Connections from HCL Technologies (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in 2018) is a collaboration tool and employee digital workspace with key features like social analytics, blogs, document management, and a social network.
N/A
Miro
Score9 out of 10
N/A
Miro is a web-based Collaborative Whiteboard platform that provides teams with an infinite digital canvas for visual planning, diagramming, and workflow mapping. The platform integrates a spatial user interface with automated drawing tools and natural-language processing (NLP) to structure freeform ideas into defined project workflows and database schemas.
$10
per month per user
Pricing
HCL Connections
Miro
Editions & Modules
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1. Free - To discover what Miro can do. Always free
$0
2. Starter - Unlimited and private boards with essential features
$8
per month (billed annually) per user
3. Business - Scales collaboration with advanced features and security
$16
per month (billed annually) per user
4. Enterprise - For work across the entire organization, with support, security and control, to scale
contact sales
annual billing per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HCL Connections
Miro
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
Monthly billing also available at $10 per month for the Starter plan, or $20 for the Business plan.
IBM Connections is well suited for larger organizations that need an internal social networking tool and are willing to deal with IBM and the complexity of the software. It is less appropriate for smaller organizations and those who don't want to deal with the complexity, or IBM's awful customer service and prices.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We work on a lot of materials across different media. Sketches could be on real paper and later scanned, or on iPad and photoshops. Prototypes could be digital CAD models or 3D-printed models and later captured with cameras. Renderings be in another programs. So having Miro as whiteboard and being able to put all kind of materials (in forms of pictures or links) in one place and arrange them in a structural way is a huge productivity advantage for us.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
The plugin for MS Office/Explorer has made saving and sharing working documents extremely convenient for me and my close colleagues
The newsfeed feature conveniently aggregates updates from the communities/people you follow. It's nice not to have to jump from community to community to see what's going on in the organization
The various apps can be used for several purposes. A little creativity goes a long way when establishing what type of information the apps can be useful for communicating
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
The lack of a note-taking tool became a bigger and bigger issue as time went on. Our pilot users felt Connections was a natural place to take and share meeting notes – including photos, drawings, recorded audio, etc. – and were always frustrated that there was no easy, organized way to do that. We tried using a Blog, Wiki, etc. but nothing really resonated as a good solution for this.
The Wiki tool is weak, providing rigid structure but with few options. A Community can only have a single Wiki, for instance. Wikis are weak in the mobile app as well; they’re not even easy to navigate. Users ended up ignoring Wikis completely despite our efforts to get them to convert documents like guidelines, policies, procedures, handbooks, etc. into Wiki form.
The Windows Explorer plug-in was useful but required a lot of manual intervention to setup. For instance, once a user joins a Community in Connections, the Community also has to be manually added to the Explorer plug-in so the user can find, open and edit files with it. We felt this process should be much more automated.
Tagging is only relevant in the web UI and, to a lesser extent, in the mobile app. However, in the Windows Explorer plug-in, Tags are not usable at all making it difficult to find things that were easy to find in the web UI.
IBM Docs was not included in the on-premises deployment; it was an additional license so we did not test it. Documents, mainly Microsoft Office files, are still the single most common way our user community creates, shares, edits and presents information. That proved to be a major gap for our users, and slowed user adoption considerably. We considered testing it, but IBM Docs would only work for about half of our users so we found ourselves wondering if we really wanted to support two document editing platforms. IBM Docs also offers no way to work offline as far as we could tell. This also meant we would need to keep licensing Microsoft Office which is not cheap.
Consulting costs are high because the back-end environment is complex. Installing, administrating and even patching Connections is a fairly complex process. We needed to hire consultants to install our test environment and any major upgrades would’ve required additional consulting fees. Any 3rd party add-ons we looked at were highly technical in nature meaning…you guessed it, more consulting costs.
Administrating IBM Connections requires editing XML files in a specific, secure way that is typically done in a console. I love consoles as much as the next admin, but when you only use a console once every 2 months it means looking up all the documentation and re-educating yourself. A single change could take me 2 hours to implement. 3rd party admin dashboards do exist, at an additional cost, but IBM really should provide a much easier way to manage the environment.
The lack of in-person or online training courses, materials, videos, etc. really discouraged a lot of users. The only decent training we could find (marketing videos aside) was a single video series on Lynda.com which, of course, was an additional cost. In the end that video didn’t really help our users much beyond introductory concepts.
IBM includes reporting, but it’s a massive Cognos system requiring some serious hardware and Cognos expertise. We had neither, and would have ultimately opted for a 3rd party add-on for reporting and statistics.
An often overlooked concern is eDiscovery. Our contracted eDiscovery service extensively works with various ECMs, but had no idea how they would handle Connections data. The cloud version of Connections offers an add-on for eDiscovery, but as far as we could tell IBM offered nothing for on-premises deployments.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Sometimes locating information on a bigger board is quite difficult as the information starts to look less sorted. So there can be a little bit of improvement in terms of bigger boards
Complex features are hard to navigate and implement without a proper hand. A little bit of intuitivity can help fix that, especially for beginners
In my opinion, a few more formatting tools for a legal workflow would really be a great add on
Connections has continued to more than meet our needs from a collaboration point of view and we are currently working on integration with our IBM Websphere portal platform to provide an integrated collaboration solution. This scenario will provide our users the best both products have to offer in a single interface.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Miro saves my day. I would spend at least 4x more time on documenting my projects and work without this tool. It support my day to day role and helps me be successful while saving my capacity. It is not only very easy to start working on it without additional training required, but also adapts to any use case that I might need to implement
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Connections combines all the most useful abilities from various social networks. This makes it useful of course, but it also reduces user adoption time initially by allowing users to get comfortable with basic features. Once they are comfortable, it's easy for users to start exploring. They find new people in the organization to contact, new sources of information, etc. Before you know it, about half of the users are contributing back in some form -- and all with little or no training needed by IT.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
What elevates usability for me is how easily the software keeps everyone on the same page during the live session. When a team member is explaining a complex diagram, I can simply click on their avatar to instantly track their cursor and see the exact same perspective they are looking at, which is awesome.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Once Connections was installed, patched, etc. it was ALWAYS up. We only had to bring it down for OS updates to the servers. That seems to be typical of anything that runs on WebSphere; it's bulletproof and could probably run for months and years if the underlying OS didn't require constant patching.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I have not encountered events where Miro is not available. It is quite nice and reliable to be fair, even on my freemium version (startup) I don't have reliability issues. It does have sometimes where the screen refresh or "freezes" or "consumes a lot of data" and we have to rewind windows and the likes, this instances are very less
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
IBM Connections web UI, mobile app (data sync to / from the device), and file transfer speeds were almost always very fast. It was rare for a slow-down of any kind, even when doing searches.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I took the loading quickly to be related to availability which I commented on before, so ditto with those comment on load time here. Although to reemphasize, Miro doesn't crash or just refuse to load like some other programs. The weak point of Miro for me is integration of files like Word, Excel, or PowerPoint (especially the later two). When you embed these, it gets slow, and complicated to bring them up while you're in the application.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
IBM Support has ALWAYS been quick to respond, regardless of the product. Even first level techs seldom provide "canned" responses and they really try to help. If they can't help, they don't wallow around but engage the right person immediately. It's very rare that the first level tech needs to escalate, and even more rare when they do escalate and the next person engaged cannot solve it. We have been more than satisfied with IBM support's quick and professional responses to our issues.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We have never reached out to or contacted support because Miro's platform has been incredibly intuitive and user-friendly. The comprehensive resources available, such as tutorials, documentation, and community forums, have provided all the guidance we needed. The seamless integration with our existing tools and the reliability of the platform have ensured that we rarely encounter issues that require external assistance. This self-sufficiency has allowed us to focus more on our projects and collaboration without interruptions. Overall, our experience with Miro has been smooth and efficient, eliminating the need for additional support
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
There was a series of webinars which Miro hosted with our organization that went over the basics, then progressively became more advanced with additional sections. The instructors were knowledgeable, and provided examples throughout the sessions, as well as answered peoples' questions. There was ample time and experience on the calls to cover a range of topics. The instructors were also very friendly and sociable, as well as honest. Of course Miro isn't a "God-tool" that does absolutely everything, but the instructors were aware and emphasized the strengths where Miro had them and sincerely accepted feedback.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Try to understand you will never find a product which suites all your end user for 100%. IBM Connections is the best of all breeds but if you go look on each functionality on its own there are better example out there. But as IBM COnnections delivers it all in just one platform makes it the best example about integration of different functionality into one platform.
Easy to learn, Miro has a series of videos on YouTube that effectively taught this program to my team members and me. The program is drag-and-drop and works excellently. People pick up on how to use it efficiently, and it's great for organizing ideas more freely. This product is more challenging for some older audiences who are not accustomed to using a touchpad, but for most, it was very easy to use.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
From the few times that I have used MS SharePoint, I can say that it doesn't seem to hold a candle to the robust features of IBM Connections. The out-of-the-box capabilities of IBM Connections are amazing and are more easy to access and use than what I've seen with MS SharePoint.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I like that Miro is something that anyone from any department can pick up, use and understand. You do not need specific domain knowledge. Miro has clean UI so running complex exercises becomes easier and can be easily shared across tools/platforms. Managing large number of participants on Miro is easier. FigJam on the other side is simpler and suits the needs of quick and simple brainstorm
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Scaling UP is never an issue with IBM's core technologies like WebSphere, DB2, etc. as long as you have or can find the technical resources to implement it. Where IBM seems to fail is scaling DOWN for smaller organizations. Connections 5.0 on-premises would have required us to create 7 servers -- yes, they would be virtualized, but still that's 7 OS licenses, 40 virtual CPU cores, 80GB RAM, and a few TB of hard disk space. All to replace Quick which runs on 1 server with 1 OS license, 4 cores, 8GB RAM and 600GB of disk. Granted, there are major differences in capabilities between the two, but how do you get a CFO understand why features like a mobile app, file sync, and social sharing require 10x the back-end resources?
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Maybe is possible now so... Could be useful to manage in some way source code for the projects? not to edit so when we make solutions with different components in MIro, maybe each component could redirect to the source code of this component
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
