SharePoint Social Aggregator Web Part is a development component which can assist programmers in effectively displaying information from various sources, including RSS and atom feeds, blogs, even social websites, like Facebook or Twitter, in a single, compact view.

The collected data is combined into a single panel, whose display can easily be customized through XSL or CSS. The layout and stylesheet of the feeds can be adjusted, for instance the number of items to displays. This way, users can include only the information they want, while also being able to select preferred data sources (the location where posts will be collected from).

The tool supports SharePoint 2013, 2010 ad 2007, so developers can choose the version they need and further work with it. Depending on the targeted source of news and feeds, SharePoint Social Aggregator Web Part can be customized and adjusted to meet the particular needs of users.

As such, when used for Twitter, this advanced component allows users to read as well as reply to comments straight from the SharePoint interface. In addition, it does not store end-users’ credentials, thus protecting their data. Moreover, the SharePoint administrator has the possibility of determining which individual users can benefit from specific extended Twitter options.

Aside from Twitter, however, SharePoint Social Aggregator Web Part also supports RSS 1.0 and 2.0, Atom, blogs, Facebook, and other such sources of news and information. It allows adjusting access privileges, ranging from ‘None’ (where anyone can view the posts), to ‘Use Default Credentials’ and ‘Custom Credentials’.

Among more notable features are the ability to scroll through posts, add new entries using a ‘Post’ button, or ‘Delete’ certain comments. These are all settings which developers can activate or deactivate, depending on their preferences.

A simple component allows users to conveniently view feeds from the variety of sources. The web part is fully compatible with SharePoint 2007, 2010 and 2013.
Virto Social Aggregator Web Part aggregates feeds from various sources and display them on your SharePoint site in a single view, which is subject to flexible customization using XSL and CSS. Users can easily customize overall layout and stylesheet as well as define their individual datasources for the feeds.

For Twitter users Virtosoftware offers additional features that allow for not only reading twits but also posting right from SharePoint interface. Virto RSS & Twitter Aggregator supports OATH protocol for Twitter, meaning that it does not store users’ Twitter accounts or passwords. SharePoint administrator is free to define the users, for whom the extended Twitter options of the Aggregator are available.

Current release is the very first version of Virto Social Aggregator Web Part. As in the case of all other Virtosoftware products, Virto RSS & Twitter Aggregator will be constantly improving and updating. In the next version we plan to complete the integration with Facebook making it possible to get and post information from the network. Support of the approval workflow is another feature to be included to one of the next versions of Virto RSS & Twitter Aggregator. With this feature it will be possible to define an approval scheme for all the posts displayed by the web part.