledge Management and Social Collaboration features.
Download Free Shareware Edition For Next Steps
The Layer2 Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint is successfully used by the NATO C3 AGENCY (NC3A), the US Department Of Defense, the World Bank, the Ford Motor Company, SIEMENS AG and many others. VAR partners and resellers benefit from the Layer2 Partner Program with free training, great license discounts and free NFR editions. The solution is available for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and 2013 as free shareware download after registration from the vendor Website.
