HCL Connections Reviews

I use it mainly for my files. I've got pretty much all my personal files and shared files in there. I use it on a day-to-day basis - the Activities part - for managing my work and the work of our teams, the scrum teams and the agile teams. We are able to see where we are in the process for everything that we have to deploy. I also use it for finding people or connecting with people and communicating.

For me, the benefit is that I have it on my mobile device, because I work a lot on mobile. I've got a lot of different devices and I work in a lot of different locations and most of the times in meetings. For me, it's easy to always be able to reach my files. Everything is on hand all the time.

For once, I would like to see better support for files. I mean, file storage is very good. It's not a concept of traditional file storage, but I figure if you want to make a transition from a traditional way of working into a new way of working, the gap between the old way and the new way, should be a little bit smaller.

I think it's very stable.

Scalability is also very good.

Technical support is good.

We had a lot of solutions and what we wanted to do was not invent a new solution or bring a new one in. We wanted to combine the solutions we already had and integrate them into a real social enterprise collaboration platform. That's why we use Connections as kind of an umbrella over all the solutions.

Initial setup was complex. It is a large-scale WebSphere deployment, and we have a twin data center, so you have to do a lot to deploy it at a very big enterprise.

We looked at everybody in the enterprise social space. We looked at Microsoft, but Microsoft wasn't that big; Jive; we looked at pretty much everyone. We did a full analysis.

When selecting a vendor, the integration between current solutions and the new solutions is important, as is the integration between different vendors. Pricing is also important, of course. Also, the social features and the completeness.

Do a comparison of the different solutions, and really look into what your use cases are and how you want to use them. Especially, look a bit forward, for example, whether you want to be dependent on one vendor or to have multiple vendors and integrate them. I think Connections is a pretty good choice but it depends on where you're coming from and what your current installed base is.

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.

• 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.

Its ability to collaborate, keep track of all the updates in one place is great. The ability to search the content, make every content searchable and the ability to share with the external parties are the most important features.

Going back to its ability to search, I think it is the biggest benefit that you have in your organization, because traditionally organizations tend to keep content in different locations, and what Connections does is, it brings all of that content together and gives you the capability to do full search of that content based on the context that you are looking for.

I think a little more of an integration with the calendaring features would be better. Right now, you don't have a direct integration for doing connections in your personal calendar. That's the feature that people are looking for, so I think that would help.

It is a very stable solution, because we have done both on-premise as well as the cloud part of it, and traditionally, from the Connections standpoint, there have been no outages.

Until now, we haven't had any challenges in terms of its capability to handle the user base.

At times, technical support is a challenge. As long as you get in good hands, you are good.

I was involved in the setup. It is complex. The way IBM sets up its product, you can never find one thing in one place. Everything that you need is not found in one single location, so now you have to start at one place, then say, "Oh, you need to go to another location to find another content," then you come back and you start all over again.

Some of the recommendations are good, but unless they collaborate well together, - as these are all products placed together into one single solution, unless they bring that all together - it will remain complex. That's my thought.

I would definitely recommend it. You need to accept that this solution has a big learning curve for organizations that are not tech savvy. However, once you accept it, you will definitely start seeing its benefits.

Ability to quickly setup a organisation in connections cloud and get them working on the full set of collaboration features - from Communities, advanced file sharing, Blogs, wikis, activity streams and good old e-mail (now via the great new way to work - IBM Verse!).

Training, education and the development of use cases is a key factor in the adoption of any Social business Solution. With IBM connections cloud you are able to get the users active in the solution from day one and start developing Social Solutions that deliver real business outcomes!

Lots!!

Directory of expertise, using communities to connect internal with external parties, merger and acquisition work and most of all - find out things in the company that you did not know where happening!

Communities, File sharing andkeeping up to date via the Connections activity stream.

IBM Connections Cloud - 2 years +

As it is cloud based and easy to onboard user, no real issues encountered!

None

None

Very good!

Excellent

I have used both Jive and MS Sharepoint in the past - I find Connections a lot more intuitive and easy to get people using the solution!

No real issues encountered

mix of both in house and external consutants (with myself as the main co-ordinator).

To get people who have not used any Social technology using the environment on a daily bases.

YEs, Connections On Premise. Due to the IT strategy of Cloud first, we decided to go with IBM Connections Cloud.

Start small, develop use cases with the usser community. Appoint champion users and train them in new ways of work.

Employ an experienced group of consultants who know IBM Connections and IBM Connectiosn Cloud

Our primary use for this solution is B2B and in-house collaboration.

This is a great set of tools that is easy to adapt to different teams.

The most valuable feature is the Activity flow that is used to catch new activities.

The file plugin for Mac need some improvement.

There are multiple applications available for the user.

• The blogs became the main source of information for the organisation and establishing dialogue.
• The forums are the best places to get and provide peer powered support.

Design and user experience.

Design: They present consistent shortcomings across their applications. For instance, when you are in a sub-community, it's difficult to figure out what other sub-communities are a part of the parent community. Whenever you land in a sub-community application, it's difficult to navigate to the parent one.

Another example is how the newsfeed tries to provide you with extra information with a blurb hovering to the right. However, it's actually the same information available on the newsfeed item.

User experience: The many ways in which you could use their different applications is, for most users, simply overwhelming.

IBM Connections can be a really good product for power users. However, for most of my users, the consistent feedback has been about how difficult it is to use and how the interface is poorly designed.

I used the solution for about two years, from 2013 to 2015.

The forums struggled to keep up when multiple users posted information.

I am not aware of any issues regarding scalability.

I would give technical support a rating of 9/10.

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

The setup was rather simple. IT handled most of the implementation. The functional owner designed a series of standard communities for everyone to join.

Using IBM Connections as a standalone product to replace the intranet is not enough. Further investment is required for a landing page, either from IBM solutions, or from any of their partners.

We evaluated Jive and Yammer.

You need a strong governance model and an effective adoption strategy. If possible, do not use the IBM Connections Files app as the main CMS of the organisation.

I like the centralized locations for everything, like file sharing, email, and meetings; having all that in one easy-to-access location versus having several different areas that you have to go out and bookmark, and having to leave the site each time. That might take a little bit longer than having everything together like it is.

The ease of use has definitely improved the way my organization functions. Just having everything in one location makes work a lot simpler. There are less accounts to remember to log into, so people have to remember less passwords.

With Cloud Connections, having it online, accessing it from the internet, being able to get to it from anywhere without having to be on the network is very handy, too.

One thing that I do wish was available - and it sounded like it might be from the general side, but I'm not 100% for sure on that - is, with the Connections desktop plugin, right now, when we copy files over, we have to do it individually and create our folder structure. We can't just copy our folders over and have them all exist.

Scalability seems great from what I've been told and from what I've seen. I've never seen any outages, really, other than some planned maintenance on emails we get occasionally. Other than that, it seems great.

Scalability also seems to be pretty easily accessible. I know our rep seems to be working with us pretty well in licensing if we need to get any more but other than that, I haven't seen any issues with that.

We used technical support a couple times for basic questions, but nothing actual issue related.

I was not involved with the initial installation.

Look at IBM Connections Cloud, just because of the ease-of-use. Again, I don't know how the setup went exactly but it all seems, at least once it is set up, to run very smoothly and fluidly.