Overview
What is HCL Sametime?
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.
Sametime a low budget and a reliable client
"Makes Working With Global Team Easier, With Fast Communication Features."
Simple Yet Effective Platform
Sametime review
IBM Sametime is a Basic Chat App that gets the Job Done... and not Much Else
Sametime? Maybe Some Other Time.
Gets the Job done for Instant Messaging
An Honest Review of IBM Sametime
IBM Sametime is a solid, reliable solution!
Sametime provides real value, a simple interface, and full mobility.
Popular Features
- Directory of employee names (7)8.080%
- Message alerts (6)8.080%
- Mobile app for iOS (8)8.080%
- Mobile app for Android (7)8.080%
Pricing
What is HCL Sametime?
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.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos
HCL Sametime v12 Demo
Features
Cloud PBX
A cloud PBX system is based on cloud computing technology where data is stored and transferred over the intenet without any need for on-site PBX equipment
- 9Hosted PBX(2) Ratings
Hosted telephony infrastructure obviated the need for local PBX hardware
- 9Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)(2) Ratings
IVR is a phone menu allowing callers to interact with the system through voice and keypad
- 8User templates(2) Ratings
Create and apply batch configurations to multiple users at once
- 8Call reports(2) Ratings
Historical call analysis and trending metrics
- 8Directory of employee names(7) Ratings
Voice directory of all employees for self-service dialing
Call Management
Customized phone system settings
- 8Answering rules(5) Ratings
Ability to enter rules to route calls to main number or other extensions in case of absence
- 8Call recording(2) Ratings
Automatic recording of inbound and outbound calls
- 8Call park(1) Ratings
Ability to hold calls in virtual location and subsequently access from any phone in system
- 8Call screening(2) Ratings
Ability to block numbers or send calls directly to voicemail
- 8Message alerts(6) Ratings
Receive SMS and email message notifications for voice and fax messages
VoIP system collaboration
Team collaboration via cloud phone system
- 8Video conferencing(6) Ratings
Built-in video conferencing capabilities
- 8Audio conferencing(5) Ratings
Audio conferencing credentials for all on the system.
- 8Video screen sharing(1) Ratings
Users are able to share their screens with other meeting participants on video conference calls.
- 8Instant messaging(1) Ratings
Users are able to communicate via chat, either one-on-one or in a group message, through an instant messaging or chat tool.
Mobile apps
Apps are compatible with mobile devices.
- 8Mobile app for iOS(8) Ratings
App for iPhone and iPad
- 8Mobile app for Android(7) Ratings
Android app
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is HCL Sametime?
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.
HCL Sametime Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
---|---|
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(21)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
Sametime is widely used for internal communication purposes within organizations, enabling seamless collaboration across different departments and locations. It provides a range of features including instant messaging, persistent chat rooms, meetings, and VOIP to address various business needs. Many IBM customers rely on Sametime as their go-to instant messaging platform due to its integration with email and web-based programs. Additionally, its compatibility with telephony systems and availability of free mobile iOS and Android clients make it a versatile choice for users.
One of the main use cases for Sametime is facilitating quick internal team meetings and project discussions. Users appreciate the convenience of being able to connect with colleagues in different offices across regions without the need for constant emails. The platform's integration with IBM Notes allows for easy booking of web meetings and checking availability for chat. Furthermore, its centralized settings and preferences management reduces the learning curve for users.
Another advantage of Sametime is its flexibility in deployment options. Organizations can choose between on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid setups based on their specific needs. This adaptability enables teams to communicate efficiently regardless of their location or work environment.
Users have found Sametime invaluable in improving productivity, collaboration, and communication within their organizations. For example, savvy users utilize Sametime as a tool for presentations instead of searching through shared drives for files. Salespeople rely on the mobile app to obtain quick responses to time-sensitive questions while on-site with customers. The ability to record meetings and transfer files faster than email further enhances workflow efficiency.
Sametime is widely used as a standard text-based chat tool across organizations, especially for quick questions. Its REST API allows for easy integration of chat functionality into existing web apps. While Sametime is a preferred messaging app within many organizations, it may not be suitable for all teams, leading to competition from other messaging tools like Slack, Google Hangouts, and Skype. Organizations need to evaluate which solution best fits their specific requirements.
Based on user reviews, users recommend Sametime for its basic instant messaging capabilities and easy setup. They find it convenient for quick chats and collaboration, making it a suitable tool for internal team communication. Reviewers appreciate its features for file transfer and texting.
Users suggest using other apps like Microsoft Workspace, Slack, Google Chat, or Hangouts instead of Sametime. They feel that Sametime requires infrastructure, feels outdated compared to other solutions, and lacks updates. Users prefer these alternatives due to their ease of use, additional features, and better integration with video and audio.
Reviewers recommend Sametime for secure communication within companies. They appreciate it as a good software for video conferencing and messaging with most of the required features, such as an AI assistant, backup, video conferences, and multichats. However, some users mention slow service, frustrating attachment loading and transferring, and suggest making Sametime less resource-consuming and more affordable.
Overall, users have mixed opinions about Sametime but commonly recommend it as a basic communication tool while suggesting using other platforms for additional features.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-2 of 2)IBM Sametime is a solid, reliable solution!
- 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.
- Call reports
- N/AN/A
- Directory of employee names
- 100%10.0
- Answering rules
- 70%7.0
- Call recording
- N/AN/A
- Call park
- N/AN/A
- Call screening
- N/AN/A
- Message alerts
- N/AN/A
- Video conferencing
- 90%9.0
- Audio conferencing
- N/AN/A
- Mobile app for iOS
- 90%9.0
- Mobile app for Android
- 90%9.0
- 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
- 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...
Sametime provides real value, a simple interface, and full mobility.
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.
IBM Sametime would probably not be well suited for environments smaller than, say, 500 users. This is primarily due to the high cost of consulting to get the environment installed and kept up to date. However, organizations that size are probably looking at cloud services anyway.
- Hosted PBX
- N/AN/A
- Multi-level Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
- N/AN/A
- User templates
- N/AN/A
- Call reports
- N/AN/A
- Directory of employee names
- N/AN/A
- Answering rules
- N/AN/A
- Call recording
- N/AN/A
- Call park
- N/AN/A
- Call screening
- N/AN/A
- Message alerts
- N/AN/A
- Video conferencing
- 90%9.0
- Audio conferencing
- 90%9.0
- Mobile app for iOS
- 100%10.0
- Mobile app for Android
- 100%10.0
- 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.
Not only was Sametime a "zero-load", no plug-in client for anyone participating, but it had a cleaner interface. Integration with IBM Notes was a big factor for us initially, and as time went on we were happy to see IBM provide solid iOS apps as well.
Another advantage for us was our users could make and keep their web meeting rooms, fully stocked with presentations and other files, ready to go whenever they needed to use them. Integration with the Notes calendar meant it was easy to send out an invitation with the correct link.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
The Chat app gives you presence awareness and the ability to Chat (of course) plus make or take AV calls. Additionally you can share your location via GPS (town & state) and an option to disconnect you from Sametime automatically after so much elapsed time.
The Meetings app is also handy. You can host and watch online meetings, though of course hosting a meeting is easier on a larger screen such as an iPad. The ability to mark up ("whiteboard") and take notes via the Discussion panel is very helpful.
- 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)