Small World Labs Community is a hosted collaboration and social networking platform with easy drag & drop modification capabilities. Small World Labs offers implementation and community engagement services, plus an open API for integration with other systems. Small World Labs has clients across industries, but a high concentration in the nonprofit area.
Small World Labs was acquired by Personify Corp in 2016.
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Webex App
Score 8.1 out of 10
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The Webex App brings together Webex Calling, Meetings, and Messaging into a single application, fostering collaboration and unlocking more productive ways to work.
You can tell from the CEO and all staff that this is a very competent company that wants you to succeed with integrity. There is a strong support and services team that works collaboratively with us to make sure we are always getting what we need. They provide 24x7 emergency support, online ticket support, email support, a client community, and the ability to call and talk to the same account manager or community consultant every time (I even have Mariano's skype and he replies on weekends!). They recently launched a client community - so they are now even practicing what they preach. Our questions in the client community are always answered quickly.
The biggest use case I have for Webex is the public and private Spaces feature. It is so handy to have a single place where I can collaborate with team members on a single project. We can chat about new ideas and share files just on that specific project. That way I am not having to search email, or a Sharepoint site or a network drives for files. And I don't have to search through a separate chat log for ideas for this project. Add to that that I can use the Webex app on my PC, Mac, iphone and Android tablet and that makes it the killer app.
It's easy to use. The admin panel has a number of drag and drop options to modify the experience
Flexibility. There are a large number of standard block features that can be added to areas. In addition, each dynamic block as a number of settings that allow you to tailor the experience you want to create. You can do this without being a programmer.
Personalization. There are good tools that allow you to personalize the experience based on whether users are logged in or not, whether they are in particular segments (which we can create) or recommendations based on information the user has provided about themselves.
Mobile. Small World Labs has a really great way of doing mobile. They give you a drag and drop interface for designing the mobile environment so there is a lot of flexibility with this. We are currently turning this module on.
Integration with our Association Management System (AMS) didn't go as smoothly as I had wished. Having said that all of the issues with that integration have been addressed.
Because the platform is updated so frequently you need to stay on top of what is available to you and your end users or you may miss out on key functionality releases.
From the first conversation and beyond, it has been a pleasure working with Small World Labs. Their staff are genuinely interested in understanding our business and our goals, and actively make recommendation on continued improvement and long-term strategy. All of their staff demonstrate a clear understanding of the product and when to expect new features. Furthermore, their CEO, Michael Wilson, is more than competent and has proven to be an industry expert. He understands both the technical side and the community strategy side of the business. In fact, we have already initiated a project to build a second community with Small World Labs for a separate business unit
I don’t have access to video features.) In an age when our smartphones do everything but call our friends, family, or clients, it’s refreshing to have a desktop app that can make calls in the smartphone’s place. It seems appropriate in a time when we’re all worried about the robots rising and taking over the world. Why not transfer the functionality of a telephone to the same computer where we program those world-dominating robots? It’s practical. Cisco Jabber takes the classic idea of making calls with a phone and puts it in the same place where we spend most of our worktime. This frees up desk space, as well as keeps the smartphone available for what it was invented to do: take Instagram photos. Not to mention, because it has its own number, it makes it easier to contact clients without having to give them your personal phone number. Need to make a call, but you don’t want to share your home phone? Cisco Jabber makes that easy. And best of all, because you call through your computer, all you need is a microphone to speak and speakers to listen, and you never have to pick up the phone at all. If you hate having sweaty ears, then Cisco Jabber is your app of choice. Note: Because I have access to phone features only, and Cisco Jabber has more available that I can’t use, I can see where it may also be a pro for business owners that Cisco apparently allows custom features availability for users, depending on roles.
Webex is quite usable, and it is, in fact very easy to use as well. You don't need a lot of documentation to learn how to use the app as it's mostly self-explanatory. The user interface is easy on the eyes, and people can see buttons without issues. Overall, WebEx's front-end design is great and I don't have much issue with it.
I would say every time I open it, it is there, there are times that our users have to sign out and back in to get it to work or even do a full exit as the app will disconnect from the controlling the desk phone, but some easy steps to sign-out or fully exit the app gets the user back up and running quickly.
Software loads and runs well. I like the ability to run the full app version, or, just run through a browser using a lightweight webex experience. In a pinch, this ability has saved my bacon when I had to connect in an emergency on a borrowed phone or computer
The people at Small World Labs are very accessible. I can email, open a ticket, or call and they are there. I'd also point out that senior management is quite available too. We frequently have talks about potential strategies and new things we might be doing, which is great. I think the whole organization genuinely likes what they do and likes helping us succeed.
The support team is quick in reverting to the issues faced, and it has multiple language support, which would be very helpful for some instances. Their expertise in resolving queries is instantaneous. Most of the common lags/issues in the application are identified and fixed with regular updates.
In-person training is more ad-hoc based on if they are traveling to you or you are going to visit them. I imagine that if I paid for in-person training that it would be set up as well, but I've just used the standard training that comes with the initial set up and ongoing support.
I am very satisfied with my experience with Webex App in online training. The creation of the event is very easy with the possibility of scheduling it in advance. The management of participants, organizers, and animators is complete. The invitations are automated and by simply using emails we can create all the schedules of the training session
Very easy to create. All operations are done without any problems with our business growth. All people like the experience including me as an instructor. The tools that WebEx App offers us are very complete for working in a virtual classroom, whether it is sharing the screen, the different display modes, the whiteboard, or even the scoring tools on the screen, it allows me to do my job as an instructor as if I was face to face with the participants.
We had staff turnover at our own organization during the implementation. We were able to get the community up and live in a good timeframe even though that happened and we had to switch some people around for managing the project on our side.
There was quite a bit of back and forth with TAC and Cisco Reps to get it fully up and running but we did get there. Some of which had to do with documentation was not fully understandable. But with Cisco TAC we were able to get fully up and running.
We evaluated a few different community platform vendors over the course of a couple of months. I believe we also evaluated Jive, Lithium, KickApps, and Powered.
A lot of drops from calls/meetings frustrated me and my customers in some cases, but with Webex App, I see very less (or even null) drops, even when I am streaming HD content through my camera, even when I connected with the support team for other products for an explanation, they blame it on ISP even though my ISP gives around 200 Mbps speed, Webex App is miraculously never "affected" by ISP speed.
Once everything is in place on the back end getting Webex on a user's PC is now very easy and with single sign-on, users are able to sign in without having to remember another password. Just make sure you have all the user settings in CUCM, CUC set right, and that they have the needed licenses in Webex Control Hub.
Our community has been very active since the re-launch of our site. Have seen some increases in member engagement.
Feedback from our membership has been nothing but positive since we transitioned off of our older Sharepoint community. Look and feel and ease of use have been real pluses for our members.
Having the Small World Labs community is allowing us to be more creative with the way we integrate our community into all aspects of our online presence, web-site, social media, etc.
Cisco Jabber helped us develop a Business Continuity Plan in case of emergencies.
It allowed our employees to answer their office-phones remotely.
It saved us a 10.000$ investment every 4 years on the desk phones for only the Turkey office, possibly much higher figures on the global scale of Hilti.
