New IBM Connections Desktop Plug-In Now Available

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With the release of IBM Connections 4.0, IBM is now updating its many extension points. Today, I wanted to share the news that the new IBM Connections Desktop Plug-Ins are now available for download. The plug-in, of course, remains free and is fully supported by IBM.

The Desktop plugin is a single install which brings IBM Connections into Microsoft Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Windows Explorer (depending on what you have installed). Here's a list of some of the features you can use:

• Upload local files to IBM Connections from Windows Explorer or from your desktop
• Share uploaded files with people, communities, or folders in IBM Connections
• Work on files locally and publish them to IBM Connections
• View people's contact details and get in touch with them
• Pin, follow, or like IBM Connections files and folders
• View or contribute comments for a file
• Lock a file when you are editing it to prevent file conflicts
• View and restore files from IBM Connections Trash
• Share folders with IBM Connections Communities

One of the things that really stands out is how all of the social features from IBM Connections Files are available directly from Windows Explorer. From Windows Explorer, I can like files, comment on them, share them and more without ever having to open a browser. How cool is that!!??!!

If you haven't seen this plug-in in action, then I recommend that you take a peek at the videos created by my colleague Ron Denham.

First, how it integrates with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel:

Next, how it integrates with Microsoft Outlook:

Finally, how it integrates directly into Windows Explorer to provide access to files whenever you want:

To download the free plug-in, download it from our App Catalog.

Social Streams Help Me Stay Focused and Productive

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At your job, you have access to a lot of information throughout many systems. That means that you are probably switching between many applications to get your job done: your email client, your intranet portal, your various line of business applications, etc, etc, etc.

Now, imagine if you had a single, social stream of updates from all the applications you worked with that enabled you to get your work done quickly and efficiently. Wouldn't that be awesome? Imagine if you could sign off on an expense report or submit your travel request or even get notified when your colleague finished a task all while you browse a single stream of status updates and more.

All of this you can do today with IBM Connections. Using open standards, enterprise applications can be surfaced into a social stream to enable people to work in one single place.

Next week I'm going to be participating in the Virtual Enterprise 2.0 Conference and I would like to invite you to attend. This will be a great opportunity for you to find out what types of processes you can socialize by leveraging the market leading social platform for major productivity gains

As a teaser for the virtual Enterprise 2.0 conference, we have prepared the following video:


To register and view the agenda, click here and you'll be entered to win a Kindle.



See you there!

Grow Revenue By Using the IBM Social Collaboration Platform [VIDEO]

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And the demo movies for IBM Connections v4.0 keep coming in.  Let me tell you a little about this one.

Before using IBM's Social Collaboration Platform, Greenwell's profits were not growing and they were losing market share.

Greenwell's marketing manager decided to leverage the IBM's Social Collaboration Platform and from that point on, the successes kept piling in.

Check out the success story:


The ROI of using IBM's Social Collaboration Platform is clear. Greenwell was able to:

• Discover new opportunities
• Rebuild brand recognition
• Increase market share
• Invigorate its customer base

Congrats to the team at Greenwell! (By the way, in case you didn't attend our conference earlier this year, Greenwell is a fictional company).

This is a great video that you can use to drive adoption and clearly understand the business value of using a Social Collaboration Platform powered by IBM Connections.

What do you think? If you are not using the IBM Social Collaboration Platform, you should start today!

Now Available - Replay of What is New In IBM Connections 4.0 Webcast

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Last week, I participated in the monthly community meeting for IBM Collaboration Solutions run by the famous Joyce Davis. In the webcast, I covered What's New in IBM Connections v4.0. For the most part, I tried to do a separate demo from the one that I shared on Wednesday of this week which was focused more on the highlights. For this webcast, I tried to get a bit more specific and show more of the new features and show them in action!

As Joyce mentioned in her blog entry earlier in the week, in the webcast Matt Tredinnick kicked things off by providing an overview of the IBM Social Business story and explained how IBM Connections fits into the strategy. Joyce tells me that this is one of the webcasts with highest turnouts!

Here's the replay of the webcast in case you missed it or want to see it again:



And this is the slide deck that I was going to use but it was decided by webcast attendees to skip these and focus more on demo. 93% wanted a demo and only 7% wanted slides; go figure!

For instructions on how to download these slides, see below:

What's New in IBM Connections 4.0 from Luis Benitez

Here's some additional links you might be interested in:

• Download the slides from here (feel free to use these with your users)
• Download the audio-only (mp3) replay from here
• Q&A during the webcast can be seen here

Enjoy!!

IBM Fully Behind OpenSocial and ActivityStrea.ms

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When OpenSocial 2.0 was shipped late last year it was declared ready for the enterprise and that's no surprise since a big push towards OpenSocial 2.0 was driven by companies such as IBM.

In the latest release of IBM's social collaboration platform, IBM Connections 4.0, IBM has included support for OpenSocial 2.0, OAuth2, and ActivityStrea.ms. The latest release also features something called "Embedded Experiences" which was a concept invented by IBM and donated to the open source community. IBM is also currently the lead editor of the ActivityStrea.ms standard and is the top code contributor to Apache Shindig, an open source reference implementation of an OpenSocial container.

With IBM and other social collaboration vendors adopting OpenSocial it presents a prime opportunity for developers who want to build apps on top of these platforms. They build once and they can use anywhere!



Earlier this year, Dion Hinchcliffe blogged about the need for Enterprise Social Networks to leverage Open Standards. He not only outlines the benefits of open standards for developers, but also to the enterprise. Specifically, Dion says (emphasis mine):

[…] the business value of social media is best achieved when it's centered in the work that we do, not off to the side. This can only be achieved by connecting our systems of engagement (social business tools and platforms) with our systems of record (CRM, ERP, HRM, etc.)

Updated 13/Sept/2012 @ 9:15a - I was alerted that Dion Hinchcliffe joined the OpenSocial board earlier this year.

And you can see IBM fully understands this as part of their launch video for IBM Connections 4.0 shows integration with SAP through an OpenSocial gadget.

ISW, an IBM Business Partner, has created a gamification solution for IBM Connections and it uses the OpenSocial standard meaning that their solution could work in other platforms as well. To see it in action, see the video below (skip to 13:03):



AppFusions is also taking advantage of this integration point and even blogged about this earlier this week.

OpenSocial is definitely now ready for the enterprise! Oh and if you want to learn more about IBM Connections, don't forget to register for today's webcast From liking to Leading: The Success of your Business is Social (click the invite below to register):


Register now!