Announcing IBM Connections Suite 4.5.1 - It keeps getting sweeter!

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Today, I'm happing to announce the latest release of the IBM Connections Suite, IBM's social collaboration platform. The IBM Connections Suite provides a single offering that organizations can deploy to build a powerful intranet, become more agile and create competitive business value.

The latest update released today adds many more collaboration features to provide a top notch experience for users. For example, teammates can work together and align on business objectives in real time using instant messaging and web meetings deeply integrated as part of communities.

A rich content library allows members to securely manage their content and use approval routing to track the progress towards the validation of the document.

From ideation, to microblogging, to real-time team collaboration, to document management, the IBM Connections Suite 4.5.1 is the most secure and complete collaboration platform out there. Remember: content is only valuable when the right people can find it at the right time.

Here's just a preview of what's new:

Here's a demo so you can see it in action from our new Product Manager, Albert Nichols:

For more information, the announcement letter is here.

Announcing the IBM FIle Viewer for IBM Connections

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Looking desperately for that important file? Don't want to download files unnecessarily just to see if it has the content that you need?

Today, that problem is gone. We have just made available a high-fidelity file viewer for all IBM Connections customers. As you may know, this was already available to Connections customers in the cloud and IBM Docs customers on premises. Today, all IBM Connections customers have access to a high-fidelity filer viewer.

The viewer allows you to see the entire contents of the file, present in full screen mode, and print without having to download to your desktop saving you time and space! The viewer will render PDFs, OpenOffice formats (odt, odp, and ods) and Microsoft Office formats (doc[x], xls[x] and ppt[x]).


Note: in the screenshot above you would only see the "Edit" button if you have purchased IBM Docs.

To get the viewer, you can get it from our app catalog, here.

A Key Social Business Benefit: Remove Barriers to Collaboration

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By now, you are probably aware that we have updated our social collaboration cloud services and that the latest monthly release of the IBM Connections mobile apps have been posted to the app stores (click here for iOS and here for Android).

The big feature this time around for IBM Connections is File Sync which started rolling out to users Monday and should be available to all cloud users by Friday of this week.

As someone who works from home and travels a lot, I depend on my tablet. Wherever I go, I have instant access to the content that I need, irrespective of whether or not I have an internet connection. And when I'm connected, it gets even better as I have instant access to experts, I can start a video chat with them or a multi-way video meeting and just get business done! I still remember just 6-7 years ago when I travelled how important it was to have access to a telephone jack so I could try to plugin and get business done over a 56K connection. How much have times changed!

Two weeks ago, I demo'ed at the event IBM held where we covered how Social + Mobile + Cloud has transformed how we work today. There, I showed how File Sync works for me and a preview of the upcoming Sametime 9 mobile apps.

In case you missed it, I've included the demo below:

Want to get started with these solutions? Start a free trial today!

How To Migrate from Quickr to IBM Connections Content Manager

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Earlier this year, we released IBM Connections 4.5. The big focus of IBM Connections 4.5 is the new Content Manager add-on which brings the power of content management and combines it with the power of the IBM Connections social platform. The add-on is part of the core IBM Connections installer so there's nothing else to install!

Content Manager:

• Combines the ease of use of social tools with the power of a structured hierarchy.
• Includes document check-in and check-out, version control, approval routing, metadata, taxonomy, document types and nested folders.
• Makes content management tools as easy to use as social networking tools.

This add-on also allows Quickr customers to upgrade to a better experience. To facilitate this transition, we've provided a migration tool to our customers at no extra cost (as you can see in slide 18 below). This allows them to take their libraries from Quickr Domino or Quickr for Portal and migrate them to IBM Connections Content Edition. We've also made a RedBook available: Making the move to IBM Connections 4.5 and IBM Connections Content Manager.

What’s New in IBM Connections 4.5 and IBM Connections Content Manager from Luis Benitez

To download the migration tool for Quickr for Portal, click here.

The documentation for the tool is here in our public wiki so you can start seeing how it's going to work. If you are interested in getting access send me a note and we'll get you going!

Announcing IBM Connections 4.5 IFR1: Community Polls/Surveys for all!

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Today, I'm happy to announce the availability of IBM Connections 4.5 IFR1 . This new release adds Surveys and Polls for communities at no additional cost to our IBM Connections customers. This capability has been available for a while but it was only as an added cost add-on. In this release, this capability is now out of the box.

With community polls and surveys, you can:

• Create and conduct surveys and polls among the members of an IBM Connections community
• Use the built-in survey designer to create the questions and rules with no coding skills -- just drag-n-drop!
• View the results of surveys and polls as chart or a table or export to a spreadsheet
• Share polls/surveys with other community managers
• Community members can participate in surveys/polls directly from the Connections mobile app

This opens the door to many use cases such as refining product offerings using insight gained from customers or perhaps validating new offerings with information from business partners. Here's how it looks:

As you can see from the screenshot above, you will have two new widgets available to you: "Featured Survey" which allows you feature a poll/survey right in the Overview page and "Surveys" where members can see all active surveys.

Editing and creating the survey occurs directly within the Connections interface. Community managers don't have to learn anything new or any HTML coding skills. It's all visual and with drag-n-drop they can create the polls and surveys they need.

Those of you who know me, know that I've been trying to make this available out of the box for some time, and today, we've made it happen! So don't wait. Go on and download and start taking advantage of this new entitlement!