HCL Connections Reviews

I really like the files and the wikis, since we use that heavily in my department. Throughout the company, obviously there are different advantages for the different departments. Our sales staff is using the Activities to attract various implementation projects starting from the earliest phases in the sales process and all the way through to the delivery/final installation.

But for me personally, I love being able to collect our departmental knowledge and put it in a central place that we can look it up, so that we don't have to keep resolving the same kind of problems.

In regards to the Files application, just having a really simple way to track important files and do version control on them, as well as share them out easily, has proven to be very valuable.

Actually, I'm seeing all the previews for the IBM Connections version 6 product and I think a lot of the stuff that we would like is coming out in that version itself.

One of our VP of sales has asked for the ability to sync nested folders by using the drag and drop option, and that's going to be in there. There are some of the Community design elements, the top menu, which is something that a lot of our employees have been asking for.

So, it seems that IBM is listening to people when it comes to including new features in the latest Connections product line.

It is not as stable as I would like it to be. But, mostly it is a lot more complicated than the Domino platform that we've been on for many years and because of that, with more moving parts, there are more things that can go wrong.

Overall, it is a pretty solid product. We don't have a whole lot of issues with it. Also, IBM has generally worked to try and get any of those issues resolved through their feature packs and fix packs.

We're on the latest release, so obviously at this stage, there are more problems than if you're a little bit farther behind.

We're a very small company and we have 215 employees worldwide. I know there are sites that are running hundreds or thousands of people in the system so, obviously, it scales up very well.

We have drastically overbuilt our on-premise installation for redundancy purposes - multiple HTTP servers, multiple Apps servers, multiple Docs servers, etc, and aren't really hitting any performance problems with the environment we have, but we can obviously always add more resources- more cores, more
RAM, or even more servers in general if it's needed to better support the
application.

There are some people that are better than others. There are some really good and sharp people at the backend of the support side, while there are some others that we prefer not to deal with, if possible.

Our CEO is a visionary and he is always looking for a new and better way to do things. When he first saw the Connections product, it was probably about 6-7 years ago. With him, it just sort of clicked, as it was something that he could use in the business to help drive us to that next level with internal collaboration. So, he went ahead and pulled the trigger on it and it's been a slow adoption. A lot of it was trying to get all the other department heads to see the same things that he saw, and that I was able to see.

Now, we're starting to get a lot more traction to it, i.e., once we get each department to solve their specific concern for the system, such as what they're not happy with, which generally turns into what they don't understand and need some additional training on. It's been really good.

The setup was extremely complex; a little less than what it may have been in the past. We've been a Connections user ever since version 3. We're on-premise and there's a lot of documentation that is wrong more often than not. Also, it's a very cumbersome process that often takes us about 4-6 months to get an upgrade completed, tested and ready to roll out. Thus, I feel that anything to reduce that would be appreciated. I know their new Pink strategy is supposed to help with that. I guess that we'll see when they start deploying things under that strategy.

It's absolutely worthwhile but it is not a technology project, it is a cultural project. In order to get traction on an implementation with any social system like this, you've got to get the culture on board, before you roll out the technology. Otherwise, it's just viewed as yet another tool, that some people are going to use and some aren't.

The product's scalability, ease of use and completeness of vision are important criteria whilst selecting a vendor. One thing that I really have to give to IBM is that they do have a really good vision on what they are trying to accomplish and they're taking the product to that point. If you look at some of the competitors out there, they don't really seem to have this idea in their mind as to what they are trying to do exactly. A lot of it is, throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks or by just trying to copy features from everyone else. However, I see with the Connections platform, IBM is trying to innovate.

From a Connections standpoint, the most valuable features are:

• Social collaboration file sharing.
• Being able to network within the company.
• Being able to find subject matter experts within the company.
• Being able to supplement our social portal, by surfacing Connections content back to our departmental portal pages.
• Being able to have a one-stop social portal, but also having Connections alerts on that page.

It has really changed the way people work:

• File sharing.

• Getting away from shared drives.

• Being able to set up communities for information.

• Being able to empower business units to basically leverage support for their business units, e.g., the HR communities, benefits communities, and those kind of departmental communities; training communities within our organization.

I would love for the communities to be more row-based, where you could have more of a community, so that you could set up the email alerts to be mandatory for some of the communities and to be standard for the others; those kinds of functionalities.

We've had a few issues, but overall the stability has been pretty good. Probably, my confidence level in the stability is around 75-80% at this point.

We've had some PMRs around some of the docs loading slowly, editing and formatting. We have open PMRs. We're trying to get those closed now.

It has massive scalability.

The technical support level is very good and they've always been very responsive.

When we got our portal, we figured out that we really needed to supplement it with more of a community type of layout and empower the business units a little bit more. Every department didn't need a department page, but we had so many other smaller departments that needed a way to communicate and collaborate with each other.

I was involved in the setup process. It was probably moderately complex because of the number of servers that needed to be set up in the test and production environments. It eventually ended up being about 16 servers between the test and production environments; it was complex to keep all of them in sync.

We briefly looked at Microsoft SharePoint but we are heavy IBM customers, so we went down that path.

In general, stability, support and functionality are the most important criteria when selecting a vendor.

Start slow - “Don't try to boil the ocean” is one of IBM's phrases - but basically plan and scope it out. Take your time and make sure you have all of your training in place, ahead of time.

• Wikis and Files: Work well for process documentation and reference material.
• Blogs: Used for department announcements.
• Bookmarks: Used on communities and on the staff’s “my page” to access frequently used links.

Connections has assisted our business area with our Knowledge Management
initiative. It provides us with a tool that the staff can use to quickly find the information needed to process their day-to-day tasks and assist our customers. It has also been valuable as a collaboration tool within our area and encourages our reps to participate within the community to ask questions and share their expertise.

For our Knowledge Management initiative, it would benefit to have capabilities within the tool to have one single source of information that allows access to the information needed based on the user’s role within the organization. We have seen other KM products that offer this feature.

The editors that are supported by the product each offer features that would be useful, but there isn’t one editor that offers all of the desired features.

We originally implemented 3.0 in 2011 but most recently upgraded to 5.5 on 10/3/16.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

IBM scheduled weekly - sometimes bi-weekly - meetings to review the status with open PMRs. They also provided on-site support during the final migration before our “go-live” date.

The support provided through PMRs was helpful, though there were some issues with incomplete, confusing, and incorrect information within the installation documentation.

Also, the support provided was based on the level of the PMR. The level 3 PMRs were handled at a more detailed level, while the level 2 PMRs often required us to provide basic background information and other details that had previously been provided through working other PMRs. These PMRs were more lengthy and repetitive, and required additional fiddler trace reports.

We were looking for a KM platform that was easier to use and included social collaboration.

The setup was more complex, as it was not an initial setup but rather an upgrade, which required migration from MSSQL to DB2.

For pricing, look to see if it is site licensed, or by unit. A unit can be users, core, etc. Are there costs to run this as a cold site, in the event of a D/R situation? Are there volume discounts involved? Look at competing products that do similar functions and compare pricing. Look to see if you have corporate discounts.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Yammer and SharePoint.

I recommend taking advantage of any offers for IBM staff to come onsite for adoption workshops for the staff using the platform. This was a helpful step in our rollout to the staff. I would also recommend that they be prepared to provide ongoing support after rollout, to be successful with adoption and to ensure that the staff has the information they need to be comfortable with navigating in the tool.

File sharing, especially within the communities, is a valuable feature. We have a disaster team and as far as I know, they're using this file sharing functionality, especially now that they can also sync offline. That's something that they wanted from the beginning, so it is valuable for them.

Collaboration in itself is a positive value.

We would like to see more statistics and have full access to files and communities. Especially with the communities; because when a community owner leaves, it's kind of problematic. As an admin, with offline or on-premise solutions, we have a lot of power and we can respond when there's an issue or if there are any access issues. However, with cloud solutions, it's more limited for us.

It's quite stable and there is no downtime.

The downside for me, as an admin, is that the admins don't have that much of power in the back end/background, i.e., not much power in terms of the access, tweaking and changing the settings. I feel it is not that much scalable.

We have used the technical support. It took us some time to resolve issues. It could be better.

We did not have any on-premise solutions, so the cloud version was the beginning.

Initial setup was straightforward.

You should do a thorough analysis before applying any solution, compare different products and look at the costs. If it's not going to save costs, then it is not worth it. Cost is not everything but it's a major factor. So, it is important to do a thorough research and ask the businesses about the product.

The roadmap - i.e., where the product is going to be, in probably a year or two - is an important criteria whilst selecting a vendor.

• File versioning
• Variety of content and file types that a user can share (images, gif, documents, embedded videos, and so on)
• Valuable search to find archived documents

The platform allows in a very easy way to create community and start collaborating. This value has been easily recognized by the users, above all for managing cross-department projects.

Some departments had a latent need of communication inside the company and they are now starting organizing autonomously, managing their own communities, spreading news and launching surveys. Nevertheless, this result was made possible only with a custom application, able to notify specific users punctually. This particular behaviour that is not provided by the platform, being a social platform, is however a basic need for every company, that has the task to inform its employees and be certain about their reception of the most important messages.

The management of technical projects was facilitated by the creation of communities in which the internal customer of the project and technical teams were able to work on the same project together, although not part of the same hierarchical department.

The platform is too dispersive and rigid. It should improve in usability and user interface customization by the user (personalized menu, communities to keep close at hand, always available files, and so on).

There are too many applications that might be replaceable with each other. Excessive opportunities of choice make adoption difficult. You find it difficult to choose the best ways to make sharing actions. For example:

• Sharing of a file: From my personal files and then sharing it to specific communities or directly inside a community?
• Communication inside a community: Should I use the status updates of the community or blog or forum?

Having tools that are able to manage slightly different shades of communication purposes is not always an advantage. A common user often feels disoriented and induced to use simpler tools.

Moreover, the status updates section in a community remains completely hidden. By contrast, if we want to read the recent status updates, we can no longer see other applications available only in the general view. We are used to a unique landing page in every collaborative group, in which we can see immediately recent conversations (LinkedIn and Facebook groups are both structured in this way).

These problems can be overcome by governing the initial stage of installation and choosing in advance which applications to release and when.

My company has been adopting Connections since January 2013.

Episodes of instability are not uncommon. For this reason, talking about on-premise installations, it is essential to have a good technical partner, if it is not possible to acquire internally the specific technical competence.

We had issues with scalability, including the need to increase the maximum weight of the files and the limit of the size of the community, but they were quickly handled.

We are not completely satisfied with the technical support. The platform often presents product weaknesses and bugs. In the first case, the issues are managed superficially, defined as "product characteristics". In the second case, it is almost impossible to solve problems quickly. We are now directly facing this problem with a specific bug that remains unresolved.

We had tested Yammer before introducing seriously an enterprise social collaboration platform. We preferred IBM Connections because we saw in it the greatest potential in managing different types of communications to pursue different purposes over time.

Initial setup was almost straightforward; handled directly from IBM.

I would recommend that everyone adopt the cloud version. There is too much constant maintenance to be performed on the on-premise version that does not allow focusing on adoption strategies.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Yammer, Jive, Social Chatter, and Tibco.

I recommend internal testing of the functionality of the platform to understand the pros and cons compared to the modes of interaction and cooperation that already exist in the company. Then, I would proceed migrating one or two existing processes, launching a driven pilot that should involve an entire team / department. I would strongly recommend a gradual release of applications and training dedicated to each instrument. The platform is too complex to be used entirely from the start.

• Granular access control across all components provides assurance that confidential and private content stays that way. The access control model carries across to search in such a way that users only see results for content that they have privileges to access. 
• Desktop add-on makes file management easy to achieve (check-in, checkout, version management, share, etc.) 
• Community component provides users with capability to create general-purpose and topic/project specific work-group collaboration spaces (can be public or membership controlled) composed of any desired permutation of sub-set components. This includes activities (for ad-hoc to-do lists and structured task management), blogs, forums, wikis, bookmarks, files, all of which feed into a global activity feed. 
• Extra-net capability of newest release allows for third-party collaboration, e.g., with your customers. 
• Themes and skins provide basic customization. 
• API allows for full custom UI implementation if the enterprise needs that form of branding and/or customized UXP. 
• Mobile apps for android and iOS provide untethered access to connections content and components. 
• V5.5 (released December, 2015) introduced support of nested folders within the files component.

• Our project teams create community spaces to share and collaborate around content and artifacts. 
• Network file shares are now a thing of the past. There is no more tyranny of the monolithic, directory hierarchy.

While connection supports @named.user messaging and #tag.labels, the collaborative interaction UXP could be updated to a more streamlined approach for posts, file-share and threaded conversations such as that which is provided by newer teamwork offerings (e.g., Slack).

I am alluding to the potential to improve collaboration via timely, intelligently presented alerts and notifications. Specifically, I am calling out the examples within other products, such as "bots" that do your bidding and provide calls-to-action and other reminders in context with your daily activities.

We have been using the product for ten years.

Running in a self-hosted private cloud, there were no significant issues regarding stability. 

Connections is now available as a service for those who need a turnkey implementation, i.e., IBM Connections Cloud.

Scalability is a function of CPU and RAM. The file component leverages IBM FileNet under the hood for robust document management.

Here are a few of feature improvements.

IBM addresses, improves collaboration and user experience with IBM  Connections 6.0:

• Communities - Smart following; notifications; modern layouts; enhanced  rich-text content management   
• Files - Selective sync of top-level folders for offline file access; hybrid-cloud storage option adapts to workload needs

Follow @IBMSocialBiz for direct updates.

IBM Connections Profiles are the heart and soul of IBM Connections. It changes the way knowledge is shared and found by allowing users to identify subject matter experts in their organizations, from there they can either look at the knowledge and content the expert is sharing, reach out and engage with the expert directly, or even reach communities of experts to find the answers they are looking for. It helps the organization to be more productive, reduces the time lost when searching for information, and allows employees to build their own brand inside the organization, resulting in better talent retention and employee engagement.

IBM Connections Activities provides a platform for getting things done by allowing teams of people to collaborate and share to do’s and feedback on tasks quickly and transparently, keeping everyone informed and on the same page without the need for frequent meetings and reviews. Once an activity is successfully completed, it can be used as a “blue print” for similar activities in the future, which saves time and allows teams to have more predictable results.

IBM Connections Mobile application and plugins provide users with the ability to collaborate and share information easily from anywhere – their mobile phone, tablet, or their favourite applications like Microsoft Word, Excel, etc.

Important information, like policies, procedures, and corporate templates, has become easy to find and has reduced wasted time and user frustration. Distribution of business reports by sharing them in IBM Connections has not only yielded the obvious result of reduced mail traffic and storage, but also allows users to engage and collaborate more effectively on these reports.

Integration with business functions and processes like internal audits has resulted in better collaboration with external parties (like auditors) and better efficiency in addressing audit findings due to open and transparent collaboration and sharing of documents and feedback (no more missed or lost emails).

Various plugins are available for Microsoft Windows desktops and this adds tremendously to the user experience.

Mac users currently only have File Sync support and no plugins are available for Linux desktop users, leaving these users heavily dependent of the web user interface. Although the web user interface works great and is constantly being improved, the plugins create a more seamless experience.

We have been using the solution for five years.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

IBM provides good support, and in most cases support is available world-wide through IBM’s network of Business Partners.

IBM Connections has replaced a variety of solutions, including File Shares (shared drives), the company intranet, and the corporate directory. IT also reduced the need for various custom-developed ad-hoc solutions due to its rich set of features.

IBM Connections provides a single solution that offers profiles, communities, file sharing, wikis, blogs, surveys, activities, bookmarks, forums, ideation, activity streams and events. The product is mature, has a very strong business focus, and can be integrated with other business solutions.

Using IBM Connections and all the capabilities it offers, provides users with a single place to go for all their collaboration and knowledge sharing requirements.

Initial installation and setup of the on-premises version of IBM Connections requires specific technical skills. Once the product is installed and configured it is easy to use and users have many options to easily control their user experience.

The IBM Connections Cloud offering provides a quick and easy way to get up and running with Enterprise Social Networking without the need for technical skills and expertise.

We evaluated SharePoint and Yammer.

Work with an IBM Business Partner who has skills and expertise, not only in the installation and configuration of the IBM Connections Suite of products, but also in the implementation and adoption of Enterprise Social Networking and Social Business.

The deployment of IBM Connections has a much lower focus on technical skills when compared with other business solutions. The success of your IBM Connections project will depend heavily on successful integration with everyday business processes and activities and user adoption.

Becoming a successful business using IBM Connections is a journey which requires careful planning and guidance, but the rewards are absolutely worth the effort.

IBM Connections is our primary collaboration platform used for all our internal communications and knowledge sharing. We also use it to work together with our customers.

Using IBM Connections, we have embraced the concept of Working Out Loud to more openly discuss and share content.

I use the Updates page to know what is going on in our company and which projects are running. External access increases collaboration with customers and partners. Online document preview and editing allows for faster co-authoring.

I would like to have more control over the news delivery on the homepage. You now need a third-party app for this. I would also like more information in the overall To Do list. You now have to click More to see where an action item is coming from.

I would like to have more control over the news delivery on the homepage.
You now need a third-party app (we use XCC from Time To Act) for this.
I would also like more information in the overall To Do list. You now have
to click More to see where an action item is coming from. It would be
better that you can see (and sort) from which community/activity a to-do
is coming from. It would be best if you could apply filters to this list.

We did not have issues with stability.

We have not had issues with scalabilily.

Technical support is good.

We were using the cloud version, SmartCloud, but we shifted to on-premises to integrate and extend it more.

You need technical knowledge for the setup, but if you have the right expertise, it is OK.

We implemented in-house, as we are an implementation partner.

Our own ROI was within nine months. We directly benefited from more knowledge sharing (and avoiding re-inventing the wheel) and shorter meetings.

We see IBM Connections as the richest ESN platform on the market today. But it takes time to understand and you need to drive an active adoption program.