Salesforce Chatter is a collaboration platform with integration into the business process and the ability to conduct actions like approving expense reports and creating support cases from the activity feed itself. Other key features include a mobile application and document management functionality.
[Chatter] is the tool that makes our relations stronger. It provides advanced ways of communication. I have trained my many team members because of the easy features and functions of this tool, It is very user-friendly. Give it a try if you want to improve your relations with your customers. It will surely enhance the productivity of your organization.
Zimbra is great for an email system for a medium or large organization with appropriate IT staffing. The system is easy to use for end-users, and has a fantastic web interface. Unfortunately, it is overly complex, when considering staffing requirements and price, when compared with Office 365 or Google Apps for smaller organizations. For other education customers, it is hard to compete with Microsoft and Google providing their services for "Free" now though
Chatter provides us with a live internal conversation for all to see without the noise that other mediums have i.e. e-mail.
One of the main features that really works well is the 'Groups' that you can join. We have multiple groups set up to not only distribute procedural changes and communicate news etc, but also have conversations around upcoming tasks in the months ahead.
Chatter works really well in instances where we need to look over historical conversations that have been had and the sentiment of those conversations with our shareholders, often using hashtags.
Groups does not have the private messaging functionality. Since most collaboration takes place in Groups, private messaging would allow for relevant conversations to be contained and not reside separately.
On a Group index page, there are two boxes for Information and Description. These content types seem redundant. You could replace both with a content type called About the Group. There could also be another box listing the Owners for quick reference.
On the main index page, the newsfeed has the same look and feel of most social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Jive, IBM Connections, SharePoint. There could be an alternate display of tiles that shows People you interact with most frequently, Files you access most often, most recent Topics, etc. The display could be something like Delve in Microsoft Office 365.
On the main index page in the right rail, it would be useful to have the ability to incorporate RSS feeds to gather outside content. Many departments heavily leverage RSS feeds to compile competitive intelligence and cultivate general awareness.
For user profiles, can we combine Feed and Overview into one consolidated view? It would save users a click to find relevant information about the person. Also, the Contact module should also have the person's phone number for convenience.
The Files feature does not allow for real-time, concurrent document editing. You have to download the document, make your edits, save, and then upload a new version, which only allows for one editor at a time.
The password change is not activated when you access by IMAP, Pop3 or Exchange sync. You have to know that the password change is required and you must go to the website to do so.
The management of mail rules should have more checking options.
There should be more applications compatible with Zimbra, the ones that appear in the Zimlets.
Chatter can fulfill at least 85-90% of our business requirements in an easy-to-use platform. Usability is a key requirement and we have had our share of bad usability experiences. In our experience, even the most novice users were able to pick up Chatter in a relatively short amount of time with little/no assistance.
It is easy to use but the impact of it feels like it is a bit antiquated. It does not feel collaborative and real time. Chatter is more akin to email versus Slack or Hangouts where it feels like problems are being solved as you are communicating.
If I ever came to a situation where i needed help they do a very good job of getting back to us quickly to explain our error or why we are not seeing something. The support is quick to help provide groups or teams if you seek. Fortunately it is user friendly so I rarely need support
Overall, we were satisfied with the implementation. We perhaps should have spent more time consulting with Zimbra or others regarding best practices but as we got to know the system better we were able to make changes relatively easily after the fact.
Skype is used more for audio calls. Chatter is used to track updates on items of interest in Salesforce. Chatter is deeply integrated with other Salesforce products. No other competing products come close. Slack is a traditional project management tool. So it does not compete with Chatter. Because of its close integration with Salesforce, it is a unique tool for Salesforce users.
We selected Zimbra because it has a lower cost in the market, offers more development features for its open source, has a very easy to use interface and adjusts to the needs of the company.
Since all of our ROI studies and strategies are performed at the corporate level, I'm really not sure what positive or negative impacts Zimbra has had on our overall business objectives. I can say that at least one positive impact it has on my business objectives, in the medical record department, is the ability to be as paperless as possible.
