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HCL Digital Experience vs. Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    HCL Digital Experience

    Score9.9 out of 10
    N/AHCL Digital Experience is based on the former IBM Web Content Manager and IBM WebSphere Portal products, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018. The product allows the user to create, manage and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile, and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).N/A

    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor

    Score9 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    The Lightning Conductor is a content aggregation tool for Microsoft SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Users can build rich, modern content reports based upon SharePoint lists, SharePoint Search, Microsoft Graph or Microsoft 365 Groups. Content can be aggregated from lists and libraries, and other applications such as Planner, To Do, OneDrive, and Teams.

    $2,200

    per year per installation

    Pricing
    HCL Digital ExperienceLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Lightning Conductor WSP
    From 1950
    per year One WFE
    Lightning Conductor Enterprise Edition
    POA
    per year Four or more WFE
    Lightning Conductor Online
    From 2200
    per year per installation
    Lightning Conductor Plus (Includes Data Viewer)
    From 2500
    per year per installation
    Lightning Conductor Online Enterprise Edition (>10,000 users)
    POA
    per year per installation
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HCL Digital ExperienceLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Prices stated are minimum per installation for "stock" products. $2.20 per user/year on top of base price. Enterprise editions can be amended to suit business needs if deemed necessary, additional costs incurred and TBD. All packages include free technical support. Free upgrades available to latest versions of tool as they are released. (online version)
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    HCL Digital ExperienceLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of HCL Digital Experience and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    5.0
    5 Ratings
    47% below category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions5.05 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of HCL Digital Experience and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    4.1
    5 Ratings
    64% below category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    API4.14 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language4.15 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of HCL Digital Experience and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    2.9
    5 Ratings
    84% below category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    WYSIWYG editor7.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness3.15 Ratings00 Ratings
    Admin section3.15 Ratings00 Ratings
    Page templates1.15 Ratings00 Ratings
    Library of website themes1.15 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design4.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing workflow1.14 Ratings00 Ratings
    Form generator3.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of HCL Digital Experience and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    1.9
    5 Ratings
    111% below category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    Content taxonomy1.15 Ratings00 Ratings
    SEO support2.15 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk management2.13 Ratings00 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions2.14 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community / comment management2.13 Ratings00 Ratings
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of HCL Digital Experience and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    -
    Ratings
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    8.6
    2 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Task Management00 Ratings8.82 Ratings
    Search00 Ratings8.42 Ratings
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    HCL Digital ExperienceLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Small Businesses
    Yext
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    Medium-sized Companies
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Progress Sitefinity
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    HCL Digital ExperienceLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (11 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    5.7
    (6 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HCL Digital ExperienceLightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Likelihood to Recommend
    HCLSoftware
    HCL DX does really well at managing and maintaining the site. It allows the business to basically maintain the site while IT spent time developing new and enhanced functions. The main issue I currently have with HCL DX is not directly with the product but it does play a role. It is difficult finding skilled resources to support HCL DX in my experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    Having experience of SharePoint On Premise and also SharePoint Online, there isn't an out of the box app/webpart that enables you to 'roll up content' from a variety of source's (in my case SP Lists, but there are many other data sources it works with) across site collections with an easy to use and intuitive interface which is what Lightning tools excels at.
    Read full review
    Pros
    HCLSoftware
    • With Version 8.5, IBM Web Content Manager introduced in place editing capabilities which allow authors to make content edits on sections of the page instead of going to the content itself. This feature allows authors to make changes in context of the page and preview changes within the actual look and feel of a live page.
    • Projects provide a collaborative atmosphere for the author community so that authors can interact and work as a team to manage inter-dependent content changes under one project and publish all changes at once, instead of working separately on individual content changes. This brings awareness across authors in an organization and easy knowledge share.
    • IBM Digital Data Connector is a cool feature that allows [users] to integrate external content sources onto the portal using IBM Web Content Manager presentation components. This allows UI/UX designers to present integrated external data in any manner they want, manage UI changes with an underlying approval process and leverage syndication to push changes live immediately.
    • IBM Web Content Manager offers a targeted content feature that allows business users to deliver personalized content to customers based on customer demographic information, browsing history and other transaction related information. Any rules created follow the publishing process thereby making it just a configurable item resulting in less turn around to turn on the feature on a website.
    • IBM Web Content Manager offers 'multi lingual solution' out of the box which allows content creation for almost all popular languages.
    • Syndication feature has improved a lot and it now provides a detailed views comprising of 'failed items', 'items that have syndicated successfully, 'items in queue'. Failed items view provides detailed and clear cut information of what resulted in failure helping IT to troubleshoot problems easily.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Aggregate documents across SharePoint site & libraries
    • Filtering for owner/person responsible & due dates
    • Ease of end-user filtering on columns
    • Color-coding & other formatting
    Read full review
    Cons
    HCLSoftware
    • IBM Web Content Manager should provide some easily usable connectors through a GUI to connect to bring content from custom data sources including connecting to Salesforce and custom databases.
    • Should further optimize and enhance creation of rich and responsive content driven UIs on various digital channels.
    • Should further optimize and enhance content personalization features.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Mobile Friendly
    • Calendar/Gantt views
    • Complex/Custom Logic
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    HCLSoftware
    IBM products always moves forward to adapt to new requirements and technologies. I have used versions 6, 6.1, 7 and 8 of IBM WCM, and I know IBM is ready to revamp the tool based on emerging needs, and still provide the capabilities to migrate your old system to the newer versions.
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    HCLSoftware
    New versions has increased user experience facilitating usability.
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    HCLSoftware
    We had some issues related with performing and the support was suitable and sucessful.
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    The Lightning Tools support team responds quickly, and team members are very friendly and helpful.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    HCLSoftware
    Implementation was successful due to Websphere application server used.
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    HCLSoftware
    Magento and Prestashop are E-commerce CMS platforms. They are used in a different scale of application than WCM.
    Concerning Joomla, it's a useful CMS forsmaller website. Once again this is an other scale of application than WCM Liveray can compete WCM 7 concerning the : ¤ specific development ¤ security ¤ responsive
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    I haven't found another product to compare this one to. Only in SharePoint Online which has a similar App 'Highlight Webpart' ... it's far too complicated to set up and requires learning yet another language and exporting and importing via PowerShell to get any real results that would be useful.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    HCLSoftware
    • Negative: Very complex architecture for on-premise deployments (too many servers to installed)
    • Positive: Easy customization
    • Negative: Architecture limited to cloud solutions
    • WCM is an old product and needs an update
    • Blog, and community are not integrated in Digital Manager for discussion
    • Templates are not available to integrate basic services (FileNet, more complex BPM , e-commerce)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Policies easier to portray
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor Screenshots

    Screenshot of MODERN SHAREPOINT LIST ROLLUP
The Lightning Conductor is a SharePoint Content Aggregator that can be configured quickly by business users. The Lightning Conductor can be used to aggregate content from SharePoint Lists such as Tasks, Document Libraries, Contact Lists, and Custom Lists making it easy to view content in one place even if it is distributed across many sites and site collections. Key data can be highlighted using conditional formatting and data-bars as shown. Content from Search and Microsoft Graph can also be aggregated with the Lightning Conductor.Screenshot of CONTENT AGGREGATION WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS
The Lightning Conductor Web Part can be used within Microsoft SharePoint or Microsoft Teams. Even if content is stored within SharePoint sites, it is useful to have aggregated Documents, Tasks, Announcements, Calendars or Custom Lists from multiple sites displayed in a single handy view in Microsoft Teams. The Lightning Conductor can be added as a Teams Tab in any Microsoft Teams Channel.Screenshot of BUILDING REPORTS ON MICROSOFT GRAPH
The Lightning Conductor can be used (without code) to aggregate content from Microsoft Graph as well as Search and SharePoint Lists. This example displays Microsoft Planner Plans and Microsoft Planner Tasks where users can Add new Tasks, Assign Users to Planner Tasks, Delete Tasks, and Complete Tasks. The same can be performed on Microsoft To Do items and displayed within Modern SharePoint pages or Microsoft Teams Tabs. The Lighting Conductor can also contain multiple views of content, making it ideal to display all of your tasks from SharePoint Task lists, Microsoft To Do and Microsoft Planner in a single web part or Teams Tab.

*Microsoft Graph Reports are only available for SharePoint Online and not SharePoint 2019.Screenshot of BUILDING REPORTS ON MICROSOFT 365 GROUPS
Powered by Microsoft Graph, the Microsoft 365 Group Rollup Provider enables users to aggregate content by browsing and selecting Microsoft 365 Groups. Within Microsoft 365 Groups, you’ll be able to select entities such as Drive Items, Owners, Members, Planner Plans, Planner Tasks, Events, Posts,  Sites, Lists, and Calendars.

*Microsoft Graph Reports are only available for SharePoint Online and not SharePoint 2019.Screenshot of AGGREGATING USING SEARCH
When performance is critical, search can be used for rollups. The Lightning Conductor offers three data source configurations to get to content. Object Model (Real Time Aggregation from SharePoint Lists), Microsoft Graph (Aggregation from Graph Entities such as Planner, OneDrive, Outlook), and Search. The Search Data Source enables the aggregation of content from large SharePoint lists and libraries when performance is critical. Thousands of documents can be displayed in under a second using Search.Screenshot of HIGHLIGHTING KEY BUSINESS DATA WITHIN VIEWS
End users and Site Owners can highlight the data that is important to them, the data that they need to prioritize. Using conditional formatting, data bars, and icons, conditions can be configured to highlight the data that is most important. Icons and Data Bars can be any color or size desired. Examples include highlighting High Priority tasks, Showing data bars for the completion progress of Tasks, or indicating which tasks are assigned to any particular user.