Socialize Me

Business Processes Go Social with IBM Business Process Manager 8.5 and IBM Connections

2013-06-14T03:00:00.000-04:00

Today, IBM released IBM Business Process Manager (BPM) 8.5, the latest in process management to optimize business processes and improve productivity. This has been a long expected release that Dave Hay talked about several weeks ago and was a big part of the IBM Impact conference a few weeks back as well.

In this release, the IBM Connections integration has been taken to the next level to socialize business processes. The marriage of traditional business processes with social collaboration is something that I've been looking forward to for a long time. In fact, for a while there's been talk of moving from systems of record to systems of engagement. My take has always been that to foster adoption it's better to combine systems of records with systems of engagement. My colleague Rawn Shah wrote a great piece on this as the outcome of the Enterprise 2.0 conference shared here late last year.

This is not the first time, however, that BPM has integrated with Connections. In IBM BPM 8.0, the IBM Connections business card could be surfaced within the BPM portal to raise awareness of experts within the system.

In today's release of IBM BPM 8.5, tasks and business processes, appear in the IBM Connections activity stream. Users can see that a new task or workflow has been assigned to them and take action directly within the stream. For example, if the task shouldn't be assigned to them they can re-assign it directly within Connections without having to switch context. If the task is for them, they can claim it and take action on it directly within Connections.

With the new integration via the activity stream you can enable scenarios where:

"Debbie" uses BPM to submit a requisition getting help from a subject matter expert, "Frank"
"Frank" uses IBM Connections as his collaboration platform allowing him to interact processes as part of his normal work in context of his other collaboration tasks

Check out the screenshot of the integration below:

Very exciting !

What's New in IBM SmartCloud Connections - June 2013 Release

2013-06-12T11:37:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, I announced the availability of a new release of IBM SmartCloud Connections, our multi-tenant offering of our marquee social collaboration platform. This offering provides the social business tools you need to work with colleagues, customers, and partners, including file sharing, instant messaging, and communities.

In my blog post from earlier this week, I shared a demo video with some of the highlights (read: my favorite features) of the new release. Since the announcement, however, I've been approached many times asking for a complete list of what's new in this particular release. Therefore, I wanted to take an opportunity and share that over here:

What's New in IBM SmartCloud Connections - June 2013 (for end users)
What's New in IBM SmartCloud Connections - June 2013 (for admins)
What's New in IBM Docs - June 2013 (if you have the add on)

Additionally, I've created a presentation that provides an overview of the features currently available in our cloud offering. I've embedded the presentation below:

And in the spirit of making sure there's a lot of information out there, I've also gathered the official videos into a playlist so you can go through the different videos. My recommendation is that you go through and embed these videos and share with your colleagues to give them a tour of the new features and capabilities.

Enjoy!

Social Collaboration Just Got Better with the new IBM SmartCloud Connections Release

2013-06-09T09:27:00.001-04:00

A few hours ago we completed the upgrade of our social collaboration platform: IBM SmartCloud Connections. In total, there's over 100 new features and enhancements.

Among some of the things you will see:

A new look and feel (firs shown at the IBM Connect 2013 OGS)
Updated mobile clients
New desktop connectors for click-to-cloud (I'll post a demo once it's ready for download)
Enhanced rich text editors
New navigation bar gives you access to content faster
Enhanced Community Overview to create a compelling landing page
Share photos and videos in the community
Enhanced ideation capabilities
Changed Recommendations to Like throughout the system
and more…!

To show off some of these new features, I've created a 5 minute video to walk you through the enhancements:

Now, it's time to start working on our next release which is due in several weeks. If you haven't had a chance to see what's new, you can start a trial today! Simply go to http://ibmcloud.com/social and go from there!

Enjoy!

New Government 2.0 Template Powered by IBM Connections Now Available

2013-06-07T03:00:00.000-04:00

Governments are challenged to deliver services to their constituents (citizens and visitors) efficiently and cost effectively in a world that is increasingly social and web enabled. Through interactions with commercial businesses they have become accustomed to on-demand service that is available 24 X 7. To meet these demands, governments are developing citizen portals to provide their constituents with access to information and government services. The social aspects of this template are powered by IBM Connections.

To that end, we have released a new template to to enable government entities to get started quickly with a citizen portal. The template provides best practice examples for the many design patterns which are common for citizen portals. All content, layouts, forms and apps can be customized and configured to meet specific requirements. The template assets can be integrated with existing systems and content to provide an exceptional user experience for Governments and their citizens.

Here's a video that shows the template in action such as a Mayor's blog.

You can download this new template directly from our App Catalog here.

IBM Connections Developers - Here's What You Need to Start

2013-06-04T03:00:00.000-04:00

For a couple of years now, the IBM Social Business Toolkit has been a great set of development resources to get partners and ISVs started with developing apps for IBM Connections.

As I stated yesterday, the Connections eco system continues to grow and we want that app eco system to continue to grow. Maybe you've been thinking about joining the Appathon to win $1000. If so, then this is perfect timing for you. So if you've been thinking about submitting an app for the Appathon to win $1000, start coding today. But what's the absolutely best place to start ?

To that end, we have created a new landing page for the IBM Social Business Toolkit. The page is built using responsive web design so you can get to it from your desktop or mobile browser and have an optimized experience. Here's a quick view of how it looks.

There you can access:

code samples
code snippets
videos
documentation
SDK download
upcoming events
… and more!

Remember, if you are going to participate in the Appathon, you have until June 23rd to submit your app!

KangoGift brings employee recognition to IBM Connections

2013-06-03T03:00:00.000-04:00

It's the beginning of June and this promises to be another month filled with great news around enterprise social business. Let's start with another example of the continuously growing IBM Connections ecosystem. KangoGift, a platform that helps companies deliver and measure informal employee recognition in a fun and meaningful way, has announced that it has become a partner with IBM and has integrated their solution with IBM Connections.

Lately, I'm hearing that more and more companies are looking to enable this within their organizations and with this new solution they can get started very quickly. Here's how KangoGift put it in their blog announcing this new solution last week:

Now from Connections, if a colleague went above and beyond on a project, you can say thank you, include real gift like dinner at Macaroni Grill, share the praise with your network, and add a positive data point to the colleague's performance dashboard.
We know from working with large organizations, that employees crave a way to give timely praise and reinforce great work. And the ability to attach a small gift strengthens the impact. And with this integration, companies don't have to implement a stand alone recognition platform.

KangoGift has taken advantage of the many extensibility options of IBM Connections and integrated seamlessly into the Connections user experience.

Check out the 1 minute video that they prepared to see how this works:

To learn more, visit http://kangogift.com/ibm

Posted with Blogsy

LinguaSys Demonstrates Translation Plug-In for IBM Connections

2013-05-09T03:00:00.000-04:00

LinguaSys has just posted a new video that shows real-time translation of content within the latest release of IBM Connections. As companies continue to roll out social collaboration platforms to collaborate worldwide with customers and employees, there's been a trend to foster collaboration in the end user's native language.

Internally, at IBM, every time I log on in the morning I see a lot of updates in Chinese and Japanese and I wish I could read them. With this new plug-in, I now can!

The plug-in even translates the contents of emails in your Exchange or Domino server via IBM Connections Mail .

To showcase the functionality, LinguaSys has created the following 2 minute demo. Check it out:

To learn more, visit LinguaSys' page on translation.

SNAPPS Announces SnappLinks for IBM Connections

2013-05-07T03:00:00.000-04:00

Today, I'm glad to share the news that SNAPPS, a long time IBM partner and whose founder is an IBM Champion, has announced new extensions for the IBM Connections rich text editor.

The rich text editor is part of several IBM products including Connections. The editor in Connections can be extended with additional buttons and features and SNAPPS has taken advantage of this.

With SnappLinks™, you can use your editor -- in your applications with XPages or with the IBM products -- to create and share the public social experience across intranets, on the web with suppliers, and in teams. SnappLinks™ is integrated directly into the editor and lets you connect to these social, public networks: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Maps, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia. In other words, Get Social Do Business in a way that's natural and easy for your users.

In addition to the helpful social linking features, SnappLinks delivers a rendering engine to IBM Connections to let users view YouTube videos, Google Maps, and Facebook feeds right on the page!

Check out this 3 minute demo to see how it works!

To learn more, go here. Note: SNAPPS is running a promotion where they are offering this at 25% off and 35% off for those attending IamLUG this week. Take advantage of that!

Demo: Deep Dive of IBM Connections Content Manager 4.5

2013-04-25T03:00:00.000-04:00

The Information Development team has created this video to take a deep dive into IBM Connections Content Manager 4.5 which was released a little over a month ago.

Earlier I had shared a high level demo of IBM Connections 4.5 so if you missed that, or you are looking for more details specifically around Connections Content Manager (CCM), then this is the demo for you. Here are the features you will see:

Upload and sharing files
Configuring library settings like draft approvals, document types and metadata, etc
Saving files as drafts
Configuring access to files
Searching by document types
Refine search by custom metadata
Tagging, liking, commenting on files
Approving / rejecting a document

Check out the 6 minute video below:

Enjoy!

Social + CRM = Spend more time selling with IBM Connections and SugarCRM

2013-04-24T03:00:00.000-04:00

If you are a seller or have a sales team you may be aware of the time spent in a CRM tool such as SugarCRM managing sales opportunities.

Now, what if every time you went into a sales opportunity you could have people and information surfaced automatically to the sellers that could help them close opportunities faster ? That could significantly increase revenues as sellers become more productive and can spend more time, well, selling.

Highland Solutions posted this video to show the integration between IBM Connections and SugarCRM in what they call Semantic Sales Insights:

This is a great example of infusing social into existing business process which is the key to become a successful social business.

To learn more about Semantic Sales Insights, visit their page here.

Demo: Mindmapping with IBM Connections

2013-04-23T03:00:00.000-04:00

Mindjet is a collaborative work management software for brainstorming ideas, organizing information and managing projects and tasks.

As you start working on a project, you may start working on it by creating a mind map. Once you've visually outlined the information and are ready to take action, Mindjet can help you start tracking tasks towards project completion.

Recently, Mindjet integrated with IBM's Social Business Platform, IBM Connections. As tasks are assigned and the project is updated, the updates appear automatically in the activity stream.

This provides great benefit and business value to Connections users as it gives them a single place to track all their collaboration projects.

Check out the 3 minute demo below.

To learn more, check out Mindjet's page.

Demo: IBM Connections Improves Contact Center Processes

2013-04-22T03:00:00.000-04:00

Today, I wanted to share this quick video with you. It shows IBM's Social Business Platform, IBM Connections, deeply integrated into the work life of a help desk representative.

This allows an agent to reduce the amount of time required to find the right information to help a caller.

Here's one of the examples shown in the video. A caller selects that they want help on increasing their credit limit via the automated voice prompts. In the agent desk, the IBM Connections community with this information, and even more specifically, the exact page within the community is opened with all the information the agent needs to resolve the call immediately.

Check out the 4 min video below:

This great integration between IBM Connections and the contact center drives first contact resolution and can reduce the time that an agent spends on the phone solving customer issues.

What a great example of infusing social into existing business processes, a key in becoming a successful social business.

To learn more, check out AVDS - Automated Voice & Data Solutions.

Webcast tomorrow: Transform your Business into a Social Business

2013-04-10T07:41:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow I'm going to be participating in a webcast to talk about the business value of IBM Connections 4.5.

At the webcast, I'm going to spend a good portion of the time talking about the benefits of deploying a social collaboration platform in the enterprise. In fact, we are seeing our customers really benefit of becoming a social business. In fact, here's a quick snapshot of some of the benefits you can achieve:

And as I talk to many customers across all industries and geographies, I know there's a set of concerns that organizations have when it comes to using social media within the organization. Here's a view of those top concerns and tomorrow I'll be talking about ways to overcome those:

So if you are on the fence on becoming a social business and/or want to learn more about the newly released IBM Connections 4.5 make sure you sign up for the webcast tomorrow! To sign up, click here.

See you there!

Activity Stream portlet for IBM Connections 4.5 Now Available

2013-04-09T15:29:00.000-04:00

The IBM Connections portlets for IBM WebSphere Portal have been updated and are now ready for download!

With this new release you can:

Bring the Activity Stream experience from IBM Connections into portal - this means you can surface the microblogging capability of IBM Connections in the portal, including @-mentions !
OpenSocial Embedded Experiences are now available in Portal
Enhancements to support ideation
Support for Portal 8.0.0.1 CF4
Support for IBM Connections 4.5

With this release, there are now 13 portlets that bring the power of social to the portal making it extremely easy to socialize an existing site.

Here's a screenshot of the new Activity Stream portlet in Portal:

To download, go out to our catalog and get it from here and the installation instructions are here.

Check out the New IBM Social Business TV Ad Premiering Today

2013-04-08T11:22:00.001-04:00

IBM continues it's big push on Social Business (one of the 4 key areas of our Smarter Planet strategy along with Mobile, Cloud, and Analytics).

By now, you may have seen a recent article we published on the Wall Street Journal on competing in the Era of "Smart". This new TV ads are the next step in driving attention to the power of a social business.

Starting today, the following TV ad will be running in the United States during the Masters Golf Tournament coverage on both CBS and ESPN.

Check out the ad:

For those of you interested, the mobile TV ad is here and the analytics one is here.

Spread the word!

IBM Connections 4.5 Reviewer's Guide is Ready for Download

2013-04-05T07:29:00.001-04:00

The news about IBM Connections 4.5 keep on rolling. Today, I'm happy to communicate that the Reviewer's Guide for IBM Connections 4.5 is ready for download.

If you haven't read one of our Reviewer's Guide before and you are not sure what it is, here's the description:

This Reviewer's Guide provides a brief summary of the applications that are included in IBM Connections 4.5. It is important to note that these applications can be used within an organization as needed—all together or as individual applications. Capitalizing on a flexible and modular architecture, organizations may start with a single application and add other applications when they choose. As in previous releases of IBM Connections, applications can be installed easily and naturally fit into the user experience, so it is easy to expand as needed.

Therefore, if you are looking for an end-to-end review of the features in the release and it's capabilities, this a great document to go through, all 94 pages of it. We've also included tons of screenshots as well.

I have embedded the document here so you can preview it:

sdf

To download it, go here: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/connections/connections45reviewersguide/index.html

Announcing the new Social Business Data Center in Germany

2013-04-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

Today, IBM is announcing the availability of a new data center for Social Business in Europe.

The new facility in Germany will serve the needs of customers in Europe interested in our cloud-based social business offering: SmartCloud Connections. Just like with our data centers in the US and Asia, customers would be able to use the latest and greatest, including IBM Docs.

The momentum towards the cloud continues to show signs of growth and with this new data center we'll be positioned to better serve customers in that region. All data will remain in the European Union (EU) which eliminates data privacy concerns and legal overhead since data is not transferred outside of the EU.

Here's a customer testimonial that was published earlier this week from Colleagues in Care and how they get value from IBM Docs and SmartCloud Connections:

And here's another customer testimonial:

For more information, check out the press release here: http://ibm.co/10xAfp2

Preview: Polls and surveys for IBM Connections

2013-04-02T07:34:00.001-04:00

Now that we are officially in second quarter and IBM Connections 4.5 shipped, I can talk a little bit more about more things coming this year, specifically this quarter. Coming in a few weeks is a new add-on for Connections that will add polls and surveys.

With this add-on, community managers will be able to:

Use a question-based authoring tool to create polls and surveys directly from the community
Configure who can see results
Configure if results are tied to a user or collected anonymously
Notify members via the activity stream. Members will be able to respond via the embedded experience (even from their mobile devices)
Notify members via an email notification. Members will be able to respond via the embedded experience (requires a modern email client such as IBM Notes 9).
and much more...

The Product Manager for this offering is Marty Lechleider so if you have any questions (such as licensing), reach out to him. In fact, Marty created the following demo to show off the new capabilities of Forms Experience Builder "Next" and how it integrates seamlessly into IBM Connections:

Enjoy!

Demo: What's New in IBM Connections 4.5

2013-04-01T08:11:00.001-04:00

By now, you have downloaded IBM Connections 4.5, which was released last Friday, and perhaps even upgraded to that release.

Over the weekend, the information development team published this video. You can use this video to share with your end users and give them a tour of the new features in this release. (share it via a blog!)

Note that this video is specific to just the new features added in this release. If you are looking for an overview demo of IBM Connections 4.5, then check this out.

The video also covers the new Connections Content Manager and there will be another video released in the next couple of days focused on just that particular add-on for those of you interested in a deep dive.

Stay tuned for more!

IBM Connections 4.5 Is Ready for Download

2013-03-29T08:49:00.001-04:00

The day has come! IBM Connections 4.5 is ready for download!! Partners can get the software from PartnerWorld and customers from Passport Advantage.

Let me summarize give you a couple of pointers to help you get ready to deploy:

What's New Presentation - http://www.lbenitez.com/2013/03/replay-of-ibm-connections-45-launch.html
IBM Connections 4.5 Documentation - http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/xpDocViewer.xsp?lookupName=IBM+Connections+4.5+documentation#action=openDocument&content=catcontent&ct=prodDoc
IBM Connections 4.5 System Requirements - http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27037782
IBM Connections 4.5 Plug-in for IBM Notes 9 - http://www.lbenitez.com/2013/03/new-ibm-connections-plug-ins-for-ibm.html
Planning your upgrade to IBM Connections 4.5 - http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21626551
Redbook: Installing and deploying IBM Connections - http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0994.html?Open

Next week, I'll share two new videos to show explicitly a demo of what's new in IBM Connections 4.5 and also a deep dive on the new IBM Connections Content Manager. So stay tuned for that. For now, check out this demo which shows an overview of IBM Connections 4.5:
Now, I'm curious to know who will be the first to go into Production with 4.5

Replay of Monthly ICS Webcast featuring IBM Connections 4.5 &Connections Content Manager Webcast Now Available

2013-03-27T08:22:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I presented at the monthly IBM Collaboration Solutions webcast. The topic? Of course: IBM Connections 4.5 and IBM Connections Content Manager.

As Joyce Davis posted late last night, the replay is available for those that missed it (tip: you should never miss a Joyce Davis webcast) or for those who want to see it again.

There was a technical glitch with my computer where it decided to alert me that I had run out of disk space (must be all those demo movies!). After several minutes, I was able to recover and you can enjoy the fun below. I was also very happy to know that more than 80% of the attendees were planning on upgrading to version 4.5 to enjoy the new content management capabilities. Remember, the download of 4.5 will be available this Friday!

Webcast replay:

I have also shared the presentation over at SlideShare:

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

If you want to download a copy of the original presentation, you can find it here on Greenhouse.

How To Create a Social Portal for Exceptional Web Experiences

2013-03-25T09:52:00.000-04:00

This video takes a deep dive on how to create a Social Portal for Exceptional Web Experiences. The social layer is provided by IBM Connections and using the new social rendering portlets you can create a great and compelling experience with a few clicks and, most importantly, with no coding skills required.

This is very useful when you want to open up Connections to users outside of the organization and/or you want to socialize an existing web front.

All of these capabilities are available today so there's no need to wait!

Update on 27/Mar/2013: I've embedded part 2 of the series and thanks to Ken Krause for doing this!!

Enjoy

New IBM Connections Plug-Ins for IBM Notes 9 Now Available

2013-03-21T12:52:00.000-04:00

In conjunction with the new IBM Notes 9.0 release today, we have also just released the latest IBM Connections plug-ins for the best email client available delivering the world's first social email experience to the market.

The new plug-in adds support for:

IBM Notes 9.0
IBM Connections 4.5
Mac OS X 10.8
Windows 8

Additionally, the Connections business card has now been redesigned and the plug-in now provides a single installer to enable all the integration points to Connections: microblogging, file sharing, and tasks. As you probably know the plug-in allows you to:

Attach a file to a status update
Like / unlike a status update
Activity stream integration allows to monitor updates for all Connections services
Search by people and communities
Post status letting your colleagues know what you are doing
View status for people in your network
Comment on status updates
Delete your status or associated comments
Forward an update by email
View or post updates from the icon in the system tray when you are not working in the Notes client
Keep up with updates for people you follow
Lock/unlock files
Upload files for your own use or to share with others
Drag and drop an attached file or a file from your desktop to Files
Drag and drop or copy and paste a file from Files to your desktop
Send an HTML link to a file
Search for people or communities
Sort files for easier browsing
Detach the Files window from the Notes sidebar

So if you are upgrading to IBM Notes 9.0 and/or IBM Connections 4.5 you must get this plug-in today! To learn more about IBM Notes 9, check out this 90 second video from Ed Brill:

And for a demo of these features check out:

To download the new plug-in, you can get it from our app catalog over here.

Replay of the IBM Connections 4.5 Launch Webcast Now Available

2013-03-18T09:25:00.001-04:00

Last week was a busy one with the launch of IBM Connections 4.5, and the enhanced IBM Connections plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. To kick off the launch, we had a webcast to showcase the business value of IBM Connections 4.5 and IBM Notes 9 called: From Liking to Leading - Transforming your Business with a Next Generation Platform for Social Business.

If you missed the webcast, or you want to watch it again, you can do so here (even if you hadn't registered for the original webcast). In the replay you also have the option to download the broadcast presentation from the “Resources” widget of the broadcast replay. I had fun getting ready for the launch and creating the demo of IBM Connections 4.5 where I focused on the importance of mobile and real-time collaboration.

Also a quick reminder that if you are looking for the two demos that were shown during the webcast, you can access those quickly here.

Here's a storify that summarizes the webcast:

View the story “From Liking to Leading: A comprehensive platform for social business” on Storify

Enjoy!

Check out the new IBM Connections Plug-In for Microsoft Outlook

2013-03-15T09:45:00.001-04:00

We have just released the new IBM Connections Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook ! This enhances the existing integration that we provide via the native Outlook Social Connector capability. However, we found that Microsoft implemented this in a limited way since it only provided "read-only" access to the social network.

Therefore, we took the integration to the next level and added a brand new sidebar to Outlook to provide access to files, microblogging, communities and more. And you can interact with your social network all directly from Microsoft Outlook!

By bringing social to the end user, you can accelerate adoption, reduce time to value, and reduce training costs as users that live and die in Outlook don't have to learn anything new to interact with IBM Connections.

Here are some of the features:

Share files easily – send links instead of attachments.
Drag and drop email messages and attachments from Outlook to the IBM Connections sidebar application to upload them to IBM Connections.
Search Connections files directly from Outlook.
Search people by name, job title, organization, etc.
View complete Connections profiles.
Initiate a chat with a colleague directly from the sidebar application.
Receive live updates from your colleagues, communities you follow, and when changes are made in files you follow.
View community files and updates.

Here's a quick 5 minute demo showing this off:

To download the plug-in, go here or find it directly in our App Catalog .