Google Chat, formerly Hangouts Chat, is a collaboration tool competing with Slack, designed to make it easy for teams to be able to get their work done in one place. From direct messages to group conversations, Chat helps teams collaborate, and with dedicated, virtual rooms to house projects over time — plus threaded conversations — Chat helps users track progress and follow up tasks. Chat currently supports 28 languages and each room can support up to 8,000 members.
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HCL Notes
Score 6.6 out of 10
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Notes from HCL (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in late 2018) is a collaboration platform based on the Lotus platform.
Well suited for businesses of all sizes. HOWEVER, I would say keep the chat groups limited at the departmental level, ensure that your moderator or the individual responsible for the group keeps it on topic, and have your IT team monitor it from time to time. Google Chat gets used so much in our organization that we have rules and regs in our Employee Handbook regarding its proper use (and when used PROPERLY, it can be very effective).
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.
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 Menus are cluttered with extraneous, outdated options and features that modern users will never use, and Preferences are often difficult to navigate for those coming from Gmail or Outlook.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).
The updates, support, general reviews on Google Chat are great everywhere. The development of the features is ongoing and this adds a great value to Google as a big company in the market. Other applications are limiting communication while Google Chat is allowing communication to grow. It is very easy to use it and teach others how to use Google Chat.
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.
It's not perfect. There are occasional glitches, drop-outs, and it takes a bit to get everything loaded and working. But it is significantly better than Zoom or GoToMeeting when you're in instructional settings. I know my teacher friends here like it and the administrators and parents seem to be satisfied too.
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.
I have not needed to contact the support folks for Google Hangouts Chat, so I can't speak to this with any accuracy. The online instructions are fairly clearly written, so it is fairly intuitive to start with. I did not feel the need to use the support people anyway.
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.
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.
Prior to Google Hangouts, our company used Spark. Spark was not integrated into our email, therefore it couldn't be easily accessed in the same browser. With Spark we also couldn't search our emails for keywords in a conversation, searching had to be done manually. The one feature I enjoyed about Spark was a request to get a user's attention: If I had an urgent question and I wanted to ensure the recipient saw my message/question, I would request their attention and the message screen would pop up on their screen.
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.
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.
