Jabber- Great for Messaging and Desktop Sharing
Updated September 27, 2016
Jabber- Great for Messaging and Desktop Sharing
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Jabber
Jabber is being used as our company's instant messaging tool, connecting team, departments, and the entire organization in a useful alternative to email. Like email it provides an asynchronous means of sending and receiving messages in a less disruptive manner than phone, or face to face conversations. Additionally with the availability status it is easy to know if a coworker is in the office. Finally, Jabber has an excellent feature that allows you to share your desktop with another user, and even grant control. This facilitates collaboration and even IT help desk support as you can view users desks remotely.
- Jabber is excellent for remote troubleshooting as it allows remote desktop sharing and even control. It is very easy to setup a sharing session- literally seconds- even for non technical users. This can be used by the business, or by IT personnel when troubleshooting an application issue. It can also save an organization money if they were using another, paid tool for remote troubleshooting.
- Facilitates asynchronous communication using conversation style. When someone messages you a small window pops up and fades within a second or two. You can either click it to open or ignore it and open it later. This is an improvement over Jabber's predecessor, WebEx Connect, which would blink an icon at the bottom of the screen until you read the message. This was really annoying because, unless you could put up with the flashing icon, you needed to click on each message right away. That negated the concept of asynchronous communications.
- Facilitates status tracking as Jabber has several statuses: green for Available, yellow for Away, red for "Do not Disturb". Finally grey is for offline. It also link with your Outlook and has automated statuses: "Presenting", i.e. sharing your desktop with another user via Jabber or WebEx or "In a meeting".
- Jabber could use a middle ground for message notification. The prior method of an icon flashing at you every few seconds defeated the asynchronous nature as it would force you to put up with the blinking, or click the message immediately. And if you clicked the message just to stop the blinking, then it would register the message as read, and it would be easy to miss or forget about the message without actually reading it. Now they have the popup window (described earlier in the review). Additionally when you click on the Jabber app you will see the number of unread messages for each user. If you were on the phone or speaking with a colleague you may have missed the message entirely. Either way, its now too easy to miss a message and the sender will use other means, and ask why you ignored their message. A good middle ground would be features they have now with either a status or something similar in the system try (it can even be the flashing icon, but flash once every 5 minutes, not once a second) which would occasionally remind you of your unread instant messages.
- Too many software updates. Jabber constantly wants to update the application and if you push it off reminds you on every login. Bundle and space them out further.
- This is minor but the default installation comes with a docking tab at the top of the screen. If you are not using the tab then it is annoying. Virtually every user wants to get rid of it but they do not know how. They are always grateful to me when I get rid of it for them.
- Jabber allows sending of files but it's a bit cumbersome as it must first be accepted, downloaded, then opened from the folder. It does give a short cut to open the download folder, but the ability to directly open received files would be very helpful.
- Jabber does not have an off-line queue as part of its standard setup. Not a huge con, but it add a level of convenience. When someone is off-line, typically after they have left for the day, you either have to wait to respond to an IM, or move the conversation over to email.
- When a new message comes in the popup window, whether or not you click on it, when you go to your conversations window, it brings you back to your last conversation. what happens is, you think your in the conversation for the window which just popped up, and if your lucky you catch your response before sending to the wrong person. This occurs even if you actually click on the popup window, you still may be in a different conversation. I am used to it by now and rarely make the mistake, but it would be a really good feature to bring you to the conversation related to the newest message.
- Jabber has had a positive impact on the organization and it a good companion to WebEx and other Cisco products. The ability to utilize Jabber for IT remote desktop sharing is one of the best features.