This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using Social Bookmarks
Bookmarks (referred to as Dogear in previous releases) is the name of the Lotus Connections social bookmarking service. Social bookmarks allow you to store and manage all your bookmarks in one location, whether they are Internet or intranet bookmarks. By saving all your bookmarks to Connections, you have one place to go to view all your bookmarks, and you can put as many tags on them as you would like to help you more easily retrieve them later. When you save a bookmark to Connections, you can choose to make it public or private. If you make it public, others can see what bookmarks you find most useful. As a whole, we can better understand what people within our companies find most useful, sites that are read most widely, and topic areas that are currently most popular. Since social bookmarks are used for intranet sites as well, they can also be used to help aide intranet search results, showing the most frequently bookmarked sites associated to searches in your company.
Posting a Bookmark
You can post a bookmark to your social bookmarks, communities, activities, and even your blog from a website while browsing. Under the tools section of Lotus Connections (found at the bottom of every Lotus Connections page), you will see a How to Bookmark link. This link takes you to a page where you can install the bookmarklet for the browser you use. This bookmarklet lets you add a button to your browser to simply add the current page to Lotus Connections. When you click the button, the New Bookmark form (see Figure 6.22) appears.
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Figure 6.22 Posting a bookmark to Lotus Connections
The new bookmark form provides a title and URL for you based on the page you are bookmarking. It might add a description as well if one is available for that page. You can add tags to the bookmark, and you will see suggested tags and the most used tags from the tags in your organization already. You can also choose whether you want the bookmark to be public or private. If you do not want to add the bookmark to your personal list, simply deselect the Create Bookmark check box. You can add the bookmark to communities, activities, and blogs instead of or in addition to your own personal list. The form is customized based on the communities and activities you have access to, as well as whether you have a blog. If you do have a blog, you can add the URL and a new blog entry right from the form.
Browsing Bookmarks
You can view the bookmarks most recently added to Connections in the All Bookmarks view (see Figure 6.23). Alternatively, you can sort this view by popularity by clicking the Popularity link at the top of the list. Each bookmark shows who added it, the number of times it has been added, the date it was last added, and the tags that were used to describe it the last time it was bookmarked. Clicking Show Details will allow you to copy a bookmark to your own, notify other people of a bookmark they might be interested in, add the bookmark directly to another Lotus Connections service, or flag the URL as broken. Besides the All Bookmarks view, you can also view popular bookmarks or just your own bookmarks (including private ones).
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Figure 6.23 Browse all bookmarks
On the right-hand side, you will see the most frequently visited bookmarks. On the left, you will see the tag cloud for bookmarks, showing frequent bookmarks as larger and darker in color. As in all the services, you can use the tag slider to filter down the tag cloud to only the most frequently used tags. You can also see the most active bookmarks users and can filter based on their bookmarks. When you filter based on a tag, person, or combination, you will see related tags and people that are contextual to the list you are currently viewing. For example, if we were looking at Heather's bookmarks tagged with "software," we would see additional tags and people related to those terms.
Watchlist and Notifications
If you want to follow a particular person or tag, you can add them to your watchlist and receive notifications when new bookmarks are added. For example, if you like Heather's bookmarks, you can watchlist her. If you like only her bookmarks tagged with software, you can add that combination to your watchlist. If you want to get updates on all bookmarks tagged with software, you can add that tag to your watchlist. To add a person or tag to your watchlist, filter by the tag cloud or the person and click Add to Watchlist (see Figure 6.24). Now when you go to the My Updates view, all bookmarks you have watched will appear.
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Figure 6.24 Add a person, a tag, or both to a watchlist
Also in the Updates view are notifications you have received or sent. For every bookmark you come across in Bookmarks, you can send a notification and a custom message to someone who you think would be interested in that link. All the notifications you have sent and received, while sent using email, are also stored here so that you can access them later.
Managing Your Bookmarks
From the My Bookmarks list, you can manage your bookmarks. For example, you can select a set of your bookmarks and add tags, replace tags, or delete the bookmarks. You can take group actions such as making a set of bookmarks public or private (see Figure 6.25).
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Figure 6.25 Manage your bookmarks
You can import bookmarks from your browser as well. To do so, go to your browser; select File, Export Bookmarks; and specify a filename. You can then import the bookmarks using this option, choosing all bookmarks or a selection, and adding tags to them. You can also export bookmarks, specifying public, private, intranet, or Internet bookmarks to export. Finally, you can manage your tags by searching and replacing tags from here or deleting a specific tag.