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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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Recent Reviews

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IBM Connections is a versatile platform used organization-wide to connect users, find and organize information, and collaborate on …
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IBM Connections review

9 out of 10
February 25, 2015
IBM Connections is being used throughout the whole organization (34,000+ end users) as a social addition to the statically delivered …
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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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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 and Ratings

(54)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

IBM Connections is a versatile platform used organization-wide to connect users, find and organize information, and collaborate on projects. Users across departments benefit from the collaboration tools offered by IBM Connections for internal projects and team collaboration. Additionally, frontline production workers to board members rely on this software for project management, knowledge sharing, collaboration, and idea sharing.

IBM Connections addresses various business problems such as document editing, sharing, version control, as well as enabling increased transparency. It serves as a centralized repository for constantly changing information with multiple levels of permissions, tagging, and spaces. This makes it an ideal replacement for wikis, providing structure in organizing and updating information effectively.

Organizations in the insurance industry utilize IBM Connections to write wiki places and blogs in different languages. Mizuno utilizes IBM Connections organization-wide to keep everyone informed and connected, share data, and stay updated on company-wide events. The software is also being evaluated for cloud options to provide document control, integration of social tools, and compatibility with various devices.

Users find value in IBM Connections' communication features to connect with staff and disseminate information within communities created for individual departments. The software's usage statistics and reporting capabilities are crucial for users to track the effectiveness of their content. Additionally, the HR department benefits from the MS Office plugin for sharing and editing documents.

Overall, IBM Connections has proven to be an invaluable tool in improving communication among teams, facilitating collaboration between departments spread across large geographical areas, and providing a centralized platform for everyday operations.

Users commonly recommend IBM Connections for the following reasons:

  • IBM Connections is praised for its ability to enhance collaboration and social networking within a business. Users find it helpful for improving teamwork and communication among employees.

  • Many users recommend IBM Connections for its features such as email, calendars, meeting rooms, and document sharing. It is considered suitable for companies with multiple departments that require transparency in operations.

  • Users suggest having IT staff who can handle the layout and functionality of IBM Connections to maximize its potential. They also recommend it for environments that support self-service and where end users want a well-structured content storage interaction.

Overall, IBM Connections is deemed valuable in strengthening internal social networks, improving collaboration, and providing efficient communication within organizations. It is particularly recommended for larger companies looking to save time with social and collaboration-based solutions, but can also benefit businesses of all sizes that aim to enhance their productivity and foster connectivity among employees.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We piloted IBM Connections 5.0 (on-premises) for about 8 months but ended up deciding to evaluate cloud options instead. Our user base is about 650 users and we were looking to move up from Lotus Quickr. We knew we needed something that would work natively on iOS as well as on Windows PCs and in browsers, provide us with additional document control (ECM-type features), and of course integration of social tools to provide easier access to people and information. Usage statistics and reporting were also a concern; users wanted to know when their content was useful (or not).
  • The web UI is very easy for most users to get around. The mobile app UI is even better, especially for Blogs and Files. It’s clear IBM has done a lot of work around the usability of Connections. Most users immediately felt at home regardless of which social network(s) they’ve used. Technically savvy users quickly discovered how to customize a Community for their own purposes. After the initial introduction, most users could use the Connections web UI and mobile app easily without IT intervention.
  • Ideation Blogs are a great way to brainstorm and share ideas, then vote on those ideas. The concept is great, and hopefully as time goes on IBM refines it with additional administrative control.
  • Early test groups loved the mobile app immediately with its super easy file sync capabilities and associated document editing app (even though we did not have IBM Docs).
  • Profiles were a big hit right away, making it easy to find, tag (recommend), and follow other people that might not otherwise be connected with in the organization.
  • The ability to Tag, #hashtag and Follow virtually anything in Connections provides users easy ways to connect with people and content.
  • External collaboration, even though we never specifically tested this, appears to be very clear in Connections, providing customers etc. a secure way to share information with internal teams.
  • Search functionality is very good.
  • The lack of a note-taking tool became a bigger and bigger issue as time went on. Our pilot users felt Connections was a natural place to take and share meeting notes – including photos, drawings, recorded audio, etc. – and were always frustrated that there was no easy, organized way to do that. We tried using a Blog, Wiki, etc. but nothing really resonated as a good solution for this.
  • The Wiki tool is weak, providing rigid structure but with few options. A Community can only have a single Wiki, for instance. Wikis are weak in the mobile app as well; they’re not even easy to navigate. Users ended up ignoring Wikis completely despite our efforts to get them to convert documents like guidelines, policies, procedures, handbooks, etc. into Wiki form.
  • The Windows Explorer plug-in was useful but required a lot of manual intervention to setup. For instance, once a user joins a Community in Connections, the Community also has to be manually added to the Explorer plug-in so the user can find, open and edit files with it. We felt this process should be much more automated.
  • Tagging is only relevant in the web UI and, to a lesser extent, in the mobile app. However, in the Windows Explorer plug-in, Tags are not usable at all making it difficult to find things that were easy to find in the web UI.
  • IBM Docs was not included in the on-premises deployment; it was an additional license so we did not test it. Documents, mainly Microsoft Office files, are still the single most common way our user community creates, shares, edits and presents information. That proved to be a major gap for our users, and slowed user adoption considerably. We considered testing it, but IBM Docs would only work for about half of our users so we found ourselves wondering if we really wanted to support two document editing platforms. IBM Docs also offers no way to work offline as far as we could tell. This also meant we would need to keep licensing Microsoft Office which is not cheap.
  • Consulting costs are high because the back-end environment is complex. Installing, administrating and even patching Connections is a fairly complex process. We needed to hire consultants to install our test environment and any major upgrades would’ve required additional consulting fees. Any 3rd party add-ons we looked at were highly technical in nature meaning…you guessed it, more consulting costs.
  • Administrating IBM Connections requires editing XML files in a specific, secure way that is typically done in a console. I love consoles as much as the next admin, but when you only use a console once every 2 months it means looking up all the documentation and re-educating yourself. A single change could take me 2 hours to implement. 3rd party admin dashboards do exist, at an additional cost, but IBM really should provide a much easier way to manage the environment.
  • The lack of in-person or online training courses, materials, videos, etc. really discouraged a lot of users. The only decent training we could find (marketing videos aside) was a single video series on Lynda.com which, of course, was an additional cost. In the end that video didn’t really help our users much beyond introductory concepts.
  • IBM includes reporting, but it’s a massive Cognos system requiring some serious hardware and Cognos expertise. We had neither, and would have ultimately opted for a 3rd party add-on for reporting and statistics.
  • An often overlooked concern is eDiscovery. Our contracted eDiscovery service extensively works with various ECMs, but had no idea how they would handle Connections data. The cloud version of Connections offers an add-on for eDiscovery, but as far as we could tell IBM offered nothing for on-premises deployments.

If you work in a large company with lots of IT resources experienced with IBM tech such as WebSphere, DB2, etc., then I’d change the recommendation to an 8 for IBM Connections on-premises. Users really loved working in IBM Connections despite various gaps they found, and it seems that IBM is very responsive to customer feedback. Many new features in the last few releases were first suggested by customers.

Similarly, if you work in an SMB and are looking at IBM Connections online (or SmartCloud or whatever IBM calls it these days), then I’d probably also say 8 assuming the cloud version is at least as good as the on-premises version. My guess is that the cloud version is probably better, given IBM’s cloud-first strategy, and don’t forget that the cloud version includes IBM Docs.

If, however, you are in an SMB with a budget-constrained IT staff who are mostly familiar with Microsoft and who find it difficult to work with anything non-Microsoft, then IBM Connections on-premises is probably not going to work well in your organization. I’d score it a 4 in that case. Even if it works well for end-users today, as time goes on it seems users discover more gaps with the software. IBM is not quick to put out new versions of their on-premises software, either. The primary reasons I think on-premises is a tough sell in this scenario are the high cost of consulting (which has a side effect of further delaying the introduction of new features), the lack of an office document editor built-in, and the lack of training for both IT and end-users alike.

  • IBM Connections 5.0 on-premises provided our pilot groups with better overall communications. Communities sprang up around projects, teams, departments, and even topics like new technologies. As the groups expanded their usage, they found posting Status updates, new or updated Files, and so forth really helped everyone keep up.
  • Throughout our pilot we kept noticing that despite the availability of tools like Blogs, Wikis, etc., our users tended to primarily use Microsoft Office documents instead. Even "millennials" coming in expected full, native support to view and edit Microsoft Office files from the web UI. IBM Docs appears to be a suitable replacement but adds cost to the solution overall.
  • Most of the admins, developers and technical support staff at our organization are heavily Microsoft-centric and find IBM software difficult to integrate, support and find training for.
  • The Connections on-premises server environment is a complex one, requiring either extensive in-house skill with IBM technologies or costly consulting. SMBs should look to the cloud version instead.

We have not yet evaluated any particular products in depth; we had fully expected to move forward with Connections on-premises.

However, we have briefly looked at SmartCloud / Connections Cloud which is, of course, very similar but maintained and updated by IBM. We have also briefly looked into Office 365 which has several advantages, being (A) Microsoft Office, (B) broadly available training (live, video, etc.) and (C) enthusiastic support from most of IT and many end users. However, Office 365 is much more expensive.

Yes
Well it was supposed to have replaced Lotus Quickr. Quickr becomes unsupported in 2016.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Analyst Reports
  • Third-party Reviews
Price probably influenced our decision the most. About 18 months ago IBM offered us Connections licensing as an upgrade from Quickr. The cost was substantially lower than our other proposal which was to go with SharePoint on-premises. Not only was SharePoint a monster to admin but very expensive. At the time SharePoint showed lots of mixed reviews from IT and end-users alike, and no one in IT here really wanted to be responsible for the environment. SharePoint Online was also not a very strong product and Microsoft seemed to be heading into consumer-driven territory, giving us little confidence that it would improve much. Other companies using Connections reported massive time savings, reduction in email, etc., but in hindsight all of those companies were about 10x the size of our organization.
Given the timing of the market, it's hard to imagine doing it any differently. We did not have the resources to test more than one solution and IBM's seemed like a great fit. It definitely had the best pricing, making it an easy pitch for approval to move forward.
IBM Support has ALWAYS been quick to respond, regardless of the product. Even first level techs seldom provide "canned" responses and they really try to help. If they can't help, they don't wallow around but engage the right person immediately. It's very rare that the first level tech needs to escalate, and even more rare when they do escalate and the next person engaged cannot solve it. We have been more than satisfied with IBM support's quick and professional responses to our issues.
No
Not for Connections specifically (we only piloted it). I do have some stories for exceptional support over the years for Notes, Sametime, Quickr and Protector though!
  • Status Updates are brilliant. Always 1 or 2 clicks away.
  • Profiles are really great, especially when you need to find or contact someone from the mobile app.
  • File sync is super easy, and on the mobile app that's a really big thing to get right.
  • Customizing Communities is pretty straightforward and IBM provides a fair amount of customization to help each Community.
  • Consuming blog posts on the mobile app is a really immersive experience.
  • Customizing notifications for end-users is really nice -- but it had to be enabled on the back-end (by modifying some XML file).
  • Ideation Blogs are extremely helpful and easy to use.
  • User adoption went very well thanks to IBM's clever implementations of common social concepts such as Liking, Following, Tags, #hashtags, and so forth.
  • Wikis are weak. We wanted to see more control, more security, more presentation options, more structuring options, etc. Many wiki solutions offer a lot more flexibility. Even in the mobile app, wikis were not easy to navigate and cannot be edited.
  • Working with Microsoft Office files from the web UI was a download-edit-upload process. Users were not willing to do that.
  • The Windows Explorer plug-in is not as intuitive as it should be. Communities are not automatically added and Tags are not readily exposed.
  • Activities are valuable but quickly get messy. A Kanban-style 3rd party implementation is much cleaner but of course costs extra.
  • Software patches on the back-end are cumbersome, time consuming and the process is not entirely clear.
Yes
The mobile app is so good, users often ask me if there's a "mobile app theme" for the web version. It's THAT good. The Connections mobile app even has a "companion" app which allows users to create and modify their Microsoft Office files quickly and easily. It's not perfect but it's quite good and did not require any additional configuration (or licensing) to use.
Connections combines all the most useful abilities from various social networks. This makes it useful of course, but it also reduces user adoption time initially by allowing users to get comfortable with basic features. Once they are comfortable, it's easy for users to start exploring. They find new people in the organization to contact, new sources of information, etc. Before you know it, about half of the users are contributing back in some form -- and all with little or no training needed by IT.

Scaling UP is never an issue with IBM's core technologies like WebSphere, DB2, etc. as long as you have or can find the technical resources to implement it.

Where IBM seems to fail is scaling DOWN for smaller organizations. Connections 5.0 on-premises would have required us to create 7 servers -- yes, they would be virtualized, but still that's 7 OS licenses, 40 virtual CPU cores, 80GB RAM, and a few TB of hard disk space. All to replace Quick which runs on 1 server with 1 OS license, 4 cores, 8GB RAM and 600GB of disk. Granted, there are major differences in capabilities between the two, but how do you get a CFO understand why features like a mobile app, file sync, and social sharing require 10x the back-end resources?

Once Connections was installed, patched, etc. it was ALWAYS up. We only had to bring it down for OS updates to the servers. That seems to be typical of anything that runs on WebSphere; it's bulletproof and could probably run for months and years if the underlying OS didn't require constant patching.
IBM Connections web UI, mobile app (data sync to / from the device), and file transfer speeds were almost always very fast. It was rare for a slow-down of any kind, even when doing searches.
February 25, 2015

IBM Connections review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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.
  • On the customer service part - one of the positive sides of IBM Connections is the openness. Thanks to that openness people started to help each other when they posted problems regarding company issues instead and they followed the officially designed business processes. In the end this made our company much more cost effective.
  • Because of the mobility functionality of IBM Connections we really saw a big jump in the employee efficiency corner. They could access their documents faster and wherever they where around the globe.
Because of the open design of the product but also because of the main support for http://activitystrea.ms/ which was a huge jump in end user news retrieval of the environment. The overall cost of the product was so much lower than comparing products as out of the box IBM Connections already delivered lots where other products we reviewed needed add-on tools with their license fees as well.
35000
Mainly as a knowldege management hub within the company but also it is currently serving us as the next step for file sharing. Within a very soon to see time we will completely switch off file shares for our end user and we expect that all content currently on file shares will be offered and driven by IBM Connections.
4
The skills of these people need to be very broad, as we talk about so many environments where IBM Connections is used. IBM WebSphere/SDI/DB2/HTTPServer/LoadBalancers/OperatingSystems and so on. So it needs to be well skilled people who need to maintain these kind of environments.
  • Better collaboration of business users of different departments
  • 24/7 availability of content and knowledge
  • Mobility support from IBM
  • Self serviceability of end users (business users).
  • Much more helpful to each other if they see from each other they struggle with the same day to day problems.
  • Content/ Documents are reused more instead of reinvented now that people can find their content.
  • Extend the reach of the platform to other platforms to get that UI/content inside connections as well.
  • Get a more steering management layer within the organization than a leading management (which is currently the situation within the organization)
  • Connect the current business process more and more to this collaboration platform.
No
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Product Reputation
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
  • Analyst Reports
The openness of the product which gave us the possibility to adapt to our current organization rules and compliances. But also the vendor reputation was a big decision maker. In this fast evolving IT market you need from a business standpoint, stability and product support for the future.
To be honest regarding the selection process, I think we would do it exactly the same again. This has proved us to be quite successful still. The only thing we would change a bit is finding the right people inside the business acting as the ambassadors for the environment. I would align that much more in a day to day business situation instead of classes and we did it right now.
  • Implemented in-house
  • Professional services company
Ilionx which is a IT Services company and also an IBM Business Partner.
Yes
We first have built a PoC environment where the stakeholders of the project could investigate how the product could assist in their day to day operations. Then we have built a development environment and finally we have built a production environment. As this platform didn't really phase out another product, we have decided to let the new collaboration platform spread it itself within the company and within 6 months we have reached throughout all employees (we could see that form the login statistics of the end users).
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
When you try to deliver a new environment everybody has an opninon on how things should look and work. So try to keep the team who implements the environment as small as possible. Make rapid decission about how things should look and work and change behavior over time when the environment is in production and afterall you see end users complaining about certain functionalities. Don't try to build everything at once but do it over time !
  • Deciding how the environment had to be called within the organization.
  • Lack of knowledge within the company about the product (in the end this was covered by hiring external people) to keep the project going.
  • Network infrastructre wasn't prepared on how we wanted to adapt the network infrastructure to our needs.
Try to understand you will never find a product which suites all your end user for 100%. IBM Connections is the best of all breeds but if you go look on each functionality on its own there are better example out there. But as IBM COnnections delivers it all in just one platform makes it the best example about integration of different functionality into one platform.
  • In-person training
Yes
Because it allows us to reach further in the support organization from IBM than otherwise would have been the case. This gives us certain advantages which makes it easier (and cheaper) than not doing so.
The support team for IBM Connections could be much better in proactive support issues by sending us the information they experienced with other customers.
Yes
Yes we have reported many bugs and all of them were resolved to satisfaction. Some of them need some more time and persuasion from our side to get what we want :-) but in the end we always got what we needed to leave us with a satisfied feeling.
During a migration weekend we had some issues with database migration scripts. We called IBM Support and within 30 minutes they found us a real DB2 expert which led us in the right direction regarding how things could be solved (in the end it seemed a 2 play problem where some kind of configuration setting (which we had of course) triggered a bug within DB2) so after we found out about this we disabled the config setting ran the migration scripts and enabled the config setting again. In the end everybody was happy :-)
  • The homepage functionality is very elegant to use.
  • Creating of communities and their functions is very easy to do.
  • Connections the Mobile client is straight forward.
  • The rich text editor of IBM Connections could get some improvements of copy/paste actions.
  • Getting an insight within the platform on the items you do follow and the items yo do not follow is quite cumbersome.
Yes
There are 2 ways of consuming the content mobile. One way is via a responsive web browser UI. This is quite good. Be the better option would be the use of the native mobile client delivered by IBM.
Overall seen the useabilty of IBM Connections is fairly easy. The ramp UP time speed is quite low for end users to understand how they can use it in their day to day business environment.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is currently being used by a number of departments throughout the company. It is addressing different problems within each department but primarily it is being used to disseminate information, used for notifications of important deadlines and for collaboration between a large geographical area.
  • Notifications - easily notifying users of changes in content whether it be blogs, forums or files.
  • Discussions - easily and quickly set up discussion topics so communities can exchange ideas on a variety of topics.
  • Quick set up - being able to rapidly set up a community in order to get a group collaborating.
  • Increased security schemes.
  • Community centric configurations
  • Displays of textual type content (web pages)
In assessing whether or not to use Connections, the primary issues are whether or not they need true web type pages and the level of security needed. The options are usually Connections or a portal site. If they don't have a need for multiple levels of access to the content or have to display web type pages then I direct them towards Connections where they can be up and running in literally 10 minutes.
  • Better exchange of ideas
  • More cohesiveness among members of departments who are geographically separated.
  • Greater ability for multiple departments to share information.
  • Novell Vibe,MS SharePoint
At the time we were evaluating collaboration tools we weren't sure if our users were ready for it or not. As such we wanted to purchase a product where the users could get the feel for collaboration without making a huge software and infrastructure commitment in case they would not buy into it. Connections filled the need perfectly. Since we were an IBM shop already it made even more sense. The best thing is that Connections has continued to meet our collaboration needs even though it has caught on greatly with our user community and demand increases every day. We will continue to use Connections despite other larger more expensive options are out there.
Connections has continued to more than meet our needs from a collaboration point of view and we are currently working on integration with our IBM Websphere portal platform to provide an integrated collaboration solution. This scenario will provide our users the best both products have to offer in a single interface.
Yes
We have contracted with an IBM partner for additional development and support work.
We ran into a few unique issues that took some time to resolve.
Yes
Yes.
  • Event creation and integration with Outlook
  • Forums
  • Blogs
  • Activities
Yes
I think the app is very good. Most people find it more straight forward than the desktop version.
Most functions are fairly straight forward and the online help can any most questions.
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