TrustRadius

Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor vs. Virola Messenger

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
Virola Messenger
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Virola Messenger is a corporate messenger for secure team collaboration. Both self-hosted and cloud Virola servers are available. Main features: private and group chat rooms file transfer and unlimited storage reactions, mentions, replies and discussions continuous voice and video meetings voice meetings recording live avatars issue tracking with task board screen sharing remote…
$22
per month 11 users (minimum)
Pricing
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorVirola Messenger
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
Annual Subscription
$1.30
per month per user
Monthly Subscription
$1.56
per month per user
Perpetual License
$31.24
one-time fee per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorVirola Messenger
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
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 ConductorVirola Messenger
Features
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorVirola Messenger
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
Virola Messenger
7.8
2 Ratings
0% above category average
Task Management8.82 Ratings8.52 Ratings
Search8.42 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
-
Ratings
Virola Messenger
9.5
2 Ratings
17% above category average
Chat00 Ratings9.52 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Lightning Tools Lightning Conductor
-
Ratings
Virola Messenger
9.0
2 Ratings
11% above category average
Video files00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Audio files00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
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Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorVirola Messenger
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Score 9.8 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorVirola Messenger
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(4 ratings)
8.5
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Lightning Tools Lightning ConductorVirola Messenger
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
Provide Support Live Chat
This is fantastic for offices that have employees working from home. It is a much cleaner and easier way to discuss projects or even have informal conversations. However if all employees are working from the same office, the features are limited as conversation, screen sharing, and task management are less valuable.
Brian Walker, AIA | TrustRadius Reviewer
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
Provide Support Live Chat
  • Secure chatting
  • Chatrooms
  • File transfer/ sharing
Santanu Sen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Santanu Sen
Insights Innovator
Read full review
Cons
Lightning Tools
  • Mobile Friendly
  • Calendar/Gantt views
  • Complex/Custom Logic
TP
Toby Pior
Intranet Supervisor
Read full review
Provide Support Live Chat
  • A cleaner interface.
  • More intuitive for older generations.
  • Customizable notification tones
Brian Walker, AIA | TrustRadius Reviewer
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
Provide Support Live Chat
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
Provide Support Live Chat
It's really early to judge Virola's capabilities with other offerings or tools in the marketplace but with the set of features the tool offers at the moment at the negligible price it can surely be counted as a dark horse to make its way through to be one of the best. Provide that it has the ability to support larger teams, it can really be successful in the future.
Santanu Sen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Santanu Sen
Insights Innovator
Read full review
Return on Investment
Lightning Tools
  • Policies easier to portray
GB
Gary Buck
IMS Manager
Read full review
Provide Support Live Chat
  • Kept everyone in the loop
  • Allowed for seamless project discussions from inside and outside the office.
  • Great way to share screens which was very important.
Brian Walker, AIA | TrustRadius Reviewer
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.

Virola Messenger Screenshots

Screenshot of Virola Messenger desktop and mobile client appsScreenshot of Issues and discussions in Virola MessengerScreenshot of Virola Messenger mobile client appScreenshot of Task board in Virola MessengerScreenshot of Screen sharing and remote control in Virola Messenger