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HCL Connections

HCL Connections
Formerly from IBM

Overview

What is HCL Connections?

Connections from HCL Technologies (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in 2018) is a collaboration tool and employee digital workspace with key features like social analytics, blogs, document management, and a social network.

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Learn from top reviewers

A multifunctional tool

Rating: 9 out of 10
February 25, 2022
Vetted ReviewVerified User
Connections is a corporate collaboration software that enables teams to operate more efficiently. It improves communication among project teams. It provides all employees with...
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Anurag Chaudhary
Engineer - Engineering
Engineer (Design & Development)
JTEKT India Technical Center
HCL Connections3 years of experience

Connections is a proven tool for managing complicated projects and keeping your data secure

Rating: 9 out of 10
August 20, 2019
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use Connections as a repository and means of communication for internal projects. It is being used by all departments and is a good tool for team collaboration.
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Kelly Capo
Employee - Sales
Business Development
IBM
HCL Connections7 years of experience

IBM Connections in the Cloud - One Stop for Communication and Collaboration

Rating: 8 out of 10
July 13, 2018
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
IBM Connections is being used across the entire organization and is available to us on our internet browser via the cloud. IBM Connections is our tool to connect to each other...
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Tony Morales, PMP, CSM
Manager - Information Technology
Project Management Office (PMO) Manager
Carestream
HCL Connections2 years of experience

A complete package but expensive and complicated to maintain

Rating: 6 out of 10
June 20, 2018
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
IBM Connections is used by the entire organization. We have many departments and user groups that are divided into Connections "communities". It helps connects users across th...
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Jeremiah Miller
Manager - Information Technology
Associate Director IT Infrastructure
Mennonite Central Committee
HCL Connections5 years of experience

IBM Connections - Not Connecting Ideas!

Rating: 2 out of 10
May 11, 2018
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
IBM Connections is being used largely as a wiki replacement system because of its tight integration with other IBM products. For instance, we used (and have since replaced) IB...
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Eric Hodge
Engineer - Research & Development
Engineering Manager
Waters Corporation
HCL Connections2 years of experience
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Pricing

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HCL Connections

HCL Connections

N/A
Unavailable

What is HCL Connections?

Connections from HCL Technologies (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in 2018) is a collaboration tool and employee digital workspace with key features like social analytics, blogs, document management, and a social network.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Details

What is HCL Connections?

Connections from HCL Technologies (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in 2018) is a collaboration tool and employee digital workspace with key features like social analytics, blogs, document management, and a social network.

HCL Connections Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Connections from HCL Technologies (formerly from IBM, acquired by HCL in 2018) is a collaboration tool and employee digital workspace with key features like social analytics, blogs, document management, and a social network.

Reviewers rate Usability highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of HCL Connections are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Reviews From Top Reviewers

View all reviews
(1-5 of 12)

Connections is a proven tool for managing complicated projects and keeping your data secure

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
August 20, 2019
KC
Kelly Capo
Business Development
IBM (Computer Software, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HCL Connections
7 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We use Connections as a repository and means of communication for internal projects. It is being used by all departments and is a good tool for team collaboration.
Pros
  • Connections has an easy to understand layout so if you are new to the tool you can catch on quickly.
  • The security features are excellent, I feel comfortable that we will not get hacked.
  • Connections provide a single place to store project docs, pics, emails and to collaborate real-time with your team.
Cons
  • I would like to see better integration with Microsoft email.
Likelihood to Recommend
I highly recommend Connections because it has all the features you would need to create a project and keep all documents in one spot and communicate with your team securely.

IBM Connections helps collaborate

Rating: 8 out of 10
July 11, 2014
TT
Thinh Tran
Senior IT Project Manager - Sunglass Hut Portfolio
Luxottica Retail (Retail, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HCL Connections
3 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Communication among the teams and projects teams is a big issue. It happens too often that the information (document, email) is not readily available and sharable with the rest of the team. Information in mail inboxes, local hard drive, network shared drive lead to miscommunications and duplications of effort. Connections has help improve these challenges.
Pros
  • I use the Activities feature extensively to manage tasks and statues of my projects.
  • I also use Forum feature to gain participation and sharing of information from members of my communities.
  • The Wiki features is also very nice for reference information.
Cons
  • I would like to have the capability to create groups of members within my communities. This is so that I can send communication to a group instead of having to select individual members.
  • I would also like to be able to have subcommunities within subcommunities.
  • Having the Wiki feature support more html would also be helpful.
  • Better integration with Microsoft Office suite products would be a plus.
Likelihood to Recommend
Create an adoption program to train your organization. It is very helpful to have as many people in your organization as possible to use the tool at the same time. This will accelerate the adoption rate and increase usage much quicker.

IBM Connections - Not Connecting Ideas!

Rating: 2 out of 10
Incentivized
May 11, 2018
EH
Eric Hodge
Engineering Manager
Waters Corporation (Pharmaceuticals, 5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HCL Connections
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
IBM Connections is being used largely as a wiki replacement system because of its tight integration with other IBM products. For instance, we used (and have since replaced) IBM Jazz. At the time that we implemented Jazz, we needed a centralized repository for constantly changing information, something that Wikis are good at. Connections was selected to be that Wiki-like tool, with multiple levels of permissions, tagging, and spaces. We also used it as a blogging platform. Users would post blogs to Jazz either from their personal spaces or from other relevant business spaces.
Pros
  • Connections does tagging really well. It's very easy to add tags to any given page and to sort content based on those tags. This makes it easy to find related pages.
  • Connections is capable - note that I said capable, and not "does a good job at" of embedding multiple kinds of content and making it viewable. Viewing Office documents is possible within Connections.
  • Connections also does permissions really well, locking down spaces depending on certain groups of users. You can view this as a positive or a negative, depending on your use case.
Cons
  • Search in connections is incredibly poor. It's commonly joked that once data goes into Connections, you never find it again, unless you have a direct link. This alone kills usability for Connections.
  • Embedded content in wiki pages in connections is poorly implemented. While the content displays, you can't interact with it, or edit it reasonably, and it's really slow to load.
  • The "social" features in Connections are pretty lame, and no self-respecting user spends any time trying to build their profile. It's just disappointing.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are absoloutely locked into the IBM Software ecosystem (required to use Lotus Notes, Jazz, etc,) Connections is better than nothing. However, I'd still rather use a roll your own solution, or, even better, the Atlassian suite of tools, which does a much better job than Connections ever did for us.

Let me be clear: you should really only opt to use Connections if you have no other choice. It will get you by, but it won't make you efficient.

IBM Connections - Get those social juices flowing at work!

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
July 18, 2014
ES
Erich Schmidt
Manager of Application Development
Applegate (Consumer Goods, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
HCL Connections
4 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
IBM Connections is used across the organization, for blogging, activities and creating wikis.The blogging (and subsequent commenting and "Likes") is the primary means of communicating business and non-business issues/events to employees. Wikis hold a great deal of business and institutional knowledge.
Pros
  • Blogging is easy and useful. For any company above a certain size, it is impractical to share things via email, particularly as an email chain with comments quickly gets out of control. Using a public social platform has obvious problems. Connections blogs makes it all easy.
  • Using and creating Wikis, and even structuring related Wikis, is easy and intuitive. Before Wikis, institutuional knowledge, product documentation, etc. was spread all over. Wikis solved that.
  • Searching is the key to it all. Connections search results were quick and more easily useful than competing platforms.
Cons
  • Though we don't use the latest version of Connections, my only real complaint has been the lack of "hot" links in Blog comments.
  • The management interface could be easier to use, or a bit better documented, particularly when dealing with error logs.
Likelihood to Recommend
I would recommend it unreservedly, if it was a bit easier to manage. If on premise, you will need someone technically proficient generally, if you don't have a Websphere administrator. Of course, you could always go cloud with it.

IBM Connections review

Rating: 9 out of 10
February 25, 2015
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 10,001+ employees
Vetted Review
Reseller
HCL Connections
7 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
IBM Connections is being used throughout the whole organization (34,000+ end users) as a social addition to the statically delivered intranet. The main business problem and why this organizations has decided to choose for IBM Connections is in fact that it pushed out to the end users to work more closely together on projects and in day to day work situations. IBM Connections fulfills in that completely. With the mobility part of IBM Connections the circle was completely round as this was one of the biggest issue's we had with the current intranet which was too much statically build and not developed for mobile clients (not build with a responsive web design). We have just introduced the CCM part of IBM Connections which will replace overtime to all current file-shares which are being delivered via OLD fashioned way of serving files via a FileServer model. All this together is for us a major improvement on the next step of our journey in the intranet world.
Pros
  • The Mobile consummation of IBM Connections is very good and is rapidly improving over time. Every month a new version of the Mobile app for IBM Connections is being delivered which fixes bugs but also adds new functionality over time.
  • Stability is very high of the product as it runs on IBM WebSphere (which has proved itself already in the MidMarket segment completely) and is very important for us as a customer because this keeps the day to day management costs for the environment very low.
  • The open design of the product. It's fairly easy to extend the product but also the end user working and feeling is open. What I mean by that is that the product supports self serviceability so no costs at the IT department regarding of creating FileShares and so on.
  • Out of the box IBM Connections delivers a complete solution which can be used as a base to extend on. Connections to already existing LDAP/SAP/Domiono or other HR systems can easily be build via the delivered license of IBM Security Directory Integrator product with IBM Connections which is almost limitless in connecting different resources together.
Cons
  • The UI of the activities component really needs a redesign. Currently this component was there already from the beginning of IBM Connections and never got a UI overhaul. Currently the functionality is working exceptionally good but the UI is too much based on Text instead of a graphical UI.
  • Better integration with PIM (Personal Information Manager like (domino and/or exchange)) environments.
  • Currently for the admin side of IBM Connections a lot is done on the command line. It would be a improvement if we get a special designed ADMIN UI. Where 95% of the management of the product can be handled.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Connections is well suited in environments where self serviceability is supported and end user wants the next iteration of storing content/knowledge inside mails and or documents.
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