Bitrix24 is a local-hosted or cloud-based social intranet and project management platform that also contains core HR (HRMS) and CRM features. Bitrix24 also provides time management services and employee self-service.
$49
per month 5 Users
OpenText Dimensions CM
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Dimensions CM is Software Change and Configuration Management for Agile development, developed by Serena Software and now sold by OpenText.
Bitrix24 is highly beneficial for teams that are geographically dispersed or working remotely. Its real-time communication tools, including instant messaging and video conferencing, enable seamless collaboration regardless of physical location. The centralized document management feature ensures that team members can easily access and collaborate on shared documents from anywhere, facilitating efficient teamwork in a remote or distributed environment.
Serena CM is well suited to highly controlled, audited, and process driven environments. It will allow strict segregation of duties, and change traceability. If implemented correctly it will help you quickly build trusts with your auditors. It is also well suited to environments that require constant branching and merging. Due to the complexity of the product and learning curve for your development and operations team it may be overkill in a small shop with loose rules
Code Promotion: Dimensions CM allows supervisors to control changes to code, in that they delegate requests to developers, and act as a gatekeeper prior to promoting to the next environment. This functionality is configurable so you can set up a workflow that best fits the structure and requirements of your own company.
Code Repository for changes and versioning: Code can be checked out by item or by synchronizing folders. Code revisions can be compared against other revisions or work files. Item histories show which developers made which modifications, and which supervisor and operations personnel were involved in assigning the request and promoting the code to each environment. Additionally a pedigree will show a stream diagram which graphically displays branches and merges.
Deployment: Serena Change Management offers help automating deployment including integrations with SVN and Jenkins. Its newer versions also have a powerful graphical deployment automation tool (Serena Deployment Automation- SDA). It comes with a certain amount of licenses built-in. If you have a many nodes to deploy to there will be separate licensing costs for that.
It's user interface can use some work. Although it doesn't take as long as some other software to learn, there is still a bit of a learning curve when it comes to day to day usage.
Bitrix offers a lot of features. It would be nice to have those features laid out in an easier-to-read layout, versus the long list at the side of the page.
It's mobile app functionality is quite limited. It can be difficult to work with other team members, solely off of their mobile app.
The only major negative that I have encountered with Serena CM product is that the very power and flexibility of the tool means there is a risk that you will make a mess of things. In other words it gives you plenty of rope to tangle yourself with. I recommend careful, well thought out deployments implementing the built in roles and workflows that can be turned on and configured, using a consistent methodology.
My experience with the Serena help desk support has not been impressive. Though reasonably polite and diligent, the technicians were well trained, and often gave bad advise and terrible scripts. On several occasions I had to rewrite scripts they have me; if I had run them as provided they would have caused even more difficulties than the problem I was trying to solve. I speak of the support in the past tense because I conditioned myself not to call them, it was usually just easier to solve nay problems my self. They do have a good account management team though, and for any major issues you can go thru them.
It is a time-saving CRM that will help save time by using one application for all your business needs. Our brain sees colors, images, drawings, it is very visual, and so is Bitrix24. You can plan visually and easily see how everything is progressing. It has tasks, projects management, chat and video, CRM (as you know), visual staff structure, calendar, shared drive, mobile app. You can't ask for anything better out on the market for what you get with their free version and also their step-up plan is $20/month, all the way up to $200, they have a plan for your business. Get your free account and try it out for a few weeks.
The absolute worst! Your only contact method is via the paid version and via a chat window. They will take days to answer and when they finally do answer, they will provide nothing but a half baked canned help file.
In fact, I use both, but in different ways, monday to control the internal agenda, Bitrix for all other parts within the company, such as task control, chat with employees and with calendar also for control in two systems. Bitrix is more complete and has many more features, but its purpose is also different from monday.
Serena CM is superior to Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) in overall functionality, but does not have very good native integration with Microsoft. Therefore in a Microsoft centric shop with no audit needs ,TFS would be better. Otherwise I would choose Serena CM
Serena has facilitated our annual completion of various audit and technology control certifications. These certifications make a huge difference to our company's reputation and bottom line.
