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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

TrustRadius Insights

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

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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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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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(52)

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

(1-20 of 20)
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February 25, 2022

A multifunctional tool

Anurag Chaudhary | TrustRadius Reviewer
Anurag Chaudhary
Engineer (Design & Development)
JTEKT India Technical Center (Automotive, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
It is an amazing tool when you need to lighten and enhance the working environment, and it has meant for us a better integration of personnel in their various areas, with no vertical relationships and simply support and cooperation accomplished in this space.
July 13, 2018

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

Tony Morales, PMP, CSM | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tony Morales, PMP, CSM
Project Management Office (PMO) Manager
Carestream (Medical Devices, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Connections is a great one-stop shop for email, calendars, meeting rooms, and sharing documents and knowledge. I believe the academic setting would highly benefit from IBM Connections. The meeting room tool is great as it provides a pre-formatted meeting notes document that includes all participants who joined and detailed information like time and date of meeting. The template can then be tailored to suit the meeting room organizers' needs.
June 20, 2018

A complete package but expensive and complicated to maintain

Jeremiah Miller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jeremiah Miller
Associate Director IT Infrastructure
Mennonite Central Committee (Non-Profit Organization Management, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Connections is well suited for larger organizations that need an internal social networking tool and are willing to deal with IBM and the complexity of the software. It is less appropriate for smaller organizations and those who don't want to deal with the complexity, or IBM's awful customer service and prices.
May 11, 2018

IBM Connections - Not Connecting Ideas!

Eric Hodge | TrustRadius Reviewer
Eric Hodge
Engineering Manager
Waters Corporation (Pharmaceuticals, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 2 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
December 07, 2017

Not flashy, but it gets the job done

Verified User
Administrative Assistant in Human Resources
Education Management Company, 51-200 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Ex) We recently gathered a committee to discuss the redesign of a product. All members in the committee were added to a community focused on the redesign. We recorded meeting agendas and minutes in the activities app, uploaded test redesigns for comment in files, and brainstormed potential improvements in the forum

Ex) The status feature is essentially useless without following the person posting the status. We do not follow individual staff members because it leads to a cluttered newsfeed with information irrelevant to other departments. We still use our phone chat client to communicate statuses.
December 05, 2017

Connect with IBM Connections!

Sarah Pressman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Sarah Pressman
Training and Staff Development Specialist
Educational Credential Evaluators (Education Management, 51-200 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for committee work and also companies that have many departments but also need to create transparency. My company is small and I think it is well-suited for the 90+ employees we have.

At the moment I can't think of any scenarios where it is less appropriate.
December 21, 2015

Great all-around tool for the large but also small environments

Victor Toal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Victor Toal
Chief Solutions Architect
ToalSystems (Information Technology and Services, 1-10 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I find IBM Connections especially useful when bringing together several disparate and possibly geographically separated team members. Also, the ability to bring in outside people (vendors, clients, partners) is very key as it then keeps all the data and the exchange inside the company but visible to all. No more copying 30 people in emails to make sure everybody is somehow in the loop.
December 10, 2015

IBM Connections on-premises: Excellent, but SMBs may want to look at the cloud version instead.

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Plastics Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend

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.

December 09, 2015

Connecting with your colleagues made easy!

Chris Whisonant | TrustRadius Reviewer
Chris Whisonant
Lead Consultant
Best Methods (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Connections is possibly most suited for larger organizations where bigger teams are able to have more people to share with. Also, it may be less appropriate when there is so much security that it would hinder the anytime, anywhere access capabilities and prevent users from being able to enjoy sharing content with each other.
February 25, 2015

IBM Connections review

Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
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.
July 23, 2014

IBM Connections is everything you need to unite professionals around the globe.

Olga Toprover | TrustRadius Reviewer
Olga Toprover
Project Manager
DIRECTV (Information Technology and Services, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Connections is well suited for a big organization where collaboration between people is required or beneficial for business and the work is mostly related to text documents. I would also recommend IBM Connections in organizations where resources are grouped by areas of business or by events.
During the selection process I would ask what the primary type of information the users work with: text documents or images/media. I would also ask how many users are planned to participate in the system. The bigger the organization is the more sense it is to use IBM Connections.
July 18, 2014

Diversity of Connections

Verified User
Project Manager in Information Technology
Sports Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
July 18, 2014

IBM Connections Review

Kiera Stallings | TrustRadius Reviewer
Kiera Stallings
Running Customer Support Specialist
Mizuno USA (Sports, 201-500 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Connections is very helpful between those of us at corporate, and those of us out on the field since we have employees all across the US. It's harder to know what's going on with those kinds of distances between the two, so having a tool that keeps track of work events is great. It is also helpful between those of us at corporate who need to share the same documents. Now they are all in one place.
July 18, 2014

IBM Connections...making our company a better place since 2013.

Adam Pugh | TrustRadius Reviewer
Adam Pugh
Consumer Relations
Planet Pops (Sporting Goods, 501-1000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Connections is an excellent tool when a department or company needs to share a lot of information between other departments or individuals. Using IBM Connections for company wide updates are much more convenient than email blasting. The only downside to IBM Connections I could see is if someone doesn't have frequent access to a computer (ex. manufacturer, warehouse, etc.).
July 18, 2014

IBM Connections - Get those social juices flowing at work!

Erich Schmidt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Erich Schmidt
Manager of Application Development
Applegate (Consumer Goods, 51-200 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
July 11, 2014

IBM Connections helps collaborate

Thinh Tran | TrustRadius Reviewer
Thinh Tran
Senior IT Project Manager - Sunglass Hut Portfolio
Luxottica Retail (Retail, 10,001+ employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
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