OpenText Vibe (formerly Micro Focus Vibe) is a web-based team collaboration platform developed by Novell, and was initially released by Novell in June 2008 under the name of Novell Teaming. Novell's acquisition by Micro Focus was completed in April 2015.
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Progress ShareFile
Score 8.2 out of 10
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ShareFile is a cloud-based file sharing and storage service built for business. The product was acquired by Citrix Systems in 2011, and is now offered by Progress Software.
I think Micro Focus Vibe is very well suited for organizations that work in a team collaboration front and have to share documents. I think this really shines in organizations that have a standard set of information that gets lost in the sauce because of the sheer amount of people in an organization. In this case, the Wiki is very helpful in this setting. I wouldn't quite recommend this site for video production houses unless you are patient enough to correlate your needs to the many many features available through Vibe...because it all boils down to patience.
When we have a particularly large ad or job printing file that would "clog up" the email process, using ShareFile is very helpful. It's also useful for particular photographers we work with to upload a batch of photos all at once. Where it doesn't work as well for us is when trying to get clients to make use of a login to access folders. We find them reluctant to take on the learning curve. It works best for us when we just send them a clickable download link, and at most just require a tracking name and email address.
Novell Vibe connects GroupWise mail with Vibe natively which means you can access Vibe from within the mail product.
Once forms and workflows are set up, the access structure on who sees what or not is very effective.
You can use Novell Vibe as your main intranet with everything from wiki's, blogging and more fully automated and still in synch with your internal organisational structure.
After playing with it for a while i found that through jsp it is highly configurable.
Workflows to get customer/affiliate responses to comments on documents.
I used to have the signature feature initially, but it was removed from the original plan, so I could only use it if I chose to select the higher plan price.
I love the upload notifications and reports on user activity.
The document storage versions are fantastic. I am the only user with Delete privileges, and I love that I can make those selections.
Integrations with Microsoft 365 - FANTASTIC - thank you.
The most pressing improvement is in printing. In speaking with Novell techs Vibe was designed as a web tool, no paper necessary. However in the real world our folks love their paper printouts. Vibe utilizes views for various functions. A print view that's easily configured would be an awesome upgrade.
Customized in JSP. Vibe is completely customized using JSP. I don't know it. I'm not a programmer. I can work things out, but programming isn't my forte.
The web console is not the most user friendly site to use to get to, and send my files.
We have had users that have not liked the change in workflow to get files from Progress ShareFile when they were used to just clicking on files on an email.
That management of the tools are not the most user friendly. There have been some improvements but keeping up with certs and setting up new users can be more work than expected.
It meets our current business needs and provides the scalability we need for future growth. It can be installed on Windows or Linux (Our alpha install was on Linux. Our beta was on Windows. We went with Windows). There are additional features, and application integrations, that we haven't taken advantage as of yet due to the lack of current business needs.
It's a highly effective and secure storage system, has robust workarounds for serving the various equipment limits of our users, meets high security requirements of HIPAA standards, significantly reduces our needs for producing paper trails.
At this moment it still looks you need to do a lot to be able to use it and to be honest that time should be used for work not for configuring a communication tool for the business. Yes I understand that it takes time to learn something to use in the organisation , but with this tool I see the help desk having to answer a lot of questions on how to use it or once someone has done something how to undo it.
ShareFile is so easy to use I was able to download all of my projects files and have them set up to sync before my supervisor could even come over to explain the process to me. It is a neatly organized and intuitive software that allows even the less tech-savvy to become power users.
Easy to use, easy to integrate with Outlook. I only gave it a 9 because I have found that sometimes it does not play nicely with Outlook and can slow it down. But, when that happens (not frequent), I restart Outlook and all is well again
Citrix was generally responsive and helpful in solving technical issues. Like any cloud based SaaS product there is a danger that it may go down. This was a rare occurrence over my three years of using the product. The more common issue we encountered was clients forgetting their login which was easily managed through a forgot password functionality.
Good documentation for the API. With a little help from RS tech staff, any competent programmer should be able to integrate RightSignature with an existing system in a week or three. That help is easy to get as well
The main alternatives were Sharepoint or creating a custom Drupal install. Sharepoint was too expensive and didn't fit into our Novell environment. The Drupal solution we found was beyond our technical ability.
ShareFile is easier and does what you need. I have moved a few organizations from SharePoint to ShareFile. Just easier. You can setup different areas for different departments, setup their permissions and it is easy enough for them to do what they want in their zones. The mobile app works great as well. So you can all the features you really use from SP, but just easier to setup and use.
All of our clients and consulting engineers find ShareFile easy to use, thus complementing our business.
Our staff also find ShareFile intuitive, accessible, and easy to use, making it an ideal, everyday indispensable desktop tool for everyone in our company.
ShareFile can be linked to our firm's primary website as a placed for private use. We haven't found need for this yet, but might in the future.
