HCL Connections Valuable Features
WE
Walter Ebeling
Product Group Lead Warehousing Solutions at Kühne + Nagel (AG & Co.) KG
It provides very potent document sharing with very good integration with the Microsoft desktop and smart phones. It includes a good feature set with Facebook-like features. It provides a very complete feature set if used together with IBM Sametime to replace desktop sharing and meetings. The feature set gives a pretty complete and easy to use social platform. The entry barrier for business users is low with little training needed.
View full review »
it_user506667
Web Project Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
The ability to have all business owners own, author, and manage content and communications is very valuable. I can use Connections and eliminate use of other software/tools, and it greatly reduces my need for IT support for simple requests. If talking about specific capabilities that make this possible, the integration of email and Connect is a huge time saver. With that, the ability to manage your community/email membership saves time. I don’t need to go to some IT staff or process to update community/email membership.
I have other business users in Connections, managing their information and communicating to 11,000 employees dispersed across the United States. I might have taken 30 minutes to train them and get them started. And that 30 minutes has allowed them to own their information, communicate it to all, receive input from all, and respond to that input. Because I spend 30 minutes training someone, I’ve gotten three years where I didn’t have to manage that information for them. Or someone else or some process didn’t have to manage that information.
I sell Connections internally by saying I can do 10 minutes of work in Connect and save an hour in email. I haven’t done a study to prove this, but I bet if I did, I’d save an hour of email for only five minutes of work in Connections, not 10. I use Connect as my knowledge base for employees. Specifically, I use the wiki capability in Connections often. I store my knowledge there.
Here are three examples of wiki pages. The first screenshot was a wiki set up by another employee who is the subject matter expert for the topic. She’s got files and videos stored in Connections, and then she delivers all the info via a wiki. The other two example are mine, and they also show the comment/interactive capabilities.
If I get 100 emails throughout the course of a year, I don’t have to take 5-10 minutes to answer 100 emails. I have that answer, already stored in Connections. The search capability in Connect is great and can be very specific. But even if a user can’t find something, the 30-second email to get someone to that info saves me a lot of time, rather than the 5-10 minutes it would take me to write that same email over and over.
Basically, Connections saves me time. Lots of it.
View full review »it_user616575
Analyst/Programmer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
File sharing is the number one feature. Profiles would probably be second, but I think file sharing, by far, is the most important aspect of it. I can have a document, or whatever live file I want; I can have it everywhere. It can follow me everywhere. It's like our private cloud. Then come the profiles; being able to find people.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about HCLTech, Microsoft, Atlassian and others in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals). Updated: March 2024.
767,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user568380
Director at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Connections is a social business platform whose key value is the richness of the environment, all accessed in one place, including:
- Files
- Communities
- Forums
- Instant messaging
- Activity Stream
- Blogs
- Bookmarks
- To-dos and activities
- Built-in documents
- Spreadsheet and presentation editors
This is where I go, first thing, to do my work. Everything is now in the cloud thanks to Connections.
Some of the most valuable features of the platform are:
- Communities, where we can create online communities for collaboration. This feature enables us to share expertise quickly and easily, and to generate feedback and comments.
- The new Verse email functionality, which is part of the platform, finally gives me a modern email application with a good UI.
- I value the ability to store and share files in the cloud with folder management and tagging. This makes information easier to share and find; together with a generous allowance of 50GB of personal file storage and then an additional 50GB per community (so, effectively I have unlimited space).
RR
Rajesh Ravella
Senior Analyst - Messaging & Mobility at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Communities and activities are very useful for team collaboration and project level communication. This prevents breakdowns and keeps all the information in a centralized location.
View full review »it_user616566
Director of technology at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
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.
View full review »it_user616569
Systems admin at a non-profit with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
View full review »it_user616590
Web Development Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
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_user541287
Senior Enterprise Solutions Architect at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
- 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.
it_user539625
Enterprise Social Network Community Manager at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees
- 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
AH
Andre Horak
Social Business Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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.
View full review »RD
Roland Driesen
Project Manager | Business Consultant | Learning & Development | Managing Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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.
View full review »it_user535224
Director of Digital and Mobile Strategy at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
it_user159693
Senior Manager of Network at a mining and metals company with 10,001+ employees
- Access to platform resources from all over the world
- Blogs
- Fast search of employees/groups/ communities/employees’ profiles
- Each file entered into the system has a label with the time and the name of the person who uploaded the file
- Document download is registered and visible to the system users who downloaded the file, time when it was downloaded. After updating the document, a new version is created, but previous versions are not deleted.
- List of activities to do
- Private communities with access management
- Integration with IBM Notes, Sametime.
All the features above improve collaboration among employees.
View full review »it_user616611
Head of Crewing, HR shore, Staff and Support at Seatrans ship management as
The most valuable feature is definitely Files. We have totally transferred the way we work, or developed the way we work on information. The ability to upload files into the cloud, the sharing options, and, even better, the commenting options and the @ mentions on the file just eases the workflow dramatically compared to using email and sending attachments back and forth.
View full review »it_user616617
It architect for collaboration and mobile at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
View full review »it_user616599
VIP it and security at Imagining business machines llc
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.
View full review »it_user635457
Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
- 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.
it_user616572
Team Lead messaging and collaboration at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
View full review »it_user244470
Social Business Consultant at a integrator with 1,001-5,000 employees
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!
View full review »TÖ
Tomas Öhrberg
IT Support Manager at MAX Burgers AB
The most valuable feature is the Activity flow that is used to catch new activities.
View full review »it_user619791
Collaboration Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
There are multiple applications available for the user.
View full review »it_user616587
System administrator at a wholesaler/distributor with 501-1,000 employees
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.
View full review »it_user616578
Connections administrator
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.
View full review »it_user616560
Technical services supervisor at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
View full review »it_user535221
Lead Consultant with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
it_user500193
Division Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
- 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).
it_user551907
Responsable Technique IT at a tech company with 51-200 employees
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.
View full review »it_user506664
IBM QRadar Specialist at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
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).
View full review »it_user502014
System Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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!
View full review »it_user504069
SAP Portal Architect/Developer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We use the wikis extensively, along with activities for managing projects and sharing information globally.
View full review »it_user636987
IBM Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The ability to sync my files offline and to share them with colleagues or external people is one of the more important functions. Communities are a popular way of combining blogs, wikis, files, and activities centered on a common objective or subject which proves popular and increases collaboration across people/teams. Recently, the ability to collaborate with external people such as vendors, customers, and third-parties was introduced, which allows us to collaborate outside of network in a secure way.
View full review »it_user616593
E-business Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
For us, the most valuable feature is really the threaded conversations, because we don't get a threaded conversation with other tools. We are looking at a two-way dialog and how we can help enable that.
View full review »it_user504210
Digital Workplace & Collaboration Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The most important feature of IBM Connections is that it is a Social Collaboration suite covering nearly all aspects of modern enterprise communication and collaboration. As a comprehensive set of Enterprise 2.0 tools, Connections can serve many purposes in an enterprise and so be useful for many people inside. It is therefore superior to any single-purpose tools that sometimes might be better in specific functions, but are only useful for a small group. The reduction of information silos is one of the most important challenges enterprises are facing today and it can only succeed if everybody in the enterprise is using the same platform for open communication and collaboration.
View full review »it_user615213
CTO with 51-200 employees
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.
View full review »it_user639681
IBM Technical Software Specialist at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The Homepage/Activity Stream keeps you to up-to-date as to what is happening throughout your organization.
I like the ability to create, edit, and share files from your desktop, or mobile app, anywhere, anyplace, with everyone.
View full review »it_user616563
Process consultant at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The status updates and the file components are valuable features. Also, we use the profiles a lot to identify people in the organization, to find new talent and for stuff like that.
View full review »it_user506652
Social Business Advisor at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
I think that the main tools, after file management, are Activities, Community and online documentation management with IBM DOC (embedded in the system). There are many other services such as Blog, Wiki, Forum, Survey, Chat and Conference, Audio/Video, Profiles. Those services are also important, but they are not immediately implemented because other applications or services provide that functionality.
Our customers believe that Activities, Community and IBM DOC are the features that provide particular value.
it_user649998
Sharepoint Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It is the single source of truth that can be shared anywhere. This is the most valuable feature of this solution.
View full review »it_user541275
Rational Rollout at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
The Files feature gives us the ability to store, share and collaborate on documents. This is, by far, the most used feature.
View full review »it_user616596
Services projects and European it at a non-tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is the single quickest way for us to start consolidating all of our files together when we are going to many countries.
View full review »it_user616608
IT Manager at Bank Data
It's easy to use for both developers and end users.
View full review »it_user507975
Chief Solutions Architect at a tech consulting company with self employed
Search functionality and notifications: The search functionality is very well developed and can be easily filtered. All search results take data security into consideration and users will only find data they actually have access to. This functionality also extends fully to the mobile app which is available for both Android and iOS.
File sharing and synchronization over the web to Windows and mobile devices: File sync is a very useful feature that allows users to synchronize files via the Connections system to Windows desktops and mobile devices (iOS and Android) automatically. Similar to how Dropbox or Google Drive would work. This feature is very useful to ensure you always have the latest versions of files available on local devices for off-line/local access.
View full review »it_user616614
Accounting manager at a transportation company with 501-1,000 employees
The most valuable feature is Files, because we are working together with our accounting department in different countries.
View full review »it_user549546
Project Manager at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
- Activity: Because this app offers a lot of possibilities. Our users use this a lot for meetings and do their work in it (Getting Things Done principle and other methods for doing your work such as lean management/agile stuff).
- Communities: To work together with good collaboration. It offers lots of possibilities to collaborate.
- Activity Stream: See what has happened in our network in a short overview, without having to open up all of the tools you are using in collaboration. You don't need mail notifications anymore!
- Wiki: This is a very useful tool for information and means having fewer documents. We use wikis a lot for our intranet (WebSphere portal) and in the communities to inform people about themes and work.
- File sharing: There is no need to mail documents, but rather we can share them in Connections. The possibility to share individual documents with anyone you choose is a great feature in comparison with home and shared drives.
- Forum: For all questions and discussions is great.
Having all features and tools together in one environment is great and gives the users a lot of possibilities to work in the way that want to. We see a great variety of use with these tools.
View full review »it_user478554
Executive Architect at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees
The most valuable feature is communities. You are able to manage your team / organization and also cross-team projects. It is very easy to use and provides a central place for your team.
View full review »it_user134814
Software Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Wikis and Blogs in combination with Activities, I like to work at home, in my office and mobile without thinking about it. I can access the solution through my tablet, iPhone, BB and Browsers.
View full review »
it_user616605
CIO at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
This depends on which department you're operating in as different departments use different features. I use it for projects a lot. If you consider HR, they use it for personnel files, staff policies etc.
The solution is useful for team engagement and team collaborations, so that everyone is working together towards the same objective and we are using the best practices among ourselves, sharing and craft sourcing.
View full review »it_user464814
IBM Infrastructure and IBM Escalation at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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.
View full review »it_user135657
Director at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Fully integrated solution, love the social element of Profiles, Files and Activities all securely accessed on Mobile !
View full review »
it_user616584
IT Infrastructure at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Files, communities, and blogs are the most valuable features.
View full review »it_user539469
Lotus Software Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
All social interaction between users is really great. Plus, I also like the Community feature and that everything is accessible via mobile devices.
View full review »it_user616602
System administrator at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable features of this solution are that it provides a space for team collaboration, sharing, security, and a standard language within the company.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
March 2024
Find out what your peers are saying about HCLTech, Microsoft, Atlassian and others in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals). Updated: March 2024.
767,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Report and find out what your peers are saying about HCLTech, Microsoft, Atlassian, and more!
Updated: March 2024
Popular Comparisons
SharePoint
Atlassian Confluence
Microsoft Teams
Office 365
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
Microsoft 365 Business
Skype for Business
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Report and find out what your peers are saying about HCLTech, Microsoft, Atlassian, and more!
Quick Links
