May 18, 2007
Why use Visible Path?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path helps business people manage their social network and build relationship capital. With Visible Path you can map and manage relationships inside and outside your company, collaborate with colleagues, and build trusted networks that offer deep insight into the relationships you have and broad access to the ones you need.
Our service applies unique social network algorithms that automatically rate relationship strength and path strength to drive new levels of success, efficiency and trust in your social network.
May 18, 2007
How does Visible Path work?
by Erin Sweeney
- Sign up!
- Download the Outlook plug-in to build your network
- Connect to your contacts to grow your network
- Search for strong paths to the people you’d like to meet
- Request an introduction to meet your target
May 31, 2007
What makes Visible Path different?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path applies unique social network algorithms that automatically rate relationship strength and path strength to help drive to new levels of success, efficiency and trust in your social network.
- Success. Use the strongest relationships and paths for the most successful introductions
- Efficiency. Avoid wasting time chasing connections through people with weak relationships
- Trust. Ensure that you’ll receive requests only from people you know well
July 31, 2007
Now that I'm a Visible Path subscriber, what can I do to get the most from the service?
by Erin Sweeney
- Download the Outlook plug-in; it rapidly builds out your network and eliminates the need for data entry
- Fill out your profile; so that others can connect with you and find introductions when appropriate
- Connect with colleagues and contacts; the more people you connect with, the more robust your network becomes
- Search for paths into key clients or accounts; then get introduced through the strongest path to that person or organization
May 31, 2007
How does Visible Path collect data?
by Erin Sweeney
You can download an Outlook plug-in to automatically scan selected folders. The plug-in never scans what's said, it just scans two categories of information:
- contact data
- message tracking data such as time and date stamps for statistical analysis only.
July 31, 2007
Why should I download the Outlook Plug-in?
by Erin Sweeney
- Automatically discover your relationships
- Automatically calculate the strength of your relationships with contacts and colleagues
- Automatically maintain your professional social network
- Never scans or stores the content of your emails, only to, from, date and timestamp information
May 31, 2007
How does the Outlook plug-in work?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path offers an Outlook plug-in that eliminates the need to manually enter your contacts. You specify which Outlook files and folders you would like to scan and the plug-in determines which relationships you have by quickly scanning your address book, your email, your calendar and your tasks, without looking at subject lines or the content of your communications. Visible Path then looks at your pattern of communication with each person to determine how strong each relationship is. This relationship strength helps determine how well you know a person and how likely you are to make an introduction for that person or to that person. After the scan, you determine which relationships should be hidden and whether you want other people in your network to know that you hold a particular relationship. You can change these settings at any time, delete individual relationships, or unsubscribe from the network and delete all of your relationships.
May 31, 2007
What content is scanned?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path never scans content. The system ignores email subject lines and email body text, as well as contact card notes, calendar, appointment and meeting information. Visible Path never scans task content. The Outlook plug-in only looks at properties of an item that pertain to the people involved and when the event took place.
May 31, 2007
What types of data does it scan?
by Erin Sweeney
The Outlook plug-in scans data including:
Contacts and contact cards: Name, title, company, address, phone, email addresses
Email: Sender name/email, recipient name/email, timestamp
Calendar: Attendee names/emails, timestamp
Appointments: Attendee names/emails, timestamp
Meeting requests: Attendee names/emails, timestamp
Tasks and task requests: Assigner & assignee names/emails, timestamp
May 31, 2007
How is data secured?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path hosts the production systems at a dedicated Internet Hosting Center, which provides carrier class environmental protection including access security, video surveillance, power conditioning, backup power including both battery and generator systems, air conditioning and fire suppression. For more detailed information, please see our Security Policy.
September 21, 2007
Where does my data go?
by Erin Sweeney
Your relationship data is transferred over a secure connection to the Visible Path data center. Only to, from date and time information is transferred. This information is formatted in an XML document, compressed, and sent to the Visible Path servers over a 128-bit encrypted SSL connection.
May 31, 2007
What about privacy?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path provides best-in-class privacy protections:
- You own your relationships
- You control if, when and how you share your relationships
- You decide whether you are visible or invisible to contacts and colleagues seeking introductions
- You, and only you, can view the strength of your relationships
- You control the minimum relationship and path strength required to access your relationships
- You can unsubscribe and delete your relationships at any time
July 31, 2007
How do I control my privacy settings?
by Erin Sweeney
- Navigate to Settings in the upper right hand of the application window.
- Under Network privacy, you can specify who can see your identity and who can network through you. You can update these settings at any time, and of course you control access to all of your relationships.
- Similarly, under Contact Controls, you can choose to hide certain relationships. When you hide relationships, simply check the box next to "Ignore" and Visible Path will not map any paths through you to that person.
July 31, 2007
If the Outlook plug-in automatically builds my network, why do I need to connect?
by Erin Sweeney
While your entire network of relationships automatically builds, you can only network through other Visible Path subscribers to whom you are connected. Thus the more people you connect with, the more robust your network becomes.
May 31, 2007
How does Visible Path measure what relationships are "strong?"
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path intelligently weights relationship strength to grant you insight into the strength and momentum of your current relationships and find the best paths to new people.
August 13, 2007
Why does Relationship strength matter?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path assigns relationship strength among people in your network. When you're looking to reach someone through your network, relationship strength prioritizes the strongest, most relevant "paths" to reach the person you'd like to meet.
July 31, 2007
When will my relationship data be reflected in Visible Path?
by Erin Sweeney
Initial relationship information will be populated immediately; however, the relationship strengths and your full relationship network will take up to 24 hours to calculate and build.
November 26, 2007
What do I see under the My Contacts tab?
by Erin Sweeney
If you have downloaded the Outlook plug-in, the My Contacts tab will show all of the people you have communicated with via Outlook emails, calendar events, contact cards and tasks. Visible Path considers these people your first degree connections (people you know or communicate with directly).
November 26, 2007
How does Visible Path add new contacts?
by Erin Sweeney
By default, the Outlook plug-in is set to scan daily. If you haven't changed your scan settings, any new contacts you begin communicating with should be viewable in the My Contacts tab within 24 hours. If you have changed your scan settings, new contacts will appear within 24 hours of your next scan.
November 26, 2007
What can I see on each record in My Contacts?
by Erin Sweeney
You can see a contact's name, title, company name and a relationship strength bar. The bar indicates the relative strength of your relationship with a given contact. Relationship strength is determined by a number of factors, but primarily based on your patterns of communication with a given contact. Your contacts are sorted alphabetically by last name. Click one of the letters along the top to see only folks with last names beginning with that letter.
November 26, 2007
Can I delete certain contacts?
by Erin Sweeney
You can't delete contacts from within Visible Path. You can choose to hide certain contacts if you don't want others to request introductions to that person through you. Go to Settings> Network Privacy > Contact Controls. From this screen, click on the "ignore" box next to a given contact's name. Click on "Save changes" and Visible Path will no longer map any paths through you to that person.
November 26, 2007
What do I see under the My Connections tab?
by Erin Sweeney
The My Connections tab shows people with whom you have chosen to connect. When you choose to connect to someone, you are offering to share networks in order to network through one another. You can then search one another's networks to find and request introductions to people you would like to meet.
November 26, 2007
What can I see on each record in My Connections?
by Erin Sweeney
You can see a connection's name, photo (if available), title, company name and a relationship strength bar. The bar indicates the relative strength of your relationship with a given contact. Relationship strength is determined by a number of factors, but primarily based on your patterns of communication with a given contact.
November 26, 2007
How do I invite someone to connect?
by Erin Sweeney
There are 3 ways to connect:
-
Under My Contacts or My Networks, you can click the box next to a contact's name, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Connect to selected relationships above."
-
Click on "Connect to someone not in my list of contacts" to invite someone who is not a contact.
-
From the recommendations box in the upper right hand corner, you can click on "Connect" when the name of a person with whom you'd like to connect appears.
Next select, enter, or confirm an email address for the person you want to connect with, enter a note and hit send.
July 31, 2007
Why should I request introductions?
by Erin Sweeney
You can request introductions for any number of reasons. Primarily for:
- Making inroads into new accounts and securing executive sponsorship
- Recruiting new employees or conducting reference checks
- Targeting key individuals for marketing campaigns or events
May 18, 2007
What happens when I request an introduction?
by Erin Sweeney
Once you’ve found a strong path to your target and requested an introduction, you’ll be prompted to write a brief description of why you’d like to meet or learn more about your target. This note accompanies your introduction request as it passes along the path to your target. Each Intermediary, or person along the path, then has the option to:
- Make the introduction,
- Ask you for more information about the request, or
- Decline to pass the request along. 70% of the time the answer is yes or maybe.
July 31, 2007
Why should I fill out My Profile?
by Erin Sweeney
Filling out your profile helps others to find you by your employment history or areas of expertise to connect, re-connect and get introduced.
July 31, 2007
What is the Internet Explorer toolbar?
by Erin Sweeney
The Internet Explorer toolbar provides Visible Path subscribers an alternative method to search, request an introduction, or view the profile of a person in the Visible Path network. It appears in a separate frame in your Web browser, adjacent to any web page.
The Internet Explorer toolbar has been designed so that you can search your relationship network while you are viewing a different web page or web-based application.
- Launch the IE toolbar directly from your home page, browser toolbar, or system tray
- Use the IE toolbar side-by-side with your favorite web site of web application
- Search for people or companies with a single right click
November 26, 2007
What do I see under the My Networks tab?
by Erin Sweeney
The My Networks tab shows other people in your company who also subscribe to Visible Path. By default you can network through the people you see under the My Networks tab, but if you choose to leave your network you will only be able to network through people with whom you have connected.
November 26, 2007
What can I see on each record in My Networks?
by Erin Sweeney
You can see a contact's name, title, company name and a relationship strength bar. The bar indicates the relative strength of your relationship with a given contact. Relationship strength is determined by a number of factors, but primarily based on your patterns of communication with a given contact.
November 26, 2007
Should I still connect to people under My Networks tab?
by Erin Sweeney
Yes. Connecting to people ensures you can network through them going forward regardless of whether you or they leave your current company.
November 26, 2007
Will I still have access to the people in My Networks if I choose to leave the network?
by Erin Sweeney
Once you leave a network, you will only be able to network through the people with whom you have connected.
May 31, 2007
What policies govern the use of information by Visible Path?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path is dedicated to maintaining individual privacy. Visible Path complies with major international security laws and regulations. For more privacy information, see our Privacy Policy
May 31, 2007
What happens if I leave my company?
by Erin Sweeney
If you leave your company, you still have your personal Visible Path login, and your relationships stay intact. However, your broader access to the company network and the company's broader access to your network ends.
July 31, 2007
How can I track my connection and introduction requests?
by Erin Sweeney
In the upper right hand corner of the Visible Path page, you'll see a little envelope. when you click on this envelope, it takes you to the "My Communications" page.
You can track your introductions and connections, both in process and historical, in the My Communications page.
November 26, 2007
Does Visible Path support the OpenSocial initiative?
by Erin Sweeney
Visible Path broadly supports the OpenSocial initiative. In the first quarter, Visible Path is slated to become an OpenSocial host or “container” site. Visible Path will include an OpenSocial application directory and application integration into subscribers’ profile pages. Before adding OpenSocial applications to the directory, Visible Path will review the applications for enterprise-grade privacy and security compliance.
Visible Path’s OpenSocial support will enable all subscribers to Visible Path and its partner-branded services to access third-party social-networking applications written using the OpenSocial API (application programming interface). An example of such an application is a social calendar that a user can share with select people in her network.
The delivery window is contingent on completion of the OpenSocial API, which is still in development.
