Relating the OSC with Outlook and Social Networks

Applies to: Office 2007 | Outlook 2010 | SharePoint Server 2010

The Microsoft Outlook Social Connector (OSC) can display in the People Pane activities, status, or photo updates for a coworker, friend, or any person you are associated with, when that person is a sender or recipient in a selected Outlook item. By default, the People Pane displays the Outlook emails, attachments, and meeting requests received from a selected person in the Outlook item. If the selected person and the Outlook user collaborate on a Microsoft SharePoint site, the People Pane also displays document updates and other site activities from that SharePoint site. Depending on the contexts of association that the Outlook user is interested in, the Outlook user can install OSC providers for line-of-business applications, internal corporate Web sites, or a variety of professional and social network sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Windows Live.

An OSC provider is a Component Object Model (COM) DLL that allows the OSC to access social network data in a way that is independent of the APIs of each social network. An OSC provider DLL must be installed locally on a client computer. A social network’s OSC provider connects the OSC, which is part of Outlook, with the social network on the Internet.

An OSC provider must implement a set of interfaces, defined as part of the OSC provider extensibility, to communicate with the OSC. OSC provider extensibility is available as an open platform.

The provider architecture of the OSC enables multiple providers to work with the OSC core engine and aggregate social information such as friends and activities. Figure 1 illustrates the OSC provider architecture.

Figure 1. Outlook Social Connector provider architecture

Terminology

In this Outlook Social Connector Provider Reference, a social network is used to refer to the following types of sites:

• Collaborative sites such as SharePoint.

• Social network sites such as Facebook and Windows Live.

• Professional network sites such as LinkedIn.

• Other line-of-business applications or corporate internal websites used for networking.

The term friend is used generally to include friends, family, colleagues, connections, and anyone else an Outlook user is associated with in a collaborative context like SharePoint, or has added to the user’s social network account. Non-friends are people referenced in friends’ activity updates but are not friends who have been added to the Outlook user’s social network account. Contacts are people in an Outlook contact folder.

See Also

Other Resources

Getting Started with Developing an Outlook Social Connector Provider