Extending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts
Bram de Jager
Audience: Development
Level: 300

About Bram
• Lead SharePoint developer / architect for
Information Worker Solutions center of
Macaw
• Microsoft Certified Master for
SharePoint Server 2010
• Contact
– http://bramdejager.wordpress.com
– @bramdejager
– bram.de.jager@macaw.nl

Poll
• Who had a coffee?
• Who are developers?
• Who developed on social solutions?
• Who played around with the Activity Feed
API?
• Who extended the Activity Feed for customer based solutions?

Agenda
• User Profiles and My Site
• Activity Feeds
• Extending the Activity Feed
• Demo

Extending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts
USER PROFILES AND MY SITE

User Profiles and My Site
• User Profiles
– User Profile Service Application
– Tight relation with MMS, BCS and Search
– My Site Host (mandatory) provides My Profile and
My Newsfeed pages
• My Site
– Personal Site Collection (personal storage)
– “Content” tab on My Profile page

Improvements SharePoint 2010
My Network
• My Colleagues, My Interests, and Newsfeed Settings
• Shows Activity Feeds from user’s network
• Configuration and social network settings & interests
My Profile
• User profile data, including position within organization, memberships
• Public notes, ratings and tags
My Content
(MOSS 2007 feature)
• Personal and shared document libraries
• Shared pictures, discussion boards, surveys
• Lists, and sub-workspaces

Logical Architecture Components
My
Network
My
Profile
My Site Host
My
Content
Pages / Navigation
My Site Site Collections
UPA
My Web Application
MMS
Web Application
Search Service Applications

Extending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts
ACTIVITY FEEDS

Activity Feeds
• Aggregates colleague activity as feed
• Natively displays user profile changes, tagging and notes activity
• Security trimmed, you can only see what you are allowed to see
• Can be extended via Activity Feed API

Data aggregation
• Two types of activities
– User profile changes such as job title, colleague changes, shared interest and anniversary reminders
– Social feedback events such as tags, notes, ratings and personal blog posts
• Gathering by timer job and broadcasted to colleagues

Timer Jobs
• Activity Feed job (Hourly)
• Pre-computes activities to be shown in users' activity feeds.
• Aggregates user profile changes and social feedback
• Activity Feed Cleanup (Daily)
– Cleans up pre-computed activities used in activity feeds which are older than 14 days. This job does not affect the User Profile Change Log.

Before and after SP1
• Enable Activity Feed job
– RTM: disabled by default
– SP1: enabled by default
• Additional setting in “Setup My Sites”

Activity Feed types
• Consolidated feed
– Activities from everything I track http://<my>/_layouts/activityfeed.aspx?consolidated=true
• Published feed
– My activities http://<my>/_layouts/activityfeed.aspx
– Activities by publisher http://<my>/_layouts/activityfeed.aspx?publisher=<accountname>

Consolidated feed
• Activities from everything I track

Activities I am following…
• Activity feed depends on interests defined in
Edit Profile page
• Custom activity applications will be soon here as well

Published feed
• Account related activities / my activities

Extending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts
EXTENDING THE ACTIVITY FEED

Extending activity feed
• Why extend the activity feed?
– ECM activities within SharePoint environment
– xRM/CRM activities
– External data (WordPress, Facebook, Twitter)
• Activity Feed API for extending the activity feed
– Microsoft.Office.Server.ActivityFeed
namespace
– Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.dll

Activity feed architecture
Activity Timer Job
Activity Feed -
Profile DB
Custom Timer Job
Social database
Change log -
Profile DB

Activity Feed classes
Activity Application
Blog Activity Application
Activity Type
Blog Post Added
Comment Added
Activity Template
Type Display
Single Value Template
Multi Value Template
Activity Event
Type Value

Extending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts
DEMO OVERVIEW

Blog Activity Application
Activity Timer Job
Activity Feed -
Profile DB
Social database
Change log -
Profile DB

Main classes
• ActivityFeed namespace
– BlogActivityApplication
– BlogPostGatherer
– BlogPostTimerJob
• Entities namespace
– Blog
– Post
• BlogActivityApplicationGlobals

Solution Package (WSP)
• Features
– Activity Feed Blog application (Farm)
– Configure Diagnostic Areas and Categories (Farm)
– Activity Feed Blog Post Setup (WebApp)
• Resources
– ActivityFeedBlog.resx

Activity Templates
• Type Display
– ActivityFeed_Blog_BlogPostAdded_Type_Display
– “Posted a new blog post”

Activity Templates
• Single Value Template
– ActivityFeed_Blog_BlogPostAdded_SV_Template
– “{Publisher} has written a new post {Link} on blog
{Link2}.”

Activity Templates
• Multi Value Template
– ActivityFeed_Blog_BlogPostAdded_MV_Template
– “{Publisher} has written {Size} new posts on blog
{Link}. <br/> {List}”

Extending the My Site activity feed with external blog posts
DEMO TIME!!

Recap: Key Points
• Activity Feed types
– Consolidated feed
– Published feed
• Extending the activity feed
– Don’t just add everything, like Twitter (overload database)
– Because you can, doesn’t mean you must!

What We Covered
• User Profiles and My Site
• Activity Feeds
• Extending the Activity Feed

Resources
• MSDN
– User Profiles and Social Data Code Samples http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512773.aspx
– Microsoft.Office.Server.ActivityFeed
namespace
• Wes Hackett’s blog
– http://weshackett.com
• SharePoint Guidance
– SharePoint Logger
– http://spg.codeplex.com

Thank You!
• Blog: http://bramdejager.wordpress.com
• Twitter: @bramdejager
• Thanks to Wes Hackett
– http://weshackett.com