Readers will know that the primary mission of the SSN Program is to support IT and best practices sharing within public sector communities.  A key focal point for this effort is the SSNv3 portal solution that we developed, and released in January.  Feedback on this has been very positive to date, especially on the additional flexibility the solution has provided to help us build portals that meet the needs of our customers.  In parallel with the development of the SSNv3 Portal, we have been having discussions with the SharePoint team around on-going ownership of the solution, and we are delighted to announce that they have decided to take this on as part of their Community Kit for SharePoint efforts.

Get it here: http://www.codeplex.com/CKS/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2606.  Thanks to Lawrence Liu for making this happen!

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

·         The source code and on-going ownership of the components developed for version 3 of the SSN Portal will be rolled into the SharePoint team’s online community initiative called the Community Kit for SharePoint.

·         The SSNv3 Portal will become the core offering in the Community Kit for SharePoint (CKSv2.0) on http://codeplex.com/cks; this site will be the primary venue to obtain the solution components and source code.  It will be available to anyone that wants to use the components under the MS-PL Permissive Shared Source License.

·         Ongoing evolvement of the CKSv2.0 is a community effort under the direction of the SharePoint team.

WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

·         Most SSN participants want a customized solution that meets their needs, and so this has meant that they cherry-picked at the SSNv3 Portal components that aligned with these needs – this matches very well with the kit-based approach that the SharePoint team are taking with the CKS.

·         This will broaden the overall SharePoint community’s exposure to the latest development methods against one of our most strategic server applications.  The SharePoint product team view this gesture as a very positive thing for all of our customers, and hope to do something similar for SharePoint as DotNetNuke has become for ASP.NET.

The SSN Program can now concentrate more on development of reusable content  and supporting existing communities in the future; using the latest in innovations from the CKS to deploy SSN Portals when appropriate. 

At the EMEA Solutions Sharing Network Summit in Dublin in June, we had an attendee from St. Joseph's University, Richard Herschel, who works in the Department of Management and Information Systems.  In partnership with Microsoft, Richard would like anyone that wants to reply to a short survey on Shared Solutions.  You can access the survey here.  You do not have to be an SSN Program participant to get involved in this, and your feedback is valued!