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HipChat (discontinued) vs. Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    HipChat (discontinued)

    Score9.7 out of 10
    N/AHipchat was discontinued by Atlassian. Users are being migrated to Slack.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
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning 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
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    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
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of HipChat (discontinued) and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    HipChat (discontinued)
    7.3
    106 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    8.6
    2 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Mobile Access7.397 Ratings00 Ratings
    Search7.2103 Ratings8.42 Ratings
    Task Management00 Ratings8.82 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of HipChat (discontinued) and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    HipChat (discontinued)
    7.3
    132 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    Chat7.7132 Ratings00 Ratings
    Notifications7.7130 Ratings00 Ratings
    Discussions6.5110 Ratings00 Ratings
    Surveys7.834 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase7.043 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integrates with GoToMeeting7.023 Ratings00 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of HipChat (discontinued) and Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Feature
    HipChat (discontinued)
    6.3
    95 Ratings
    24% below category average
    Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    -
    Ratings
    Video files6.585 Ratings00 Ratings
    Audio files6.873 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access control6.660 Ratings00 Ratings
    Advanced security features5.949 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integrates with Google Drive6.027 Ratings00 Ratings
    Device sync6.055 Ratings00 Ratings
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    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
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    Score9.8 out of 10
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    Score9.8 out of 10
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    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.8
    (133 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    7.2
    (8 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.1
    (7 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.4
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.6
    (8 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.2
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HipChat (discontinued)Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    Well suited for
    Cross-teams communication.
    Webhooks support. Easy integrations with Atlassian products and other systems as well. File sharing directly or in a group. Video/Audio calls.
    Not suited for:
    Lacks apps integration like Slack.
    Lacks quality with video calls.
    Slow file transfer for large files.
    Frequent downtime due to app instability.
    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
    Discontinued Products
    • HipChat is very stable and reliable. I have never had issues with not being able to connect or being able to communicate with others on HipChat.
    • HipChat integrates quite well with other applications, such as Jira and Stash. This is a main selling point for my team. It provides a convenient feed of actions on a JIRA story or Stash pull request.
    • HipCat does a good job of allowing 1-1 and group chats. It is simple to start a new conversation and it is easy to hold a group conversation and keep track of who is in the room.
    • I like how HipChat has away/here/on mobile statuses. This makes it easy to see if a person is available to be contacted.
    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
    Discontinued Products
    • Mobile app is not very responsive on iOS. Sometimes connection to Hipchat servers is taking too long even on good networks.
    • Both mobile and desktop versions have no alphabetical or recent sorting for groups and chat rooms.
    • Video and audio calls are pretty useless, they're slow and not always work.
    • The whole user interface is simple but very outdated - apparently Atlassian didn't focus too much on Hipchat even though they tried in the last 2 years.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Mobile Friendly
    • Calendar/Gantt views
    • Complex/Custom Logic
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    If they fix the bugs the last update gave that are causing hipchat to crash more often.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    The app itself had a pleasant if not generic interface. As a user experience expert and engineer I can say the interface is fairly intuitive if not bland. It does what you expect it to do and it's available on iOS and Android devices. If I recall it was generally pretty light weight in terms of installation size.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    HipChat support is good . Responds in timely manner when ever we have raised the request via email , phone and gives us continue update on the request .Though most of the questions are answered by HipChat FAQs , but they can still improve it and add more to the knowledge base .
    Incentivized
    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
    Discontinued Products
    I don't have insights as I was not a part of the implementation. However, I love the end product
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    We tried a lot of chat clients before choosing HipChat. The Skype for Business UI on the Mac side was 5 years old and terrible. Mac users hated the app including our CTO. Cisco Jabber was expensive to license and maintain; Skype was open to the public which took time away due to users dealing with spam and could allow viruses and malware. HipChat being a closed product, centrally managed and available to try without an upfront investment was perfect for our environment. All our Agile teams have their own room, chat and can communicate with others quickly and easily.
    Incentivized
    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
    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    Actually I never shared of HipChat using with more than 25 persons in team simultaneously, but I believe it can be scaled for much largest collaboration teams. At least it works flawlessly for us, with transparent integration with Jira, and I am not see any reasons for some troubles for work at big scale.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • HipChat has increased the effiency with which I am able to communicate with my coworkers, particularly those who work out of other offices. Having a light, portable messaging solution has been beneficial for checking in on small things without the need to send emails or schedule phone calls.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Lightning Tools
    • Policies easier to portray
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    HipChat (discontinued) Screenshots

    Screenshot of HipChat is with your team, whenever, wherever. Try it on your desktop, web, mobile, tablet, & wearable.Screenshot of Give your eyes the respite they deserve from your blaring white screen with HipChat dark mode!Screenshot of HipChat becomes your command center by integrating with over 100 awesome apps/tools your team already loves (like Uber!).

    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.