HCL Connections Reviews

The most valuable features of Connections would be that it opens up communication silos that previously existed in the company. Instead of everybody working in this little box, it opens it up across the enterprise so that people have the opportunity to discover talents and interests in other areas that may not pertain to their normal job function.

The benefits are, first and foremost, we get to find out exactly what other business units are doing in the company. You work for a company for a long time, but you don't know what everybody else does. You get to find out, "Oh, these are other things that are happening," and it happens in real time. Once someone in a business unit posts something, you get to find out about it if you follow them. Another benefit is that it exposes you to people with other talents and disciplines that are not their normal job function. That's not what they were hired for, but they have that skill set that you can call into play, either as a reference or as a resource.

They seem to be implementing some of what we want in the upcoming versions, like an onboarding wizard. Having an easier way to integrate with other third-party tools would be really helpful. Right now, depending on the tool, it's easier or harder to integrate than it could be. That's probably one of the bigger things.

Support has got to know what they're doing. They got to have a good product, and the product has to work. We've dealt with a number of vendors for products that integrate with Connections. They advertise one thing, and it just doesn't work as advertised. It seems like everyone's in a rush to get something to market without being thorough in their testing and QA. They release a product, and that's something else that IBM is kind of bad about. They release a product that's not quite ready for prime time just so they can say, "Okay, we hit a deadline. We released it on this date." I guess in the backrooms they're thinking, "Well, we'll fix it in the next two quarters." We see the same thing with some third-party vendors.

We've been using it now for, probably, three years.

So far, it's very stable, depending on your implementation of it. We've been at it now for, probably, three years. The stability and the capability is getting better with every version.

It seems to be capable of scaling. We haven't had to scale it that much, because we did a mass rollout all at once, and our company is not growing that fast. I see where the potential for scalability is very good, because of how we built it.

Support needs improvement. The product seems to be released with a lot of bugs. Of course, IBM has multiple layers of technical support. The lower levels of technical support are somewhat clueless about how to support this product, so it takes a lot longer to get to somebody who does know what they are doing than I think it should. That's probably the most frustrating aspect about supporting a product so far. Hopefully they're going to improve that. We've been told that they're implementing different training programs within the infrastructure. It remains to be seen.

We didn't previously have anything else. Through marketing material, we saw what the capabilities are. Management had the foresight to recognize, "Okay, this could change the way that we do business or we do work," and it has.

We didn’t consider any other tools for the connection solution in general.

Do your research. Don't skimp on marketing within the company, in terms of adoption. Invest heavily in adoption strategy, because you can put it out there and it will be great for a week because it's new and shiny. But unless you have a serious plan for adoption, your utilization is going to drop off like a cliff if you don't have a staged plan of keeping adoption rates high and incentivizing people.

IBM Connections Cloud gives us the opportunity to put files in one location for the people to get access to. Also, we use it in the meeting rooms this time, as it helps us with upgrading to software on-premise and its cost. It's an easier solution for us.

The meetings rooms have helped us. It's easier for people to use. It's easier for us to support. They went to the VaaS system on-premise and we didn't have any experience with that. It's just easier to use for us.

For us in the IBM Connections Cloud, we would like to use the capability for instant messages, but we need to have the groups sync up to the cloud from the on-premise, which it doesn't do at this point of time.

Also, with the file sharing option, that is where you could sync a folder; they say that this feature should be coming soon, but we haven't seen it yet.

There's good scalability because there hasn't been any limitations for us as such.

We also have a business partner that supports us. The support has been fine for us. They have helped us with the questions that we've had so far.

For file sharing, we were using Dropbox, which isn't secure, thus we would like to have something different there. With the meeting rooms, like I have mentioned before, the cost of the upgrade and the lack of expertise on the site was the reason we moved to the IBM Connections Cloud.

I was involved in the setup process to a certain degree. It was quite straightforward.

Just understand what's all there and its cost. We haven't moved any files or applications or mails yet, just because of its cost. However, you should understand what's available and what you can use out of it. Don't be afraid to just pick and choose what you need.

When we choose a vendor, we are looking for somebody with whom we can work with and who doesn't speak a language that goes over our heads. In other words, a vendor that speaks our language and that assists us with what we need.

Some of the valuable features in this product are:

• Profiles – It is easy to find people with similar tech skills and reach out to them internally for a project requirement. Project managers find it easy to know who in the organization possesses a skill that matches the requirement.
• Community - Access to projects and their data remains within the group and all other Connections' functionalities are included internally as a feature, which is great.

Initially, only our technical team used this product for mainly two purposes - One as file sharing and the other was Communities. However, now our HR team has also started using it, to know more about the employees and their skill levels.

Development of more customized widgets as per the organization’s requirement is one area, which if improved, will attract even those employees who don't use this product often.

I have used this product for more than four years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would give the technical support a 4/5 rating.

Previously, we also had another wiki solution to manage project documentation for sharing with other teammates. But, we found wikis in IBM Connections can be used in the same way and hence we decided to move out.

As the version of the product moves up, the complexity of setup also increases, with many other features getting added.

This is not something that I manage.

We did not evaluate other options prior to his product.

The infrastructure team needs a skilled, technical person who is familiar with this product.

• Business contacts network: You can define a business network like LinkedIn, but limited to your installation. You can also view the organizational chart inside the tool.
• Communities: One of the best functionality of the product. Complete functionalities.
• Automatic notifications: Users receive notification of all activities done on Connections. When files created, modified, ..., the platform advise users of some of the contents within the function of the role and the past activities. Users can also decide the way in which notifications are sent (they can filter the type of event and also the timing).

Marketing has created a community open to all internal employees where it has centralized all marketing content (brochures, presentations, communications).

Compared to the past, now we have a single point of interest where all content is available, and all employees receive a notification when new content is published. In addition, all employees can provide feedback and a personal impression about all shared content.

File management: File management is a little poor. For example, you don’t have the ability to create a folder or organize the contents of a folder. Some functionalities are available only if the customer also buys the IBM FileNet platform.

User management: Users are mainly on LDAP. There is no way to create a user “on the fly” and to add it to a community or business network. You must track all users on LDAP before interacting with them and this is very boring, especially if you have to interact with external users.

I have used it for two years.

I had some problems on earlier releases; in 4.5, I’ve only noticed some browser incompatibilities.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 8/10.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup has been simple.

Pricing is not so “easy to access”; licencing is for a single user.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

It’s very important to understand what you want to do with “social” before implementing something on the platform.

IBM Connections is a great product, with new functionality each year. It can be integrated with other products easily and you can personalize this product to match with your organization.

For joint ventures, for example, it's easy to merge employees into the same entity group assignment, hierarchy and organization, with mixed rules and the right community and distinct special areas.

I actually work with profiles and identity, and also all the information around entities (not only geographic, but all properties assign to a employee).

My dream: Create a workflow to manage and simplify the lifecycle of a employee across the company...

My entity should be the same if I change companies; only some properties are different, but my links are the same (Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

I have used this solution for seven years, providing assistance and support, deploying social solutions or upgrading versions.

I am certified to deploy complex solutions.

I would rate customer service as follows:

• IBM 6
• JALIOS 6

I would rate technical support as follows:

• IBM 4
• JALIOS 6

We used to deploy Backbase Portal and IBM. I advised the selection of this solution.

It depends on the chosen architecture but initial setup can often be complex for a new user.

I implemented and deployed the solution. You need a good requirements evaluation for design and a good architecture.

Check IBM licensing.

• Search for a good partner who has installed a lot of solutions and multiple integrations with other products. This may not be easy and more skills may necessary.
• Most Connections functionality must be customized and personalized but it is more expensive to customize this product, and the product does necessarily provide the widespread coverage that a customer may seek.
• I developed a personal project to help integrate and interoperate where I can define like a ERP, and My ERP is based on a identity Management and access management much more.

The integration of all tools delivered by the platform itself is the most valuable feature of this product, in addition to its ability to integrate with already available default infrastructure tools within the company (like central directories (LDAP’s), load balancer infra or HTTP infra, which is already in place).

Projects we run within the company are more structured thanks to IBM Connections, our employees have really started to work more openly and projects run within the company are more transparent.

The administration part of the product could be increased. There are, for instance, lots of statistics available for the platform, but you really have to harvest them, as they are available on so many different parts of the product.

It lacks centralized product administration; you have to access different parts of the product. For some administration tasks, you need to be in the web interface of the product; for other administration tasks, you have to be on the command line of the operating system where the product is running, and so on.

Also, the different tools you have to use for day-to-day operations sometimes makes it hard to keep up with the work that needs to be done to keep the product running on a day-to-day basis.

I have used it since the start of the product (January 2007).

The stability is quite high. We have had some crash issues in the past, but IBM Support did a tremendous job for us at the time to find the issues which caused the platform to crash.

The scalability within the product is one of the big plusses, because the underlying infra where the applications are running on is IBM WebSphere. It is one of the best application platforms, which can scale easily in a horizontal and vertical way.

As indicated elsewhere. We haven’t had much interaction with IBM Support, but the times we had to, they really did a tremendous job finding the issues in our environment.

We have used SharePoint in the past, but this product (IBM Connections) is much more a total solution out of the box than SharePoint can deliver, so we migrated all our content from SharePoint to IBM Connections.

The initial setup was quite easy after we had defined the basic parameters the environment had to fulfill.

Regarding pricing, the product is far from the cheapest in the market, but I would advise to never pay the list price. There is a lot of negotiation room from the IBM side. So use that and defend your own position hard!

We used the Gartner “Enterprise Social Platforms” reports to identify the leaders in this market. We used these “leaders” as a list to compare features that were important to use. And so we decided that IBM Connections would fulfill most of our needed functions. At the time we had to make our decision, these were the products in the leader quadrant:

• Liferay
• Jive
• Salesforce Chatter
• IBM Connections
• Microsoft SharePoint

Be very specific on features your business expects form such a platform as this, and then be honest about which products fulfill them the most. Don’t let your IT department decide to buy the product; the business department in your company should make the decision as they are your end users.

IBM Connections is born for collaboration and one of the easiest steps is starting a community with a set of great collaborative, built-in applications and starting to collaborate over a project. When a user starts a community, activity, blogs, files, and wikis will be instantly available for the team community with their intuitive GUI. Users can use the platform from browsers, mobile, or a desktop plugin within a minute!

It increases productivity. One example is using files inside Connections. You don’t have to manually go looking for a file in a folder somewhere. You can search for it with the internal search engine or you can search inside the relevant community.

Connections has a feature named Docs that enables online co-editing of Office documents.

The perfect software doesn't exist, but I think Connections is really a good piece of software with few things lacking. Probably they should also build a Windows Phone client app.

Also, IBM could develop an easy way to install the Connections platform. Currently, many steps are required and involving a skilled IBM Business Partner is mandatory for successful setup.

I've been using Connections for four years.

I have not encountered any deployment, stability or scalability issues.

Pre-installation steps should also include a plan for deployment to size the correct environment.

Nope IBM Connections is running over WebSphere application server so it is usually up and running

Nope, Connections runs over IBM WebSphere Application server so you have only your fantasy as limit, you can cluster Connections in many differents ways

IBM technical support is great.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup is usually quite complex, but Connections is a set-and-forget environment.

An in-house team implemented it, because we are an IBM Business Partner.

I think anyone can find ROI using Connections, but they have to drive users during the initial stages.

Find an IBM Business Partner with experience and start to plan your environment.

We use the wikis extensively, along with activities for managing projects and sharing information globally.

Our productivity has increased by using IBM Connections. For example, an engineer in Asia used to feel disconnected and missed opportunities to contribute. By using IBM Connections, he was able to have visibility into challenges other engineers had in the US. Our US-based engineer was very pleased when he arrived to the office in the morning and saw some options presented by the engineer in Asia.

Our users would like to see more document management capabilities in the base IBM Connections package (without having to install extended components). Users also prefer using a traditional folder structure for organizing content and are not used to tags (might be a learning curve or resistance to change).

Our users are having difficulty grasping the concept of tags and tag clouds. They are used to placing items into folders for organization. I have attempted to explain how tags can provide the same functionality for locating content. I also showed how tags can be associated to one or more tags, which is not possible in a folder structure. I think it was resistance to change more than the inability in understanding tagging.

Without purchasing the additional add-on for document management, Connections offers the ability to make new versions, lock a file,etc. Users would also like to be able to do a check-in, check-out, and co-edit with revision control.0

I have used it for four years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

The technical support is excellent from both our vendor, The Rock Team, and from IBM support. The technical staff at IBM are very knowledgeable and addressed all support calls efficiently and expeditiously. There is always great communication and details provided for all support solutions.

Our prior tool was the SAP NetWeaver Portal. The interface for IBM Connections is much better and is better suited to support organic growth of content in an easier-to-navigate, user-friendly interface. IBM Connections provides better search capabilities for locating content.

The setup was not complex. We did have a bit of a challenge that was overcome in setting up SSO using our Microsoft Windows Active Directory.

We also considered Microsoft SharePoint. After further investigation, we realized that IBM Connections and SharePoint are very different. The social capabilities that promote organic growth among users was the strength that IBM Connections had over SharePoint. We wanted more than SharePoint’s strength with document management and deficiency in social capabilities.

User acceptance is very important. I recommend looking at the processes within an organization and then identify the alignment of IBM Connections tools to support the processes. Then, migrate users into IBM Connections in a phased approach by showing each process area the benefit of using IBM Connections to support their process. User buy-in and acceptance is improved when users can see the immediate benefit, while at the same time discovering the power of IBM Connections for other tasks.