IBM Connections Cloud November 2015 Release is Now Live !

Tweet

It's a new month, so we have a new monthly release of our IBM Connections Cloud platform now available! This release focuses on improvements to files and our mobile capabilities. 

To start off, if you are using the Mac file sync plug-in, you now have more visibility to understand the status of sync for each file directly from the Mac Finder:

On the mobile side, we've now made it easier to respond and participate in polls & surveys created in Communities:

This will require a mobile app update which will be in the app stores soon!  

The other component that got many upgrades is IBM Docs. First off, the maximum number of co-editors in a co-editing session increased from 10 to 20. Of course, you can still share a file with as many editors as you want. Check out the updates to the different editors:

Documents editor

• In co-editing, you can hover over an editor's underlined changes to display his or her name. 
• Orphan and widow control in paragraph breaks, accessed from the Format > Paragraph Properties menu.

Presentations editor

• The presentation file size limitation is increased from 30MB to 50MB.
• In .pptx files, you can set line type and line weight for shapes. You can also set line endpoints for arrows and lines.

Spreadsheets editor

• You can create and edit data validation criteria.
• You can copy images from external applications and then, in Firefox and Internet Explorer 11, paste them into the spreadsheets editor. 
• A 3D reference formula is now available. 
• You can drag images from the desktop and drop them into spreadsheets.

File Viewer

• The presentation file size that can be viewed is increased from 30MB to 50MB.
• A formula with a 3D reference can be correctly calculated in Viewer.

There's more new features that you can check out here.

Using IBM Docs with IBM Content Navigator for Real-Time Co-Editing

Tweet

As we get ready for another major on-prem release of IBM Docs, IBM's collaborative editing solution, I wanted to share a bit of how IBM Docs integrates with other repositories beyond IBM Connections.

For example, if you are using IBM Content Navigator, you have the option to use IBM Docs on top of that.  With IBM Docs, you can edit Microsoft Office files in their native format directly in the browser, without having to do complicated download and re-upload steps. You can also create brand new spreadsheets, presentations, and documents directly within the browser which accelerates the content creation process.

Here's a quick presentation that one of my colleagues put together as a demo of IBM Docs inside IBM Content Navigator so you can walk through the experience end to end.

IBM Filenet Content Navigator + IBM Docs screen demo from Brian Pearson

And here's a demo so you can see it in action:



And check out what one of our customers has to say. Kleber Bonadia, Director of IT at Flex Contact Center, talks about how they use IBM Connections Files to collaborate with their own customers to support their own rapid growth:



So if you are a using IBM Content Navigator, make sure you don't forget to use IBM Docs as well!

How To Enable Nested LDAP Groups in IBM Connections

Tweet

The other day I was asked how to take advantage of LDAP / Active Directory (AD) groups within IBM Connections, specially if those groups contain nested groups.  So I went to our internal brain (IBM Connections) and a quick search turned out a post from Antonio Aleandri and with his permission, I'm re-posting here:

-=-=-=-=-

By default, nested groups (nested LDAP groups) are not enabled in IBM Connections. What this means, for example, is that if you add the parent group as member of a restricted community, users belonging to children groups are not automatically Community members.

To enable the nested group you have to customize the scope of member attributes of Group attribute definition in your federated repository.

There are some small differences depending on the type of LDAP repository used:

Active Directory

Change only the scope of member attribute="member" to nested as shown below:

Tivoli Directory Server and Domino 

Customize the name of group membership attributes in Person record (ibm-allgroups for TDS and dominoAccessGroups for Domino) and set the scope to nested:

Check the right Object Class used for member attributes (groupOfUniqueNames for TDS and DominoGroup for Domino)

Save the configuration and restart all components!

Gartner Recognizes IBM as a Leader in the 2015 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace for IBM Connections

Tweet

Put it in the books! For the 7th year in a row, Gartner has placed IBM as a Leader in their recently released 2015 Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace* based on IBM Connections.

We are now getting ready for another major release of IBM Connections and organizations continue to report value from deploying a social collaboration platform such as IBM Connections.

If you haven't seen IBM Connections lately, check out this video that we recently published to showcase our secure file editing capabilities for iOS and Android.

So where do we go from here? And don't forget to register for IBM Connect on January 2016. We are also just coming back from IBM Insight 2015 and I shared some content so you can see what was presented there.

Update 16/Nov/2015: To download the report, you can access it from this page. And then start a free trial of IBM Connections!

*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace, Mike Gotta, Nikos Drakos, Jeffrey Mann, 26 October 2015



Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

IBM Insight 2015 - Check Out What You Missed

Tweet

Last week was a wild ride over at IBM Insight 2015. The IBM Verse and IBM Connections teams were there to share the latest about our products. It was a great opportunity to meet new customers, partners, and fellow IBMers.

One of the highlights of the conference, was the Super Session by my colleague Rob Koplowitz. He co-presented with Jason Silva, the host of the TV show Brain Games (catch it on Netflix). You can watch a replay of his session here:



I co-presented on 3 different sessions around Application Development on top of our cloud platform, Mobile Collaboration, and working with content with IBM's enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) offering, IBM Connections. A key capability here that I wanted to cover was the latest and greatest around IBM Docs. We actually have a major release of IBM Docs coming up here very soon. And given that IBM Docs seamlessly works with IBM Content Navigator it was really well received. If you have IBM Content Navigator, don't forget to take advantage of your entitlement to IBM Docs today!

I've uploaded the presentations so you can see the content that was shared.

IBM Connections Cloud Application Development Strategy from Luis Benitez

IBM Collaboration Mobile Strategy and a New Way To work from Luis Benitez

IBM Connections Cloud & IBM Docs: Working securely and quickly with content from Luis Benitez

So what's next ? You NEED to come to IBM Connect 2016 in January 2016. In fact, John Hernandez invites you personally:

IBM Ranked as Leader in the 2015 Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software

Tweet

And the great news keep piling up as we get ready for another major IBM Connections release. I'm just back from IBM Insight 2015 and will share some content soon about that but wanted to get this out soon!

The latest to hit the wire is that IBM Connections has been ranked as a Leader for the third year in a row in the third Aragon Research Globe for Enterprise Social Software. This is in addition to the Gartner report where IBM came out as a leader in the Enterprise Social Software MQ (more on that soon)!

According to Aragon's announcement, the report evaluates 22 social collaboration vendors against 3 dimensions: Strategy, Performance, and Reach. Based on the evaluation of each vendor, each vendor is placed in 1 of 4 spheres: Leader, Innovator, Specialist or Contender. Again, IBM was ranked as a Leader.

“When it comes to Social Software and Communities, the biggest challenge for the enterprise has been connecting people with critical content and knowledge,”said Jim Lundy, CEO and Lead Analyst at Aragon Research. “Our new Aragon Research Globe for Social Software will help buyers understand the current state of the market and why the market has shifted from feature comparisons to use cases, and how ESNs are helping the enterprise get to faster outcomes.”

Aragon called out the growing number of apps available for IBM Connections: With its growing set of partner apps, IBM Connections can be configured to meet multiple business user needs.

A great example of a customer reaping the benefits of becoming a social business with IBM Connections is Verisure. Check out this video where they share the benefits that they've seen:

Update 19/Nov/2015: To download and read the report, click here. To start a free trial of IBM Connections in cloud, go here.