Adding discussion threads and like button to MySites newsfeed

Question

It seems that Mysites 2010 falls well short of the mark when it comes to the newsfeed. No out-of-box ability to hit reply, to answer a question, or even to 'like' an existing comment. This is a real discussion killer.

Because of this we are already looking at alternatives which allow for proper enterprise microblogging and functionality (Yammer or NewsGator being the most likely candidates).

Just wondering if anyone has yet attempted to customise the newsfeed and add some of this core microblogging functionality? I'm wondering if customisation is a path worth considering. On the face of it it does seem a daunting task, as the built in data structures don't seem to support threading at all. So we'd be likely be building everything from scratch.

Answer 1

There are a lot of solutions out there which offer great code to get going if you have a dev machine ready to go.

http://weshackett.com/2011/06/extending-the-activity-feed-with-enterprise-content/

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/johnnyt/archive/2011/03/26/working-with-sharepoint-2010-user-activity-newsfeed.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff512787.aspx

I have developed a lot of addons now, mainly as event receivers, which opens up a lot of options. In order to microblog though, you probably also need to override the rendering of the newsfeed or make your own.

Answer 2

I don't think they intended on using it for a full microblogging system. I agree the ability to reply to a message would be desirable, but the platform as a whole is fairly extensible. There has been a lot written about how to push additional activities into the feed, including from sources outside of SharePoint such as Twitter, external blogs, etc.

Answer 3

We extended the Activity system with a custom service application to provide micro blogging. Adding the types to a custom database and generating new ActivityItems when a user performs a new action.