SharePoint Knowledge Management Suite V2.4 Released by Layer2

Hamburg, Germany, August 18, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Companies and organizations are slowly waking up to the enormous value that enterprise social knowledge networking can unlock. With Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and 2013 Collaborative Knowledge Management becomes an approach to enable organizational intelligence in larger companies or organizations, but SMEs as well. Knowledge Management and Social Networking are key components to establish a new way of working together. As Forrester Research and also Gartner noted is their studies, 3rd party solutions from Certified Microsoft Partners like Layer2 can close still existing gaps with SharePoint Knowledge Management and add even more value to the already existing platform to increase benefits and improve end-user adaption.

Layer2 highly improves Enterprise Metadata Management with SharePoint

Centrally managed metadata or enterprise taxonomies are the key to success with knowledge management projects based on SharePoint. The Layer2 Taxonomy Manager for SharePoint highly improves the default metadata management features with advanced import, export, update and deployment features. To make use of commercially available taxonomies the widely used XML-based SKOS format is fully supported for data interchange. The solution also adds content classification rules to terms managed in the SharePoint Term Store as a pre-consideration to simplify content categorization.

Automatic content classification and categorization with SharePoint

The Layer2 Tag Suggester for SharePoint makes it as easy as possible to add metadata to SharePoint items or documents. Content classification rules managed directly in the Term Store are used to make content-based suggestions to guide users while assigning metadata. The Layer2 Auto Tagger for SharePoint goes far beyond this: Content is classified completely automatically with metadata, based on rules, existing content properties, item context and document text content. This is a great step forward for companies that have to classify large document sets, for example after migration to SharePoint.

Benefit from content classification with advanced navigation features and better findability in SharePoint

Out-of-the-box SharePoint already provides great features to profit from content classification, e.g. metadata-based list filters or faceted search. The Layer2 Tag Navigation Web Part for SharePoint adds additional navigation options to the SharePoint default. The tree-structured enterprise taxonomies can directly be used for content discovery. Users can simply browse the corporate knowledge - independent of the storage location.

The Layer2 Tag Directory Web Part for SharePoint offers some kind of index or glossary of corporate keywords based on the Term Store. This type of index is well-known from technical books, now available for SharePoint. “The Tag Directory can help employees to find a common corporate language and understanding based on the enterprise taxonomy. The automatically built index of terms also allows to find and share content very fast alphabetically – a must-have for each SharePoint portal”, Frank Daske, Product Manager at Layer2, explains the features and benefits of the add-on.

Also available is the Layer2 Tag Cloud Web Part for SharePoint which allows to find content by the importance or usage count of the terms assigned. The Layer2 Related Content Web Part for SharePoint - as a next generation, search-driven SharePoint application - displays related content completely automatically, depending on page context. Most users might know this feature from Amazon or other B2C portals. Contacts, related documents, similar news, further links etc. can be presented automatically always up-to-date and easily be found by users with one click.

External content seamlessly included in SharePoint Knowledge Management

Using the Layer2 Business Data List Connector for SharePoint or the Layer2 Cloud Connector for Office 365 it is possible to seamlessly integrate almost any external enterprise data sources like file shares, database records or ERP/CRM items with the SharePoint Knowledge Management and Social Collaboration features.

The Layer2 Knowledge Management Suite for SharePoint is successfully used by the NATO C3 AGENCY (NC3A), the World Bank, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and others. Implementation partners and resellers benefit from the Layer2 Partner Program with free training, license discounts and free NFR editions. The solution is available for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and 2013 as free shareware download after registration from the vendor website www.layer2.de/en/.