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.
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Webex Meetings
Score8.7 out of 10
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Webex Meetings is a video conferencing solution powering hybrid work. It enables a seamless collaboration experience and better results with meetings that are designed to give everyone the ability to engage no matter their location, language, or communication style.
Training and Staff Development Specialist in Human Resources at Educational Credential Evaluators (Education Management, 51-200 employees)
Chose HCL Connections
We did not select IBM Connections via searching. We had a previous IBM product that was discontinued and so when we were given IBM Connections, we did evaluate it but not against other systems. However other one off products had been evaluated/used in the past but as I just …
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 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
The first reason is the ease of use and availability, which makes WebEx work for all. The quality of audio and video is adorable. As a business development associate, I must make an impression on the other side, and WebEx helps me make first impressions. A few features are complex for new users but can be resolved.
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
Only a few options are there for non-verbal feedback like hand raising or emoji reactions. They should work on it as expressing understanding or agreement would help collaborate with the cross-functional teams.
More options for creating custom workflows and integrations with internal tools would be helpful and the whiteboard also looks basic compared to other similar tools. I think, adding features like sticky notes and freehand drawing would be a great boost.
The mobile app is functional but I find it less intuitive and feature-rich compared to the desktop version. Should have parity in features and a more user-friendly interface will become more helpful for mobile users like me who sometimes conduct or attend meetings on the go.
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 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
Because Webex Meetings is known for its consistent performance, with high quality audio and video that works well even in low bandwidth situations. This makes it a dependable tool for both small and large meetings without worrying about technical glitches. Also, the platform is easy to navigate, both for meeting hosts and participants. Features like screen sharing, chat, and breakout rooms are intuitive
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
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
Webex Meetings does not provide enough audio feedback for users with visual disabilities to properly navigate the tool. Students, faculty, and staff who are blind or have low vision may not be able to use Webex Meetings. Users with motor disabilities that navigate via keyboard, may not be able to navigate the web conferencing session enough to participate fully.
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
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
So personally I have never faced any kind of meeting unavailability issue while scandaling meeting with WebEx the bandwidth is really good and in terms of application performance the same is my opinion what I mentioned for availability it is good and the objective of communication is quite fruitfully achieved with a simple and effective product like WebEx which is often bundled with the purchase of course which is which we have at our company and great discount is being offered so it is easy on our pocket. I really don't have any specific errors which have faced I should mention over here the operation or application uses is quite smooth.
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
We use browsers to join Webex Meetings and it is very good no issue also appears from Webex APP is very organized and does not consume more resources of PC so no issues appeared. We join audio and video in many ways, all of which are good. We integrated it with active Microsoft Exchange with easy deployment.
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
The support cases can be opened instantly. The support engineers can support you via Telephone, E-Mail, WebEx Meetings, and My favorite WebEx application.24X7 Availability of the engineers. Step-by-step guidance is available by an engineer. https://help.webex.com/ - Great Site for instant FAQ's. https://status.webex.com/ - Is helpful to identify the updated schedule of WebEx or to know the server status of WebEx services.
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
It was straight to the point and very informative. effective training often includes clear explanations, hands-on practice opportunities, time for questions and answers, real-world examples, and follow-up support. If you're trying to assess the quality of a specific training session, you might consider these factors. For organizations looking to assess the quality of their in-person training, it's best to solicit feedback directly from the participants. This can be done through anonymous surveys or feedback sessions, enabling the organization to gather firsthand information and improve future training sessions accordingly.
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
It was very interactive and well explained. The trainor is very much knowledgeable of the product. He was able to answer all of our inquiries in a timely and professional manner. There were lots of exercises done during the duration of the training to ensure that we have a better view on what to expect from the product.
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
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.
That we needed complex implementation that we didn't get tells me 2 things: 1) the product was not designed in a way that "just worked" like some of its peers (Zoom / BlueJeans) and 2) had our company defined actual user needs and validated / verified that they had bought something that matched those, we would have pursued features / designs more closely aligned with what the product actually does: screen share, sometimes video, definitely VOIP audio (always an option regardless of license), and easy recording and retrieval of meetings.
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
The ability to transfer multimedia files directly into the platform and a very robust free plan helped me make the decision to try out Webex Meetings. Easy to set up in a company environment and accessible once the learning curve and sign up process are complete. In-platform web navigating is also a nice feature when onboarding new staff or doing market research.
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
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
I work for a Fortune 500 company with many employees so I can testify to its usability for large corporations. In addition, I use the software within my small team of sales reps so it is always usable on a small scale as well. In my eyes, this tool is scalable for businesses of all sizes without any hiccups or 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
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. More Info
The costly nature of individual accounts across multiple schools made it difficult to maintain the budget when our student population grew exponentially.
Often communicated to clients and stakeholders that we were a trustworthy and elevated provider.
Limited engagement and interactive features with students often contributed to complaints around student engagement and buy-in.
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
