At the RiteTrack Conference in Las Vegas last month we talked a lot about using social media and how it might integrate with RiteTrack. As a matter of fact, after I did a session on current trends in Social Media on day 1 of our conference, a team of Handel staff were so motivated they decided to take an idea and turn it into action (something that commonly happens here at Handel). Alas, next morning during the technical keynote, Michael Stephens, Director of Product Development, showcased how they had integrated Twitter directly into RiteTrack. Using an available C# Twitter Library, Twitterizer, RiteTrack became instantly able to integrate with Twitter.
There are two points to be made here. First, this task was accomplished in no more than two hours (and it would have probably been even faster had this idea not been conceived at 3 AM when our ISP decided to take a time-out) a testament to how easy it is to extend the RiteTrack platform. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates how you can take two great technologies and come up with something entirely new.
Figure 1: An example of how you can send Tweets from inside RiteTrack.
In the demonstration made by Michael and his team, Twitter was integrated with the RiteTrack Status board. A change to the status of an employee in RiteTrack ("Out to Lunch") is instantly posted to Twitter. Likewise, a Tweet sent from outside RiteTrack, attaches itself to the status board. While Twitter is just one of several social media technologies that can augment RiteTrack, we have already come up with at least half a dozen use cases for how RiteTrack and Twitter can work together. Some are pre-mature to mention at this point, and others are already being implemented as we speak. Stay tuned for more updates.