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Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board vs. Socialtext (discontinued)

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Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

2 Reviews and Ratings

Socialtext (discontinued)

4 Reviews and Ratings

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    		Social Squared is a SharePoint Discussion Board App that can be deployed across SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. Social Squared improves productivity and efficiency by providing structured discussion forums for employee and student discussions. For Microsoft SharePoint Social Squared is a SharePoint discussion board application where users can post questions within relevant forums and receive answers to their questions from subject matter experts. The…

    $2,200

    per year per installation

    Socialtext (discontinued)

    Score10 out of 10
    		N/ASocial 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 Social Squared Discussion BoardSocialtext (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    Social Squared Discussion Board
    From $2200
    per year per installation
    Social Squared Discussion Board Enterprise Edition
    POA
    per year per installation
    Socialtext
    $1.00
    Starting Price Per Month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardSocialtext (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.—
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardSocialtext (discontinued)
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    7.6
    1 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Mobile Access9.11 Ratings4.01 Ratings
    Search9.11 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Task Management00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Gantt Charts00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Scheduling00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Workflow Automation00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Visual planning tools00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Communication
    Comparison of Communication features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    7.2
    1 Ratings
    10% below category average
    Chat9.11 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Notifications9.11 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Discussions9.11 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Internal knowledgebase9.11 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Surveys00 Ratings4.01 Ratings
    File Sharing & Management
    Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board and Socialtext (discontinued)
    Feature
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board
    9.1
    1 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Socialtext (discontinued)
    -
    Ratings
    Versioning9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Video files9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Audio files9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Document collaboration9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
    Access control9.11 Ratings00 Ratings
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    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardSocialtext (discontinued)
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    Flock
    Score9.5 out of 10
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    Score9.5 out of 10
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    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Troop Messenger
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardSocialtext (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion BoardSocialtext (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Lightning Tools
    Their customer service it top notch and always responsive. I struggled in the beginning a little bit because I'm not tech savvy and we had to add it to our SharePoint site but they helped me along the way and even had share screen meetings with me to assist!!
    Verified User
    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
    Read full review
    Pros
    Lightning Tools
    • Organizing Data
    • Opens up discussion, whether publicly or anonymously
    • Easy to setup
    Verified User
    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
    Read full review
    Cons
    Lightning Tools
    • I would love to be able to assign various people as administrators of different topics (this may be an option now but a couple years ago it wasn't)
    Verified User
    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
    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
    Read full review
    Usability
    Lightning Tools
    Our employees really like the fact that they can find things easily with the search feature and add questions and comments as they see fit.
    Verified User
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Lightning Tools
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Lightning Tools
    • We signed up for a 3 year contract and hope to do another 3yr contract when this one is up. :)
    Verified User
    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
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Lightning Tools Social Squared Discussion Board Screenshots

    Screenshot of MODERN, RESPONSIVE SHAREPOINT DISCUSSION BOARD Discussion Forums can be created for a variety of different reasons. This example is a Forum Group for the Microsoft 365 technologies such as Teams, Planner, and SharePoint. Forums are then created within the Forum Groups for more specific discussions. Under the SharePoint Forum Group, there is a Forum for SharePoint On-Premises and SharePoint Online. Anyone looking to ask a question regarding SharePoint 2019 for example would be able to post their question under SharePoint On-Premises rather than SharePoint Online. This also allows subject matter experts to focus more on the questions that they can respond to and provide value.Screenshot of SHAREPOINT DISCUSS BOARD – TOPICS VIEW When navigating into a forum, the topics and discussions that are taking place are shown. Any new topics that not yet read will be highlighted. It also displays whether topics have been answered, their average ratings, how many views and posts are within the topic, and also provides the ability to subscribe to the forum to be notified of new posts within it.Screenshot of READING DISCUSSIONS AND PROVIDING FEEDBACK Social Squared offers a threaded discussion view with the ability to provide feedback to other users. Posts can be rated, voted upon, or liked by users in order to give feedback to the user creating or responding to a post. Additionally, replies can be marked as answered or marked as featured, which gives readers of forums assurance that the response they are reading is validated to be the correct answer. Users also receive feedback through the earning of badges. The more users post or mark posts as answered, the more points are rewarded. This makes it easy to spot subject matter experts.Screenshot of SUGGESTED TAGS Social Squared provides a rich text editor for creating and replying to topics. The Rich Text toolbar provides functionality such as inserting images, YouTube videos, Stream Videos, Formatted Code Inserts, as well as font formatting. While typing, suggestions on how to tag a post appear. Selecting an existing tag will provide consistency in the tags used making it easier for other users to discover the post.Screenshot of SOCIAL SQUARED TAG CLOUD VIEW The Social Squared Tag Cloud view makes it easy to navigate to posts within a specific category even if they span multiple forums. The more a tag appears in different posts, the more prominent it will be in the tag cloud. Users can navigate to posts with the tag in one click.Screenshot of DISCUSSION BOARD WITHIN MICROSOFT TEAMS TAB Social Squared is a Discussion Board App for Microsoft Teams Tab’s and Microsoft Teams Personal Apps. Social Squared provides information workers the ability to post questions within relevant forums, and receive answers from their team. The Discussion Board layout for posts makes it easier to find answers to questions that may have already been asked before. Through features such as “Mark as Answered”, “Forum Moderation”, “Post Rating”, “Post Likes”, “Post Voting”, users will be assured that the answers they are reading are validated.