EnThinnai is a social enterprise app that has all the service objectives of a social network, but the scope of federation is upto the sharing enterprise; it can share with non-users as well while ensuring the id of the viewer.

1. EnThinnai: A Social
Enterprise App
Aswath Rao
http://www.enthinnai.com

2. Summary
 Requirements
 Description
of EnThinnai
 Cloud-ready Architecture
 Roadmap

3. Enterprise-specific Requirements
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Provide collaborative tools New Gen workforce is used to and
is expecting
But ability to maintain privacy and confidentiality requirements
of a corporate entity
Federated identity scheme
All content must be corporate knowledge-base
Presence information
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Real-time Communication tool
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Availability of a specific individual
Availability of an individual with some functional responsibility/expertise
Text, Voice and Video
Both internal and external
Collaboration tools
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Conferencing, Screen sharing, collaborative editing

4. EnThinnai Overview
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A repository of digital information of a user and shared with one
or more "buddies"
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Users and Buddies are identified by their OpenIDs
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Buddies don't have to be EnThinnai users
A buddy can be assigned a "null" OpenID
An Enterprise can have top level control on which OpenIDs can be included
EnThinnai is a Unified Communications (UC) Platform
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Or by Enterprise issued responsibility tags
Or by self expressed interest and experience (much like lists)
Pull contact-specific Presence information
IM
Voice/Video
Archiving of chat sessions
Access to any stored information can be embedded in any web
page

5. Features and Capabilities
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Availability Status ("Presence")
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Notes
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Cross between email and blog
It is structured like email
It is stored and accessed like a blog post
File sharing
Contact Information
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Customizable for a single or a group of buddies
Buddies pull this information when required
Address
Phone information
Internet methods: email, IM
IM/Voice/Video
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Utilizes WebRTC/Websocket
Every chat session is recorded and archived

6. Use Case: Collaboration
 Use
Notes to record an ongoing exchange of
ideas and viewpoints
 Easily add new members to the team at a later
date
 Use file sharing to share documents
 Use IM/Voice/Video to have dialog
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IM sessions are archived for later reference
 Easy
to add partners and customers because
of use of OpenID
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Just as easily the access permission can be removed

7. Use Case: Customer Interaction
Access URLs can be placed in different places in the
Company's web site
 Customers can easily reach appropriate people
associated with the customer's need
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Product description page -> Sales organization
FAQ page -> Support
Career section -> HR
Deep context -> Fine routing based on Cookies and other info
 Much like Amazon’s Mayday button
Archived conversations
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Continue an interactive session at a later date
Efficient way to build a Knowledge Base

8. Cloud-ready Architecture
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Service definition ensures the growth is linear and not
polynomial
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EnThinnai is both low-end and high-end scalable
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Presence information is pulled when needed
Shared content is pulled when needed
When a new user joins the system, only the server associated with
that user is impacted
5-user (unlimited buddies) system can run on a single Raspberry Pi
It can run on a Public cloud like Amazon Web Services
Designed for cloud
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Service logic runs on an instance (can be added incrementally as
new users are added)
Bulk data/files are stored in storage instances (can be added
incrementally as new data are stored)
Cloud provided backup for failovers

9. Chat Application
 User
generates a “contact link” and
shares with others
 As
a link in a web page, email signature or biz
card
 By embedding an iFrame
 Can be “deep contexted” – so user will know
the context of a call from a buddy
 Email
soliciting comments on a doc will contain a
link identifying that doc
 When a call is received, the UI at the callee end will
identify the doc and the user can view the doc easily

10. Generating Contact Link

11. Look of an iFrame

12. Initial screen

13. After sending the first message &
Permission setting
Caller’s view
Callee’s view

14. Full Chat Session (in progress)
• Simultaneous IM
and Video
• Can end just
video
• Mute one or more
video components
• Ability to Buzz the
other end to get
attention

15. Product Roadmap
 Multi-party chat
 Real-time document editing
 Second Life kind of room sharing
 Permission based on Enterprise issued
responsibility tags
 Permission based on self expressed interest
and experience
 Encryption of data
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During data transfer
Storage

16. Background

17. Background
 Gen Y and Millennials are dominating the
workforce
 They require social collaborative tools
 They have used tools like Facebook and
Twitter
 They intuitively know the benefits
 But Enterprises have fiducial and
regulatory constraints

18. Features of Social Networks
 Easy information sharing
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Condensed information with links for details
 Quick dissemination
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Spread by others using codified “forward” mechanism
 Percolation of good ideas
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Ability to “vote” up or down
 Real-time 1-1 and group communication
 Modeled after Facebook and Twitter
 But blind emulation of these networks may not
be appropriate

19. Benefits
 Customer focus
 Increased engagement
 Faster response
 Quick lead conversion
 Workplace focus
 Instant collaboration among employees
 Weak-ties become collaborators
 Weakened departmental silos

20. Corporate Realities
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But corporations have regulatory requirements and fiducial
responsibility for data control and access control
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Business partnerships and customer interactions require ease
of federation at both the enterprise and individual levels
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Both inclusion and exclusion must be easily accomplished
Real-time Communication needs must be addressed
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Need to allow for limited sharing
Multi-modal
Permission based
Flow model is not always appropriate
Ability to add new people to previously shared content
Repository of corporate knowledgebase
These suggest some desired attributes of Enterprise Social
Software

21. Identity and Authentication
 Simple federation implies that identity
must be user-centric
 Organization control requires filtering
capability
 Must allow for different grades of
authentication
 Strong for sharing confidential data
 Non-existent for casual and first-time visitors

22. Information Exchange and Sharing
 email
is a widely used tool
 Though
 It
widely despised
is a repository of organizational memory
 But
difficult to pass it onto new employees
 The trail may be diffused
 Blogs
 But
and wikis are better models
they lack access control

23. Presence Information
 Simple
online/offline is meaningless in an
always on world
 Rich Presence will have multiple sources
 Presence information will depend on the
receiver
 Security considerations while federating
Presence information

24. Real-Time Communication
 Need
for multi-modal communication
 Require a way to escalate the mode of
communication using a permission model
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Text-based communication is less intrusive
Voice communication is richer
Video has its own advantages, but most intrusive
 Persistent
sessions
 Organizations may require the ability to archive
communication sessions

25. Collaboration Tools
 Real-time,
collaborative editing of
documents
 Multi-party conferencing
 Screen sharing
 Second Life like virtual world based
collaboration session
 Again ability to keep the session
persistent and ability to archive