Good Vibe-rations
July 07, 2014
Good Vibe-rations
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
3.4
Overall Satisfaction with Novell Vibe
Novell Vibe was a huge success in replacing our intranet and introduced a solution to address several problems and wants: department landing pages (for related news and info), blogs, discussion threads, wiki (we use it for IT change controls), surveys, calendars, LDAP sync to Active Directory (giving users the ability to access it externally), and a mobile app, just to name a few.
The most attractive piece, from a maintenance/administrative standpoint, is that it allows us to assign user rights at any level. From a single entry to an entire landing page. It puts content-management in the hands of department managers.
The most attractive piece, from a maintenance/administrative standpoint, is that it allows us to assign user rights at any level. From a single entry to an entire landing page. It puts content-management in the hands of department managers.
- Rights. You can grant users/groups rights to specific entries (i.e. an entry for IT eyes only).
- Due to how it's built, you can access it via SSO internally, and access it externally (workstation/app) using credentials.
- Wiki. We created a Change Control wiki to help document changes to our systems.
- Personal Workspaces. These are very dynamic and useful in keeping track of tasks and projects.
- Application Integration. We integrated our email and IM systems. Especially useful when working on projects with team members across multiple sites.
- The app needs some enhancements (i.e. phone numbers aren't touch-and-call)
- There can only be one global landing page. Meaning you can't have users go directly to their department page. Our work-around was putting links to their pages on the global landing page.
- The Photo Album capability is cumbersome.
- Blogs seemed to be the only way to successfully set up a landing page as it offered the most flexibility.
- Collaboration has increased.
- External access to Vibe has been positive.
- Managers have taken on more ownership of the system.
- The learning curve was difficult, and near vertical, at times due to Vibe being so different than what empoloyees were used to.
We are a mixed shop (Microsoft and Novell). We had the entire Novell suite and realized Novell Vibe was included. After meeting with Novell and learning what Vibe had to offer for collaboration and application integration, and since we wouldn't incur have any additional costs, we decided to try it before looking at other solutions. We are happy with our decision.