HCL Connections Reviews

The ‘Community’ feature is the most valuable. It is a good place to gather a web home page, wiki, blog, forum, file library, bookmark, tag, or @ notice.

It is a good product for making improvements across departments and in communications. People can share knowledge and files, and other people can search and learn.

• It is not easy to create a company’s Intranet home page since the home page is the first page the user lands on. IBM Connections can create many communities which link to the home page, but not the homepage itself.
• You still cannot search the contents of files inside, like words in MS Word, PowerPoint, or Adobe PDF.
• There is no project tracking function. The ‘Activity’ function is not a good feature. We need a Trello-like project management function for agile management methodology, but not only the current ProjExec function.

We have been using the solution for about eight years.

We did not encounter any issues with stability.

We did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give the technical support a rating of 8/10.

Previously we used IBM’s TeamRoom. We changed because IBM changed the strategy from TeamRoom to Connections.

The setup is not complex. But if you add other products together, like Sametime, it will need more customization. If people use the SaaS version, called IBM Connections Cloud, then it is straightforward.

The price should be lower. The pricing model should count concurrent users, not named users. Otherwise, a large company will be reluctant to use it as there are too many named users.

We evaluated Slack, MS Office 365, Facebook's Workplace, and Google G-Suite.

I was looking for an integrated product which is easy to use for a low price. Slack has the ‘Intranet home page’ functions, too. The per user price is higher than IBM Connections Social Cloud.

My company uses Office 365, and we can therefore use SharePoint, Yammer, and Teams for free because of our Exchange server subscription. But those functions are not integrated like IBM Connections.

SharePoint is very difficult for end-users to create Intranet home pages or departmental home pages.

Facebook's Workplace is easy to use as a consumer version, but no blog/wiki is available, like IBM Connections. But its price is the lowest.

I cannot successfully try Google G-Suite. For the initial setup step, G-Suite asked me to log in with my domain name server to prove that I own the domain name (my company’s domain name). However, I am an evaluator, and not an IT administrator, so I cannot try it.

IBM Connections is a good product with many functions. People should refer to the best practices to guide the company in how to use it. For example, when to use Blog, Wiki, Forum, Activity, Files, or Bookmark.

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.

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.

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.

The entire suite of features is very important to me. The three features I use the most are communities, activities, and files.

IBM Connections Pink is a journey and not a destination!

IBM Connections Pink means leaving the IBM WebSphere backend and moving to the Docker.

IBM Connections Pink means you can choose where your application and data resists, i.e., either on the local, private, public cloud or a mix of all those.

IBM Connections Pink means leaving Java and moving to Node.js.

IBM Connections Pink means leaving DB2/Oracle/MS SQL and moving to a single, more powerful database platform - MongoDB.

IBM Connections Pink means introducing IBM Watson as your personal assistance.

IBM Connections Pink means a new way of collaboration, like you have never seen before.

There is no more a discussion of WHERE to store documents and where to find your corporate information. It is centrally stored and has the perfect search functionality. It’s easy to find.

The ability to use it as a hybrid solution. IBM has started the Connections PINK journey, and the hybrid option will be part of it.

We have been using the solution for six years.

There were never any issues with stability. It’s fully clustered.

When you choose to use it on-prem, you have to decide the scalability based on the usage. It can be easily expanded by adding more servers. The cloud is another story and is always perfect in performance.

I would give technical support ratings as follows:

• Level 1: 6/10
• Level 2: 8/10
• Level 3: 10/10

Level 1 sometimes seems as if they are part of a call center. When they transfer the call to Level 2, we see that the support gets better.

Level 3 is comprised of specialists most of the time, and sometimes even developers. I often ask for Level 3 directly in the initial call.

I am a true IBM enthusiast, so the answer is NO. But I am aware of other products and have seen them. Still, I would choose IBM Connections.

The latest two versions are easily to install and are well documented.

IBM is still cheaper in the end. IBM Connections runs out-of-the-box. Other vendors need customizations in order to get what you need.

I am part of an IBM business partnership, so other vendors are not an option.

Connections will be shipped soon and contains Orient Me, a new dashboard with IBM Watson technology. See Watson as your personal assistant and whom who you can get advised in your daily work.

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.