Productivity Hub for SharePoint 2010 – Update

Back in June 2010, Microsoft released what was known as the Productivity Hub for SharePoint 2010. It was a site collection that Microsoft provided that could be extended out for end users to visit to acquire knowledge on how to use SharePoint.  Great resource if you were short on training components and looking for assistance but weren’t able to find their IT Pro (who was probably hiding somewhere no doubt, fearing for their lives). Further for those that are looking to engage and foster adoption of the Information Worker’s in your business, the productivity hub is key to gaining their buy in and helping them to truly dive into the SharePoint platform to make it their tool set.

The best part of the hub in my opinion is the ability to customize it and add additional modules that meet your organization or business unit’s needs to ensure that your implementation is actually serving them from a business perspective rather than just humming away as another file share replacement.

Well, like most technology solutions, there are updates and enhancements.  On 17 January 2011, Microsoft released such an update for the Productivity Hub for SharePoint 2010. So, if you’re looking to just download and implement with the content packs – fear not, it’s simply and easy by just heading over to the Microsoft Download Center at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4aaa9862-e420-4331-8bc3-469d7bae0ff1

However, if you’re feeling crafty and are looking to customize this product, it’s available on CodePlex from the team that created it (thanks RedTech!) at:

http://productivityhub.codeplex.com/

The key enhancement to the Productivity hub in this case is that of the customization documentation to provide guidance when crafting the Hub for your implementation’s UX.