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HCL Sametime (formerly IBM Lotus Sametime, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in 2018) is an enterprise-level unified communications and VoIP platform. It includes features such as instant messaging, web conferencing, voice and video integration, telephony capabilities, and presence information. Prices start at $63.50 per user per year.HCL TechnologiesSametime review2019-06-04T18:30:08.208ZIBM Sametime is being used globally in almost all departments from down to top in our company. We use it as a instant messenger to communicate with internal staff only in our day to day work. It is not the only instant messenger tool in our company but the most widely used one for sure.,The license cost is comparatively low so almost all staff have it installed in our company. We can use it to contact all internal staff.
It’s light and fast with almost no downtime. It also provides easy to use APIs for the user to build automation process on it. We have an internally built robot running on Sametime to answer frequently asked questions and do some repetitive tasks.
Chat history can be saved as per user’s preference and it is easy to be searched.,Whenever I drop Sametime and relogin, I have to ask somebody else to invite me to chat rooms. It would be great to have a function to show me which chat room(s) I was previously on and give me an option to rejoin by Sametime itself.
Not always able to see chat history in chat room. If the invitor forget to check allow to see chat history, or the history the invitor cannot be seen, I will not be able to see.
Can not send files via Sametime.,9,Easy for day to day communication with internal staff.
Has API provided for the user to build automation processes. We have an internal robot running on Sametime to do repetitive tasks.,Jabber,Jabber, Symphony TalentVerified UserIBM Sametime is a Basic Chat App that gets the Job Done... and not Much Else2018-12-09T19:00:23.368ZIBM Sametime is the messaging app that many people at our company use on a daily basis. Not all departments use Sametime, but the ones that do, love it for regular communication between team members. It is not well suited for some of our other teams though so there is competition between Sametime, Slack, Google Hangouts and Skype.,IBM Sametime is incredibly simple to use. It is straightforward and offers an easy to use chat experience.
Being able to set up team chats is a great feature. This allows us to keep a chat room focused on a singular topic if required.
Sametime is available for our team members on PC as well as on Macs. There is also a mobile app to keep people in touch when they are away from the office.,The mobile app is not that great for anything outside of straight up messaging.
We tried video chatting within Sametime without any real success. There were connection issues and the app would crash quite often. We switched to another product and had no problems.
IBM Sametime just looks outdated. The menus and contact list are not up to date from a UX perspective compared to many other popular chat apps.,6,Sametime keeps many of our team members in contact throughout the day which leads to increased productivity which makes everyone happy.
We use the team chat room feature every day. This allows a team to stay focused on the task without any extra messages that are not on topic.
The split between IBM Sametime, Slack and Google Hangouts has caused some issues when team members are not checking for messages on a certain app.,SlackVerified UserAn Honest Review of IBM Sametime2018-04-06T20:23:23.643ZSametime comes in many flavors - anything from simple chat and awareness all the way to full audio/video integration. For many IBM customers it might actually be a free entitlement (e.g. IBM Domino clients can get chat/awareness for free). Many of my clients use it as their main instant messaging platform as it integrates well with email and websites/web-based programs. It can also integrate with telephony systems and has a free mobile iOS and Android client.,Awareness and chat integration with different platforms.
Basic meetings and persistent chat rooms are not complicated to set up and support.
Runs on many different operating systems (Windows, various Linux distributions, etc.),Audio/video setup can initially be tricky, requires checking and coordinating a lot of moving parts
The base install of chat/awareness is easy, but the more features you want the more complicated it gets and the more experience you need to planning ahead correctly,8,Licensing for existing IBM customers can be advantageous as they might actually already have a free entitlement (even if they do not know that yet) - so it can be quite cost-efficient.
Small environments can be fit onto a single server and run quite well,Skype for Business and Jive Hosted VoIP,Skype, Skype for BusinessVictor ToalSametime? Maybe Some Other Time.2018-07-24T20:27:15.595ZIBM Sametime is used as the standard for text-based chat across my entire organization. Our IT department has, in the past, tried to standardize on it for video teleconferencing as well, but it performed so poorly that the idea was quickly dropped. It is intended to serve as a solution for text-based conversations amongst colleagues, where the phone, or video might be inappropriate, say, for quick questions.,Sametime integrates well into my company's other text based communication software (IBM Notes). As a result, it is easy to begin a chat with another employee right from within Notes.
Sametime has been deployed across the organization, which means it's also the lowest common denominator for communication. It is almost always the case that I can get in touch with someone via Sametime.
Sametime CAN be (but not by default) configured to save conversations with others for later reference. This is particularly handy during technical conversations.,Sametime's audio and video chat features are horrendous, and years behind their competitors in usability, functionality, and reliability.
Sametime's default configuration is idiotic - stealing focus away from active windows, not saving chats for later reference, etc. If you plan to roll it out, make sure to get an administrator that knows what they're doing!
Despite the fact that it was rolled out organization wide - some people simply refuse to use it because they hate it so much. As a result, it even fails as being the lowest common denominator for communications - that common method still ends up being the phone in those instances.,1,As I've mentioned throughout the review, it covers the majority of our employee base as a lowest common denominator communications method. That's handy.
Sametime is pretty terrible, but as a result, when we switched to an open-office plan, people get up and talk to each other, rather than having to use Sametime to get a question answered.
Sametime has also demonstrated how behind the times my organization is with IT infrastructure, and has helped drive the conversation towards modern tools.,Google Hangouts, Slack, Skype, Skype for Business and Apple iCloud,Apple iCloud, Jenkins, JIRA Software, Atlassian Confluence, CamtasiaVerified UserGets the Job done for Instant Messaging2018-04-11T16:19:11.302ZSametime is used across the entire organization as our instant messaging tool which comes as a part of IBM Notes (e-mail platform). It's used to quickly message a coworker if you want to talk, remind them to jump in a meeting, ask a quick question, or send a file over to someone. It helps with productivity, collaboration, and communication. It's really critical to have an effective instant messaging tool because a lot of our employees work from home and need to be able to message other workers to get quick answers or communicate effectively when working on the same project.,Instant messaging
File sharing
Group chats,You are unable to message co-workers if they are offline
IBM Sametime frequently crashes
Once you leave a group chat you are unable to rejoin it
UI is not the cleanest and does take some getting used to,5,Increased productivity
File sharing ability helps move projects along
Easy to create group chats to communicate with key project members,Workplace by Facebook (Formerly Facebook at Work),Workplace by Facebook (Formerly Facebook at Work)Verified UserIBM Sametime is a solid, reliable solution!2016-02-23T22:05:51.623ZCurrently, due to the nature of our being a small company, our organization does not use Sametime for internal communication purposes. We do, however, recommend, install, and maintain Sametime for many of our customers. Generally we see that Sametime is used across entire organizations and often certain departments will use it differently than other departments. Sametime can address many business problems depending on how many Sametime options are deployed - it can serve the purpose of just IM, persistent chat rooms, meetings, and/or VOIP.,Sametime can be installed in any number of ways to provide as little or as much functionality and integration as you want.
The backend capabilities of the Video components are quite amazing for providing the streaming capabilities.
As a telephony client, being able to have it integrated out-of-the box with your primary mail and application platform (IBM Notes) for presence and communications is a great win.
IBM allows for this to be run either on-premises or in their IBM Cloud.,On-premises installation for anything beyond the basic chat functionality can get tricky quite fast. The requirements for hardware also grow exponentially.
Sometimes administration of users can be problematic when it comes to reliably pushing down policies.
The core IM UI goes through stages of years of stale look and feel. Though I believe a new UI may be coming with the next major release.
There are often times where the IBM Cloud implementation has features that take a while to make it back into the on-premises codebase.,9,In general, customers of IBM Notes would be able to use the core IM components as part of their license. This is good in itself, but also can lead to further desire to have more of the Sametime options.
On-premises installations have been good for our consulting business.
For customers, being able to provide presence awareness with global resource has been a huge time-saver.,Microsoft Lync and Skype,IBM Notes, Skype, IBM Connections, Evernote, Dropbox,No,9,Yes,I have had some recent support calls with IBM about Sametime and with many of them I tend to work with the same technicians. This leads to some good relationships and the technicians are generally very helpful. Recently, I had a quite positive experience with a potentially complicated authenticated solution. IBM was able to gather their teams together and work with me and my large customer to come up with a workable solution.,Starting a conversation via chat, voice, video, and/or meetings.
Finding out who is online and getting notified when certain people do come online.
Updating your presence status.
Integrating your presence status with your calendar.,Some of the default notification settings are a little "nagging" and can be a little deep in the settings for the users to change. We typically have to update a config file when rolling out the client to users.
Browsers/Plugins/Java/Etc... requirements for web-based meeting rooms. Roll the dice and hope you pick a winner for the week...,Yes,9Chris WhisonantIBM Sametime is an excellent office communicator2017-03-14T19:17:36.078ZIBM sametime is an excellent platform to communicate across the globe within my organization. It is really easy to find the person's status (available, busy, do not disturb, away etc). IBM Sametime is really useful for instant message or chatting, file sharing, screen sharing.,Instant message
File sharing
Send screenshots, pictures without saving in my laptop/desktop
Identify person's availability,Sometime I have faced log in issues.
Big size file sharing also a big pain.
But mostly I like the the features of IBM Sametime.,9,Using IBM Sametime, we can connect the people instantly. Instead of sending email and waiting for his/her reply, we can just ping him/her to get a quick response which helps us to save a lot of time.,Skype for BusinessVerified UserSametime provides real value, a simple interface, and full mobility.2016-02-10T21:58:58.075ZIBM Sametime is a collection of real-time collaboration and communication tools. It solves several problems and fills various needs across our entire organization, which I'll summarize as bullet points.
We have not yet integrated IBM Sametime with our phone system.
First, a list of the features we use which may or may not be unique to IBM Sametime:
Presence Awareness: Quickly find someone who's available to help.Chat: For quick questions, notifications, or file transfers, Chat is the go-to communication tool.Web Meetings: For formal training, with people on-site or anywhere in the world.Screen-Sharing: For cross-training, technical support, or co-creating content.
Audio & Video Conferencing: We've just started using this feature but we've got great feedback from traveling Sales and internals alike.
Mobile Apps: From an iOS device I can join or start a web meeting, see who's available for a chat, and make or take video calls.
Additional benefits we've found:
Savvy users log into a IBM Sametime Web Meeting to give a presentation, rather than search through
thousands of files on a shared drive before a meeting.If on-site with a customer, our sales person can get onto IBM Sametime via the mobile app and get quick responses to time-sensitive questions.
Chat on iOS can optionally show a logged-on user's GPS location (town & state). This has been really handy on multiple occasions and does not seem to impact the iOS device's battery life very much.File transfer is faster via IBM Sametime than via email. Users love that!
Here are some specific aspects of Sametime that we really appreciate:
Integration with IBM Notes: Not just an add-on, but full integration means it's really quick and easy to book a web meeting with dozens of other people, or see if the person who just sent you an email is available to chat about it. Your chat status changes to "in a meeting" automatically if you've got something booked on your calendar.We use Notes' SmartUpgrade feature to deploy updates to the embedded IBM Sametime components of Notes along with Notes FixPacks.
Centralized Settings / Preferences Management: It's an XML file, yes, but the amount of stuff we can tweak is extremely useful. This reduces the learning curve for users and keeps them from changing the wrong settings.
Rest API lets our developers easily integrate basic chat functionality into web apps, etc.,Sametime's web-based interfaces are "zero load", requiring no plug-ins to be installed to join a meeting, launch a meeting, or use chat in a browser. A plugin is required only if you want to share your screen.
Integration with IBM Notes is very tight. Sametime's chat status can change according to your Notes calendar. You can easily see if someone who just emailed you is available to chat. Your chat History is right inside Notes as well.
IBM's mobile apps are top notch. We automated the apps for our users thanks to IBM's work with third party MDMs. This made it very simple for us to deploy the Sametime mobile apps -- Chat and Meetings -- and get new capabilities such as Audio & Video mobilized quickly.
No down time, ever. The rock solid WebSphere back-end of Sametime means the environment is always up. Period.,In web meetings, even with audio & video enabled, we cannot stream pre-recorded video such as a training video in MOV format. It seems like this should be simple but I'm told only 1 or 2 competitors can do it.
The "WebPlayer" plugin that's required for screen-sharing, etc. is not easy to push out. IBM does not supply a typical .MSI file for easy deployment to Windows clients so we had to come up with our own work-around.
As is typical with most IBM software, the error messages -- though admittedly quite rare in Sametime -- are not helpful.
We do not have WebSphere experts on staff so there were considerable consulting costs to install and update the Sametime environment, which required 8 VM servers in our environment. Once up and running, though, the environment needs little or no "care and feeding" to operate.,8,Faster response times to inquiries internally, from tech support to HR to marketing and finance. This means employees are generally happy with the technology and have improved their efficiency overall.
Better customer service from the Sales staff who have embraced the technology. The ability to reach in and see who's available and get a quick answer for a customer is very satisfying for us and for our customers.
If there is a negative impact, it's been that some people see Chat as "distracting" and who have complained that this technology hurts us more than helps us. At the end of the day, Sametime is just another tool and we have to train our users to use their tools appropriately.,Skype for Business, GoToMeeting and WebEx Meetings,IBM Notes, IBM Connections,,,Presenting across geographies. While we don't claim it reduces travel expenses, Sametime does increase the amount of time remote teams spend working together without increasing any travel expenses.
Cross-training. Whether for new hires or current users that are using new software or processes, sharing my screen is invaluable. Far better than sending dozens of screenshots via email!
Connecting otherwise disconnected people. Traveling sales people are often disconnected from the rest of their team unless they go out of their way to check in. With Sametime, the internal team can tell when the Sales person is available or on the move.
Fast file transfers. Many of our users still rely on email to get files to other users. However, that introduces delays and can be frustrating. By using Sametime to transfer files instead, the transfer is practically instantaneous.,One issue we've had for years is when someone wanted to present a slide deck from a PC in another office, they either had to copy their presentation to an "open" shared drive (clogged with thousands of files), take their file on a USB stick, or email it to someone who had access to the presentation room. With Sametime meetings, users can load up a meeting room (which they can keep and re-use for repeating meetings) and just log into the web interface to present.
Sales sometimes field complaints when on-site at a customer. They used to take dozens of photos and email those photos to basically everyone they could think of, hoping to get a quick response. Now they can contact a person who's actually available and, using Sametime's file transfer, take a photo on their phone and immediately transfer it to that person. It saves a lot of time and reduces confusion and re-work.
Using AV calling from smartphones, you can point the device's camera to a scene -- say, machinery or some kind of process -- and share that with the meeting attendees. This has been a great way to "live stream" to a private, internal audience and has the benefit of not cluttering up users' devices with large video files.,We are hoping to reduce travel expenses as users get more comfortable with AV calling direct from their PCs and mobile devices.
At some point we would like to integrate Sametime with our phone system. It should not be difficult but it is just not a priority for us.,10,Yes,Price
Product Features
Product Usability
Product Reputation
Prior Experience with the Product
Vendor Reputation
Existing Relationship with the Vendor
Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Analyst Reports
Third-party Reviews,Now, several years later, cloud services are more easily integrated (with e.g. ActiveDirectory, mobile, etc.) whereas at the time, we prioritized integration over most other features. Integration was much easier to accomplish with on-premises systems so it was a primary driver for Sametime over its cloud / SaaS competitors.,10,Yes,They ALWAYS provide exceptional support! I can not think of any time when IBM Support merely solved an issue and closed the case without follow-up to make sure everything was working as it should. IBM Support also rarely plays the "blame game" that is so common. There are many cases where they could blame Microsoft's Windows of Apple's iOS, but instead they try to get hard data to prove or disprove where the root cause is.,The Meetings and Calendar integration is particularly helpful, not only on the PC / Mac client but also on mobile devices.
Sametime significantly reduces barriers to user collaboration & sharing. Our high-tech users had no problem using 3rd party services for e.g. screen-sharing before we introduced Sametime, but most of our users would never have attempted it without that functionality built-in and in easy reach. Now, screen-sharing to help a co-worker or train a new hire is very commonplace.
Making myself available from the mobile device is also really easy and really useful. Reporting my location (town & state) via GPS is also helpful because people in the office can easily see where I am.,Joining a web meeting by clicking a URL should open the "rich client" if it's installed on the PC, but we've found that to be hit-and-miss. The rich client is a bit faster and includes a few advanced features that are not in the pure web-based client, particularly for the presenter.
It's too easy to accidentally start an group chat. Occasionally you get "invited" to join a chat with 100 other confused users, and the person who started it accidentally sometimes gets so embarrassed that they won't use Sametime anymore after that.
Allowing & Taking control of a screen-share session is something most users need to be trained on first, otherwise they just don't get it. The UI design should be streamlined and made more obvious; it's a little obscure and requires too much thought to get it to work correctly.,Yes,9,10,10,9,ActiveDirectory, for authentication and user "business card" details.
IBM Notes, for calendar integration and Chat History preservation.
Apple iOS, via MobileIron, for mobile app deployment and auto-configuration. Users don't need to know the server name, ports, etc. It just works.,IP phone systems (various...each office has their own).,Single Signon
API (e.g. SOAP or REST),9,Find a consulting firm who has installed Sametime before. IBM's back-end technologies are amazing for their performance, but they are VERY complex.Verified User
Unspecified
HCL Sametime (formerly from IBM)
15 Ratings
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