TrustRadius

Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor vs. Socialtext (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
Score 9.0 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
Socialtext (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Social Text was a tool that focused on social learning and includes Twitter-like microblogging capabilities. The product competed with MindTouch,Confluence, Jive Team Collaboration and other collaboration platforms. It was acquired by PeopleFluent in 2012 and is no longer available as a separate product, though similar capabilities are supplied by the PeopleFluent platform.
$1
Starting Price Per Month
Pricing
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorSocialtext (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
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
Socialtext
$1.00
Starting Price Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorSocialtext (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices 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
Community Pulse
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorSocialtext (discontinued)
Features
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorSocialtext (discontinued)
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
8.6
2 Ratings
10% above category average
Socialtext (discontinued)
7.6
1 Ratings
2% below category average
Task Management8.82 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Search8.42 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings4.01 Ratings
Visual planning tools00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
-
Ratings
Socialtext (discontinued)
7.2
1 Ratings
11% below category average
Chat00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Notifications00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Discussions00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Surveys00 Ratings4.01 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorSocialtext (discontinued)
Small Businesses
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorSocialtext (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(1 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorSocialtext (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
JB
Julie Bird
SharePoint/M365 Development
Read full review
Discontinued Products
We use Social Text as a platform to air our issues with different departments. We voice our concerns and suggestions so we can help find a solution to the problems we incur on a daily basis. We need to have social text as an app so we can communicate in real time not only during work hours.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Pros
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
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Discontinued Products
  • Version history - Always keeps the edited versions and one can revert back any time
  • Creating and Editing an article is very easy and intutive
  • Sharing the articles with peers
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Cons
Lightning Tools
  • Mobile Friendly
  • Calendar/Gantt views
  • Complex/Custom Logic
TP
Toby Pior
Intranet Supervisor
Read full review
Discontinued Products
  • Search needs a ton of improvements. It was very slow a year ago
  • Search result quality was also not that good
  • I know they have improved their UI recently but when i used it last year it did not really have any design elements which could be used to make the articles look more presentable. It was important for us as we used it for external communication as well.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Lightning Tools
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
We have a lot of info in Socialtext already. It would be hard to get all that info out and port it to a different system
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Support Rating
Lightning Tools
The Lightning Tools support team responds quickly, and team members are very friendly and helpful.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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.
JB
Julie Bird
SharePoint/M365 Development
Read full review
Discontinued Products
I frankly like Confluence better than socialtext because of the speed and the quality of search. They also have better design elements which can help make the articles pleasant to the eyes.
Verified User
Anonymous
Read full review
Return on Investment
Lightning Tools
  • Policies easier to portray
GB
Gary Buck
IMS Manager
Read full review
Discontinued Products
  • We get solutions to concerns much faster
  • We promote interactions with the other depts
  • We listen and have discussions
Verified User
Anonymous
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.