Notes from HCL (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in late 2018) is a collaboration platform based on the Lotus platform.
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Planview AdaptiveWork
Score 6.8 out of 10
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Planview AdaptiveWork is a web-based collaborative work management software. Planview AdaptiveWork enables users to connect employees and partners and create documents, reports and specialized workflow automation. Planview AdaptiveWork is designed to work across multiple teams to enable cross-company task, project, and resource management.
I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
If you have a need for tracking projects and keeping the teams on the same page with the status and updates within a project, Planview AdaptiveWork works well. I do like how discussion posts automatically go to folks email addresses and every note is stored within the project. I also like the flexibility of reporting and configurations that can be made. Depending on how you use the system and what your needs are, the configurations can sometimes impact each other and it's not automatically known what the impacts will be unless you read through each configuration that has to do with your problem. It would be great if the configurations were more user-friendly instead of easy for people with configurations backgrounds. It's not always apparent which formula you should use for what you need - and the formula options require some training or some experience in coding to understand immediately. If the configurations could be "dumbed down" a bit and then warnings for impacts to other configurations before being saved, that would be helpful.
Notes' backwards compatibility sometimes gets in the way. Menus are cluttered with extraneous, outdated options and features that modern users will never use, and Preferences are often difficult to navigate for those coming from Gmail or Outlook. We have greatly simplified this via Policies, but users still find it daunting to go through all the options that are available.
The IBM Notes client for Windows & Mac is essentially the Eclipse Java development platform...so it is HUGE. Performance initially was very slow but IBM has done a good job of speeding things up. As IBM moves more toward cloud-delivered applications, this will not be as much of a problem.
Notes and Domino can be complex to manage for administrators who are more accustomed to ActiveDirectory, Group Policy, etc. Editing a notes.ini file to add a feature, or working with XML files by hand to create a SmartUpgrade kit can be daunting to those coming from more modern administrative roles.
Some users claim to "hate" Notes mail. While I have heard this less and less over the past 10 years, we have had 3rd party software offer plugins to Outlook and it's rare to see any for Notes.
The client update process should be automated more. I would like to see the Notes client update quietly and quickly more like an Adobe software update. If an update fails it should automatically try again without prompting the user over and over.
Notes multiple language spell checking is a downloaded add-on Java-based resource that has to be deployed in a convoluted way that is difficult for users to grasp. Therefore any foreign language spell check updates must be done individually per Notes client by IT, which is unfortunate. I would prefer to see that be a "live download" update option for users to get directly from IBM (don't make me download it and put it on my network).
Planview AdaptiveWork's ability to create relations between work estimates, resources, and time is one of its strengths but also one of its drawbacks. The average user is a little less considerate of the way these things interact with each and the automatic way in which Planview AdaptiveWork will affect one or the other can occasionally create a confusing scenario if the user is unaware of how changing one will affect the other
I've been in IT business and as a Programmer/Developer for 20+ years with too many programming languages experiences/back ground (C/C++/Visual Basic/Basic Program/Unix/COBOL/Java). Also with 18+ years with Lotus Notes/IBM Domino, I am still and always think Lotus Notes is the best RAD platform available!. When the time where resource is very limited and the expectation is very high and the turn around is too short, IBM Domino/Notes is the platform to use and it's the only choice available.
I give my renewal of this product a 9. It's only because we never know what product may come out next and how other factors in our office political environment may cause impact upon this. If I always had my way, this is what we'd settle on as our de facto project management system.
Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
It is easy to configure, intuitive. The customization process is in some ways better than Salesforce.com. It has a great UI. It does however depend on how it's implemented.
The design of it is generally fine, however the ability to data upload people from a spreadsheet is an obvious miss.
Sometimes it is slow when everyone is entering their time on Fridays or Mondays but other than that we rarely see downtime and maintenance notifications are well in advance.
Most Ancillary Pages: Quick to Reasonable (By "ancillary" I mean lesser used/master data maintenance pages - e.g. People, Customers, Individual Tasks, Milestones, etc.)
Work Plan (with 100 sub items): Reasonable to Slow
I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
It's a good experience overall. Clarizen was useful when needed. It's mostly needed for advice on how to do more sophisticated actions or how to change something that was set up administratively. It's seldom used otherwise. The product consistently works, the documentation is acceptable, and the generally intuitive product is easy enough for most staff to pick up without much issue.
• We worked with a Project Manager on their side. He was very good about developing a project plan to hit our goal. I think we had weekly or twice weekly calls – very steady cadence over 3 month period. • Their PM skills were great – kept us on task. For the last week, they sent 2 people on site and they did training for power users. After that a couple of them revisited here
Our trainer, Alex, is exceptional and knows the product really well. I swear he must have wrote the product himself! His manner with training is very easy going, gives you homework that is applicable to what you need to learn and stages it correctly for you. It was a pleasure to be trained by him.
Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
I performed the implementation with our Clarizen provide trainer, who knew the product 100% and it went quickly and without a problem. It was a pleasurable process without the problems other software implementation often encounter. Kudos to the Clarizen team for making this a worry free process for their clients because it is worry free.
Outlook has been considered for years as a replacement platform. Pricing and support staff made it prohibitive. Our long-time use of Microsoft Office productivity suite naturally led us to consider the adoption of Office365. A recent investigation told us that Azure Cloud services propel an O365 solution to the forefront. Early adopters in international divisions have paved the way for Azure and O365.
Planview AdaptiveWork was the right size, at the right price point that fit our customization and integration flexibility. It is intuitive to use but allowed us to add complexity as our needs grew
Over the years, we have lost countless hours of productivity from the thousands of crashes we have experienced.
One benefit of IBM Notes is that it is very simple to train a new user on. Many people prefer and are familiar with Google tools, but those that use IBM Notes have very little trouble acclimating themselves.
Time tracking, of course, has a big impact on ROI, as we can see what and how much time is spent on certain projects and clients, therefore better letting us scope and forecast future projects. That said, this is not something that is individual to Clarizen. The same goes for any time tracking software.
