HCL Connections Reviews

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.

Connections is a full-featured enterprise social network solution. Below are some of the features most used by our employees:

• Files and document management, including file sharing and libraries
• Employee profiles
• Communities
• External communities
• Blogs
• Status posts
• Activities

Connections, with its file sharing and lightweight document management capabilities, has helped us reduce the volume of email and network file usage.

Ideally, the product will increment advances from consumer social networks and file sharing tools sooner, as users expectations are formed by the software they use at home and on their devices.

We have used IBM Connections since early 2013, beginning with version 4.0. In 2015, we upgraded to version 5.0. Throughout, we have used the on-premises solution.

In 2016, we extended the platform to external users via external communities.

We have not had any stability problems.

We have not had any scalability problems.

We used a variety of business partner support models and have been pleased with the support.

Prior to Connections, we did not have an enterprise social network solution.

Like any major software implementation, the initial project required planning, resource allocation, vendor management, and communications.

Learn and understand the different product offerings and pricing models and note the difference between cloud, hybrid, and on-premises solutions.

We evaluated Jive and SharePoint.

Do your research and look for the solution that best fits your organization. Ultimately, enterprise social network adoption will be about culture and fit, and not the technology.

We have Connections 4.5, which is an older version. It does have some features that help people to collaborate in the same community.

There are newer versions that are integrated with Watson and some other features, and that might bring a lot of valuable features. For example, you can really collaborate in multiple channels, using Connections, so whether it's cognitive collaboration, or file or content collaboration, it makes it much easier.

From the sharing perspective, it is very clunky. It's very hard to share files and very hard to share content. It is not intuitive in the way it is. It doesn't provide the documentation baseline collaboration, so we're actually moving away from Connections. There are newer versions, but in today's world, with the version that almost everybody uses, it's very, very hard to use.

It's stable.

It's scalable.

I don’t personally use it, but the company uses support all the time.

We needed some collaborative software and space, and IBM is our shop. So, you know what they say, “even our blood is blue”; everything's IBM. Apparently, it didn't make it all the way, so we actually are moving to Microsoft.

I wasn’t involved in the initial setup.

Go with the latest version and get everything integrated.

It is the single quickest way for us to start consolidating all of our files together when we are going to many countries.

Communication is a benefit. The challenge with it is whether or not it's a monetary benefit.

There's nothing pressing for us about Connections itself at the moment that we are desperate for that we don't already see in version 6. The biggest benefit for us will be nested folders. Until we get nested folder support, folders within folders, we can't move away from the historical file stores on Windows.

We have it on premise, so we control the stability. We have had issues with tuning and configuration. The best practice isn't always clear about how to configure it and make it work when it scales. We control the tin, but I'd say that probably there's a gap at the moment in best practice recommendations.

When we went from 1,000 users to 2,000 users, we hit some problems and then it required a lot of retuning and reconfiguration.

When you get to the right person in technical support, they are very good. The challenge is finding the people who understand it. There are probably about 50 people around the IBM world that can deal with the level of detail we sometimes go into but getting hold of them is quite challenging.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

The product itself is good, probably best in its class still, but the solution brings it down. They don't approach it as delivering a solution to a customer. They look at it as a product that then you work with. And they're making a big mistake there.

Get a good partner that understands how to implement it and don't expect that IBM can respond quickly enough. Make sure that if you buy the product and you use the product, that you've got a partner that can fully manage it for you. Don't expect there to be rapid releases. If there are gaps in functionality, be very clear that you probably won't get them within 18 months.

When selecting a vendor, trust is the most important criteria.

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.

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.

Files, communities, and blogs are the most valuable features.

There is interconnectivity with all the employees of the enterprise. The possibility to share files in a unified way helps our organization. The same file can be accessed by all the employees of the enterprise just in one place.

We are watching the new IBM Connections version 6 right now; it's working right now. It would be helpful to have more interfacing of all the IBM platforms.

The stability is very good.

Scalability is also very good.

Just do it and go to the Cloud version.

Certifications are the most important criteria while selecting a vendor. The vendor has to be really helpful, stay close and work together with us.

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.