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Filter 18 vetted HCL Sametime (formerly from IBM) reviews and ratings
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November 06, 2019
HCL Sametime is used across in my company for internal communication. Sametime is integrated with HCL Notes. We use Sametime to facilitate communications with other offices across regions without the need to send emails all the time. We also use Sametime to have a quick internal team meeting for project discussion and status updates.
- Easy to track chat history
- Can share files and screenshots easily
- Can create user availability alerts to alert when the user is available
- Facilitate team communications across regions effectively without being very formal and therefore strengthens our team relationships
- Not convenient for a large group meeting.
- Very basic tool for internal communication only not available for third party communication
- Very basic and limited mobile app features.
- High speed connection is needed to connect to Sametime
January 24, 2020
The use of HCL Sametime helps the teams to communicate in a fast way, especially when you have teams located in different cities and even countries. As the product is very user-friendly to all users, we are having no trouble using it around the world, since we use it in Latin America, EMEA, and East Asia region. All teams are using Sametime to communicate efficiently and with no limits.
- Sharing files and screenshots is very easy with the screenshot feature.
- Simple to use and with good chat history.
- To perform better, it requires lots of configurations that are not default.
- The app feature could be improved.
IBM 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.
April 06, 2018
Sametime 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
February 26, 2016
Currently, 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.
December 09, 2018
IBM 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.
July 24, 2018
IBM 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.
April 11, 2018
Sametime 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
March 14, 2017
IBM 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.
February 12, 2016
IBM 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:
Additional benefits we've found:
Here are some specific aspects of Sametime that we really appreciate:
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.
HCL Sametime (formerly from IBM) Scorecard Summary
Feature Scorecard Summary
What is HCL Sametime (formerly from IBM)?
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.
HCL Sametime is ideal for cross-team chat in countries with strict data privacy and gravity laws, companies in regulated industries, and government entities who need to be able to ensure the security and auditability of their data.  ​ 
Categories: VoIP
HCL Sametime (formerly from IBM) Technical Details
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application: | No |