Quad Enterprise Social Software

Cisco’s thin client application allows a user to work across business and social media feeds through one interface

Global enterprise application vendors have worked for the last two decades to build productive and effective collaboration software tools. In the late nineties, Lotus and Microsoft used knowledge management as a key driver and enabler for their collaboration tools. In this decade with the advent of unified communication technologies and the huge number of one to many and many to one exchanges via social media applications, technology vendors are looking at this scenario as another opportunity.

Cisco Quad is the next-generation enterprise collaboration platform that provides such an integrated user experience. Quad enables a user to be more productive by finding and connecting with people, communities and information from a personalized dashboard. Users can communicate and collaborate with colleagues and share knowledge through a unified posting model. Quad is representative of the convergence of communication tools and social software with enterprise content management systems and line-of-business applications. It has a key attributes built around content posting and sharing, people collaboration, social media feeds and customisation and communication interoperability.

================================

Collaboration within a community

Users can add and manage communities based on their work and knowledge collaboration patterns

Types of collaboration # Open: Anyone can join; name and content area are visible in search results # Restricted: Only those allowed can join; name is visible in search results; content is visible in search results only for those who are members # Hidden: Only those allowed can join; name is not visible in search results; content is visible in search results only for those who are members.

Actions: List of 1-click actions such as create a post, create a Wiki, start a discussion, add a blog entry, upload a document, upload a video, upload an image, invite members, edit community and leave this c.

Add Applications: Allows instant addition of portlets like actions, activities, blog, bookmarks, calendar, community members, content publisher, dictionary, discussions, documents, IFrame, images, OpenSocial App, RSS Feed, recent documents, survey, tag cloud, Wiki and Wiki Links to any pages within the community.

OpenSocial App Portlet: Allows you to add one or more OpenSocial compliant gadgets to any pages within the community.

Invite: Allows you to invite up to 20 users at a time by email to join the community.

Library: Lists all posts such as new posts, my posts, favourites, videos, and deleted items created in or shared with the community.

================================

Managing my communities

These features allow users to list communities of which they are members

All Communities: This shows a list of all communities within Cisco Quad to which you have at least read access and allows name and keyword search; for each community, there is a 1-click Join option.

My Communities: Shows a list of communities of which you are a member; for each community, there is a 1-click Leave option; for communities to which you have owner role, there are 1-click view membership request, assign members, assign user roles, edit, manage pages, leave and delete options.

Communities I Manage: Shows a list of communities of which you are an owner; for communities, there are 1-click view membership request, assign members, assign user roles, edit, manage pages, leave and delete options.

================================

My View

A personalized dashboard for accessing and engaging people, communities, and information

Watch list: This feature enables easy tracking of any content that you have posted or commented on, sorted in reverse chronological order based on your last participation activity.

Social activities: This feature provides a centralized stream of status messages and activities from contacts and communities associated with the user, allowing and encouraging collaboration and interaction among users.

Add application: This feature allows instant addition of blog aggregator, bookmarks, calendar for Microsoft Exchange, content publisher, dictionary, documents, IFrame, images, My Communities, openSocial app, RSS Feed, recent documents, social activities, tag cloud, voice messages, watch list, welcome, wiki and wiki link to any pages within My View.

Open Social App Portlet: This feature allows one or more Open Social-compliant gadgets to be added to any pages within My View.

Library: This feature lists new posts, my posts, favourites, videos and deleted items that you have created or that has been shared with you, sorted by title, last modified date, number of changes, and author. It also provides separate lists of documents, images, and bookmarks. You can create custom views to filter for a specific user, tag, or community.

User’s core profile attributes: Shows name, presence, avatar or photo, job title, latest status message, location, time zone, mobile and work phone numbers, primary and secondary email addresses, and instant messaging (IM) addresses; attributes can be imported and synchronized with any Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Version 3 (LDAPv3)-compliant directory.

User’s blog: Shows your blog posts, sorted in reverse chronological order.

User’s Activities: Shows a centralized stream of your public activities.

Expertise: Shows your expertise as keywords.

Interests: Shows your interests as keywords.

Public Communities: Shows a list of public communities of which you are a member and that you have selected to be shown.

Contacts: Shows a list of contacts with whom you have connected and whom you have selected to be shown.

Following: Shows a list of people you are following and who are following your public activities.

================================

People

This provides a directory for browsing and finding people and contacts

All: Shows a list of all users within Cisco Quad and allows for name and keyword search; for each user, options include 1-click add contact, IM chat, call and email.

My Contacts: Shows your list of contacts; for each contact options include 1-click remove contact, IM chat, call and email.

Security Trimmed Search Results: Protects sensitive information by showing only search results for which a user has at least read permission.

Faceted search results: Enables easy and fast filtering of search results through facets such as mine, people profiles and expertise, communities, information types, file types and date range.

================================

Technical specifications

Compatibility

Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0 or later

Cisco Unified Presence 8.0 or later

Cisco Unity Connection 8.0

Cisco WebEx Meeting Center 8.5

Cisco WebEx Connect Cloud

Microsoft Exchange 2003 or later

Microsoft Office Communications Server (Cisco IP Communicator Web access) 2007 R2 or later

Protocols

HTTP, HTTP/SSL, NT LAN Manager, SSO, LDAP, OAuth, WebDAV, CMIS, WSRP, XMPP, BOSH

APIs

Authentication, OpenSocial, Notifications, Content Web Services

Hardware

Cisco Unified Computing System Vblock 0 (for +10,000 user environments) and Cisco UCS C-Series (2,500-10,000 user environments)

Optional for enabling HTTP/Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): Cisco ACE Application Control Engine Module

Software

Cisco Enterprise Policy Manager (included)

Cisco Show and Share 5.2.1 (included)

VMware ESXi 4.0

Oracle Database 10g

Browser support

Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX platform support

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0

Firefox 3.6

Safari 4.0 (Mac OS only)

Chrome 8.0 (Windows)

===============================