Outlook’s Social Connector

Download the social connector for Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007: Outlook Social Connector

See the Tools section for links to the newly released social connector and providers. The Tools section also has links to MSDN resources for developers interested in writing a provider for other services.

People Pane Search

Windows Desktop Search is required for the people pane’s search to work. When it’s not installed, messages and events associated with the email address will not be found and the people pane will be empty.

Contacts Folders

When a provider is designed to store Contacts locally, a new contact folder is created for that provider. The contact folder is enabled as an address book.

If you don’t want it included in your address list, you can right click on it, choose Properties and remove the check from “Use as address book” on the Outlook Address Book tab.

Facebook Contacts

The Facebook provider does not store the contacts (or feed updates) locally . It uses on-demand contact and activity sync because Facebook terms of use prevent caching of user information. On-demand providers use the email addresses of recipients on a message to retrieve contact and activity information from Facebook, but those addresses are passed to the Facebook provider in a hashed format to protect the privacy of users that have not joined the Facebook network.

News Feed

When the privacy settings allow, the social connector displays news feeds for the contact.

Use the Social Connector with Outlook Hotmail Connector

When you use the Outlook Hotmail Connector and have the Hotmail Live account set as default, any provider that creates a local contact folder won’t work as expected as Contact folders can’t be created in the Hotmail Live data file. The LinkedIn and Windows providers are two popular providers that are affected. The Facebook provider is not affected because it does not store copies of your contacts locally.

The solution: set a local pst file as the default data file.

Facebook Privacy settings

Anyone with the Facebook provider installed will see the Facebook profile pictures belonging to email addresses on the message but not status updates, unless the person’s privacy settings allow it. The recipient addresses need to be associated with the social networking account. For example, if mary@example.com has a Facebook account but sends you email from mary@smith.com, you won’t see her Facebook profile picture or updates, even if she is a friend.

When the Facebook provider is installed, status updates are visible based on the kind of Public Search settings selected in the Facebook profile.

If a person has made their profile:

Publicly searchable: you will be able to see their status even if you are not friends.
Not searchable: no status information is returned from Facebook.
Searchable to friends only but their email address is not visible to friends: then no status information is returned from Facebook even if you are a friend.
Searchable to friends only AND their email address is visible to friends: then that person’s status information is returned from Facebook if you are a friend.

Remember: The address used with Facebook needs to be the same email address used for email, associated with your Facebook account, or on the contact record in Outlook.

If the email address used to send messages is not registered under account settings for the social network, the user’s activities will not appear in the people pane. If you want your activities to appear for your colleagues at work, add your work email address as an additional email address under account settings for the social network.

LinkedIn Privacy

The default setting for LinkedIn is to display profile photos to people in your “network”. This includes your connections and those who are connected to your connections. This can be changed to display the photo only your connections or everyone. Member feeds have a similar setting.

Troubleshooting

If the people pane is not working you need to verify it is enabled. In Outlook 2010, go to File, Options, Add-ins. Is it listed in the Disabled or Inactive Application Add-ins sections?

If in the Inactive section: click the Go button at the bottom of the Add-ins dialog to open the COM Add-ins dialog.

Locate the Outlook Social Connector in the list and check the box to enable it.

If it is listed as disabled, select Disabled Addins from the dropdown at the bottom of the dialog and then press Go.

In Outlook 2007, look in Tools, Trust Center, Add-ins. The dialog is identical to Outlook 2010. You can also check for disabled add-ins from the Help, Disabled Items menu. If listed, select the add-in and click the Enable button.

In Outlook 2003, check for disabled add-ins from the Help, About, Disabled Items button. If listed, select the add-in and click the Enable button.

Tools

Developing an Outlook Social Connector Provider	TechNet article containing information about the Outlook Social Connector provider model, which provides an abstraction layer between the OSC and the APIs offered by social networks, and the interfaces that an Outlook Social Connector provider must implement. (40 printed pages)
Exclaimer Outlook Photos	Outlook Photos from Exclaimer makes it easy to add user photos to your Microsoft Exchange 2010 global address list (GAL). Like Contact and Social Connector photos, GAL photos display on contacts and email messages associated with that user. Free.
LinkedIn for Outlook	See the latest LinkedIn activity and profile photo from any connection that sends you an e-mail. For Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010. Requires Outlook Social Connector. 64-bit version is available here
MeshIn	Meshin understands and sorts every element in your inbox to help you easily find task-critical information on demand - whether you're having difficulties with your search or trouble remembering what you have. Meshin links items in your inbox to relevant content, contextually binding together information, attachments, internet databases, websites, and social networks. It organizes your email data using intuitive dashboards. Meshin displays people's contact information, your upcoming appointments with threaded conversations, attachments, links, related communications and documents, and information from the web.
MySpace provider for Outlook's Social Connector	MySpace provider now available for the Social Connector. (The Social Connector is available for Outlook 2003/2007/2010) (32-bit only)
OSC: Synchronizing Friends and Activities	This article explains how the Outlook Social Connector synchronizes friends, non-friends, and activities for friends and non-friends in different ways: cached synchronization, on-demand synchronization, and hybrid synchronization. The main difference among these modes of synchronization is where the OSC stores the data-whether it is in a folder in the user's default Outlook store, or in memory on the user's computer.
Social Connector Provider for Facebook	Connect your Facebook account to the Outlook Social Connector and stay up to the minute with the people in your network by accessing everything from e-mail threads to status updates in one single, centralized view. (32 and 64 bit)
Social Connector Provider for Windows Live Messenger	Connect your Windows Live ID to the Outlook Social Connector and stay up to the minute with the people in your network by accessing everything from e-mail threads to status updates in one single, centralized view. (32 and 64 bit)
Viadeo Social Connector Provider	Social Connector provider is available for the Viadeo professional network.
XING Connector	Social connector provider for Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010 that connects to the XING network.