Hi Everyone! As you can guess from the title we are getting close to the release of the next major version of Chatter for SharePoint. This project began almost a year ago and is finally coming to fruition. I’d like to thank my BETA testers for their feedback. Since the BETA was released last month there have been major changes to the codebase, including general bug squashing and significant performance improvements. The majority of the work has been around performance and I am happy to report that version 2 is far faster in rendering feeds and performing feed actions than the 1.x codebase. In many areas – it’s as much as a 100% performance increase. This is due to an entirely new caching design. While the 1.x solution cached entire feed pages – the 2.x code caches individual feed items and dynamically builds feed pages on the fly. This new caching was not implemented in the BETA – but you will be able to see it very soon.

Which leads me into the next topic – the general availability of version 2.x. Plans are to release the final version the week of November 3^rd! I’m in the final debugging stages – soon to be updating the installer and documentation.

Next – a final reminder about the licensing change. Only Version 1.x customers who are under maintenance as of November 1, 2014 will be grandfathered into the new Enterprise licensing model at no cost. New and existing customers not under maintenance will need to purchase the 2.x solution and license it under the new terms.

Finally – some screenshots (just because everyone loves screenshots)

Screenshot of the Read Only Feed View

The Feed – with the new Trending Panel open.

A feed item with Topics.

Comments on a feed item with attachments.

New dropdown action menus.

The new Edit Mode info panel – licensing details will be visible here.

The Web Part Properties panel is now just one section for easy management of settings.

Thanks again to all my customers who have invested in the Chatter for SharePoint solution. This version represents a year (on and off) of development – with features and improvements suggested by you. I hope you continue to find it useful. I’ll be updating the site the week of November 3^rd with the release announcement. Existing customers will be notified via email with download links and instructions for requesting new license keys.