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Daisy Hernandez is vice president of enterprise social software at SAP, leading the product management team for SAP Jam. The recent 1505 release of SAP Jam includes enhancements that make life better for IT, and to find out more, I spoke to her.

What’s new in release 1505 that provides value to IT?

There are two main areas that we’ve improved: First, it’s now easier for IT to use SAP Jam to manage their own work. Second, SAP Jam now helps IT serve stakeholders in their enterprise better.

To help IT manage their own work, we’ve created two new work patterns.

The Issue Escalation work pattern makes it easy to pull tickets from a service request system into SAP Jam, where IT can then pull in experts from the right teams to help resolve a tough issue. Even if those other experts aren’t in IT and don’t have access to the service request system, they’ll be able to communicate and solve problems as a team with IT in SAP Jam – in context of the most up-to-date information from the service request system.

The IT Projects work pattern is designed for projects that IT is tasked with or funded for. If you’re developing a new application, rolling out a new tool, or upgrading an application, this work pattern will make it easy to track requirements and enhancements as the team works together on the project.

"To help IT better serve their stakeholders, we’ve added capabilities that make it possible to deliver seamless integrations in more ways."

To help IT better serve their stakeholders, we’ve added capabilities that make it possible to deliver seamless integrations in more ways.

For instance, we’ve created what we call an activity hub: It’s a desktop application that allows users to pull together an aggregate view of feeds across multiple enterprise social networks. Instead of having to log into to more than one social network, they’ll have a single place where they can see all activity.

There’s also a new desktop file sync client that’s perfect for employees who travel frequently and need to have the latest versions of documents available, even when they don’t have internet access. For instance, salespeople who visit a prospect – but can’t connect to wireless – will still be able to access and deliver their presentations.

Because SAP Jam supports OpenSocial, it means IT can integrate even more capabilities from other tools with SAP Jam, opening up a vast array of possibilities. Support for Google spreadsheets, or even web conferencing, could be added using OpenSocial.

Support for mobile users has been expanded. SAP Jam now supports Android and includes a cross-section of features that build on its enterprise readiness: Secure storage, passcode security, and mobile auditing.

Finally, we’ve improved the onboarding experience for company admins. It’s much easier to get started – checklists and wizards within SAP Jam provide information about the tools available to company admins and let them choose which tools to support.

How does this release build on what’s already in SAP Jam?

It’s simple: SAP Jam has always been about providing collaboration where it matters – within the business processes that drive results for your company. These new capabilities continue to support that strategy by further connecting people, content, data, and processes so they can get work done.

The new work patterns for IT build on ones we’ve had in market that have already been supporting IT: The Onboarding work pattern helps IT ramp up new hires. The Help and Support work pattern helps them answer questions in a forum that makes the answers available to everyone in the company. The Planning and Implementation work pattern is perfect for smaller projects that don’t have multiple phases.

In turn, the integrations build on many that have already provided value to IT, like integrations for Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, and other productivity applications; integrations for search technologies that support federated search; and integrations for multiple content management systems.

What can people who are in IT do to learn more about how SAP Jam can provide value?

The free developer edition of SAP Jam is a great place to start. That’s a place where you can work on customizations and try out the work patterns by integrating service request applications. You can learn more about it and register for it here.

I’d also recommend reading the release notes and developer admin guide – so that you can get familiar with all the new integration possibilities.

To try out the activity hub and desktop file sync, you can ask your customer support representative for details. And for even more information about this release, please reach out to your account or service representative, and they’d be happy to help.

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