I'm sure a bunch of you just got done installing CS 2008 or upgrading to SP1 for CS 2008, but I want to give you the lowdown on what you can expect this fall with the release of CS 2008.1.
Schedule
The first thing you'll notice is that I said "fall 08" and not "spring 09". Yes, we're going to be speeding up the release rate of Community Server. Expect 3-4 releases per year and also expect that service packs become strictly focused on bug fixes rather than features. I'm going to label to the target of CS 2008.1 as September. Expect a beta within 2 months.
Evolution
"Evolution" is the name being given to a new version of Community Server. This version is being built for use as an intranet solution. Evolution, although based on core Community Server functionality, will include extras meant for usage behind the firewall like Sharepoint, Active Directory, & Exchange integration. Evolution releases will generally ship after CS releases, but this post isn't about Evolution. :-)
Wikis
CS 2008.1 will ship with support for Wikis. No this is NOT the same wiki engine you may have seen on http://wiki.asp.net. Wikis, in Community Server, will feature pages with revision history, tags, ratings, comments, easy linking/ page stubbing, wysiwyg editing, and a couple of surprises for good measure.
I will say that our target scenario for Wikis is collaborative documentation. This isn't to say you can't use it for anything, but we're really going to help out people looking to build documentation, tutorials, FAQ, etc out collaboratively.
Forum Questions & Answers
I know, if you read my blog then you know we support this already... but not well. We're improving everything from how you can set up support communities all the way down to the workflow & theme of QnA threads.
Default Site Avatars
I've jokingly called the work we've done with Avatars my "No more Rob's" campaign. In CS 2008.1 site administrators will have the ability to upload a set of "Site Avatars" that users can select from. This will be an option to enable or disable just like remote or user uploaded avatars. We've also added the ability for admins to pick a new default avatar in the control panel for users that don't choose/upload their own. Finally I'm really happy with some of the updates we've made to the users avatar selection experience. It's a small bit of functionality, but something a huge percentage of users will go through.
The Devils in the Details
Similar to cleaning up the user avatar experience there are a lot of small things we are doing to make the administrator and normal user's life better. If we do it right then these are the sort of things you don't notice outside of being less frustrated and discovering "hidden features" that we've buried deep within the product. These changes range from something like making the administration UI easier to navigate to letting you add multiple users to groups at one time.
Posted to Software
and tagged as
community-server
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evolution
,
cs2008-1
