Our go-to solution for chats, voice and video calls
April 02, 2018
Our go-to solution for chats, voice and video calls
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Jabber
All employees worldwide in our company use Jabber. Jabber has a found a sweet spot between e-mails and phone calls. It's faster to contact someone through Jabber, and less formal, than it would be with an e-mail. On the other hand, receiving a Jabber message is less disruptive for the recipient than receiving a phone call. We routinely use Jabber for instant and informal discussions with colleagues anywhere in the world. Jabber is also providing telephony and video conference capability over IP, integrating with Cisco IP telephony.
- It has a presence system. We can see in a glance if our contact is available, away, offline, or does not want to be disturbed. We can also see where our contact is (for example, in the office, working from home, from a hotel or customer premises)
- Thanks to its voice and video calls capability, Jabber provides the ability to call anyone from anywhere in the world, as if we were actually in the office (integration with Cisco IP telephony). Someone could call us at our office phone number, and we can pick the call from our computer, whatever our current location (office, home, hotel, etc). We can also consult our voicemail from Jabber.
- Jabber provides a Windows and a Mac client. I've used both, and they are quite user-friendly, enjoyable to use every day overall.
- There is no Linux client. I don't run a Linux workstation on my daily work, but I have colleagues who do. They struggle a bit with alternative clients in order to connect with Jabber. Most of them, if not all, do not have the capability to send or receive images in chats.
- Jabber does not synchronize the conversations over multiple devices. My main computer is a Mac, and my backup computer runs on Windows. When Jabber is opened on both, one of the computer starts to receive all messages, while the other doesn't see them. I might lose some conversations just because they appear only on the other computer.
- Jabber does not keep a server-side history of conversations. All conversations are stored only on the computer of the two people discussing. When switching to a new computer, we have to archive our conversations, otherwise we would lose them.
- Jabber has provided a very functional alternative to our company to Lotus Sametime. We had been using Sametime for years, and as we were moving out of the Lotus/Domino ecosystem, Jabber has provided a replacement with the chat system, but also means to do voice and video calls.
- Although handy, intensive usage of Jabber can be a curse for a company (including ours). Every information stored in Jabber is only available to the two people involved in the conversation. Without a proper knowledge management strategy, this can mean that a lot of valuable information can be shared privately as peer-to-peer conversations, and not available to people who need it.
- Another downside of Jabber is that it can multiply stress for some people, who can be contacted very often, and be interrupted at critical moments. This can introduce additional context switching, and reduce the productivity of some people.
We had been using Lotus (IBM) Sametime for years. About 5 years ago, we decided to move out of IBM for mails, and go for Exchange/Outlook. As a result, we also naturally considered ditching Sametime who was tightly integrated with Lotus Notes. Jabber is a good fit for us as we are using Cisco IP telephony system, and both integrate fairly well together.