Socialize Me

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 .

Demos of IBM Notes 9 and IBM Connections 4.5 Launch Now Available

2013-03-14T17:23:00.001-04:00

By now you know that this week we launched IBM Notes 9 and IBM Connections 4.5. On Wednesday, we had a webcast to launch these two products.

At the webcast we had Ray Wang, from Constellation Research, kick things off by talking about the 9 C's of collaboration.

During the webcast, Scott Souder and myself did demos of our respective products. Those demos are now available online in case you missed it (or you want to see it over and over and over again! )

Here's the IBM Notes 9.0 demo:

Here's the IBM Connections 4.5 demo:

The full replay of the launch webcast is also available here.

Enjoy!!

IBM Connect 2013 and Product Demos Available

2013-03-14T07:30:00.000-04:00

Building on the launch of IBM Connections 4.5 and IBM Notes 9.0, the demos that were done during the IBM Connect 2013 keynote (aka OGS) (aka Opening General Session) are now available directly from the main IBM.com/social page.

From that page, there's a demo tab which then brings you to a page with individual product demos as well as the OGS demos from IBM Connect 2013.

And clicking on See Demo shows the following movie. Here you will see a little of IBM Connections 4.5. Additionally, I demo the new real-time collaboration capabilities provided by Sametime as well as some of the new features provided by IBM Notes 9.0. If you couldn't make it to yesterday's launch webcast a replay of that will be available soon, so for now, enjoy the following video:

As a reminder, IBM Connections 4.5 will be available on March 29th, 2013, so get ready!

Enjoy!

Announcing IBM Connections 4.5

2013-03-12T03:00:00.000-04:00

Today is a big day ! Following up on our previews at IBM Connect 2013, today we have updated all of our ibm.com pages to reflect this new release: IBM Connections 4.5! This release comes exactly 6 months after the huge release of 4.0 back in September of last year.

I've already talked a little about IBM Connections 4.5 and of course I showed it at IBM Connect. If you weren't at IBM Connect, or couldn't get to my session, here's the slides that were shown:

ID301 - What’s Coming in IBM Connections from Luis Benitez

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.

The feedback so far from customers has been overwhelmingly positive. So now, to really learn everything about IBM Connections Content Manager, you should come to the live webcast tomorrow. I'll be in the webcast to do a demo so you MUST attend.

Click on the button below to register!

One final note, there are now three license levels you can buy:

IBM Connections Suite 4.5 - social + content + unified communications (this is what I'll demo tomorrow)
IBM Connections Content Manager 4.5 - social + content
IBM Connections 4.5 - social networking and collaboration platform

Get your servers ready !

How to Compete in the Era of "Smart"

2013-03-07T09:52:00.001-04:00

Today, IBM Social Business was highlighted in the Wall Street Journal and it is front and center as part of IBM's Smarter Planet strategy.

In the essay published in the Wall Street Journal, we describe how for the past 5 years we've been working with companies to transform how they operate using key IBM technologies in mobile, social, analytics and cloud to achieve measurable business value and results.

At organizations, we've seen how employees have far more access to data, and better access to something else: each other. My favorite quote from the essay is:

In this knowledge economy, the exchange of ideas has become the new means of production. And the advent of social and mobile technologies is shifting the competitive edge from having workers who amass knowledge to having workers who impart it.

I've seen this in practice at IBM. The transparency created enables the organization to become agile an connect a remote workforce (e.g. enabling them to live in cool places like Puerto Rico). In the essay, we highlight some of the organizations that have achieved tremendous value from becoming a social business, such as Cemex and Lowe's. So again, make sure that you go ahead and read it.

The op-ad is very well timed as South by Southwest (SXSW) kicks off tomorrow. Speaking of SXSW, if you are going to be there, make sure that you check out these sessions presented by IBM speakers:

I Know Where You're Going: Location as Biometric

- Jeff Jonas, IBM Fellow & Chief Scientist

The Large Enterprise of Social Media - Meet Up

- Noah Kuttler, Market Segment Manager, IBM Enterprise Content Management

Mentor Session

- Rawn Shah, Social Business Strategist, IBM

Engaging Government for Fun, Profit & Meaning

- Gadi Ben-Yehuda, Innovation & Social Media Director – IBM Center for the Business of Government

Making Accessible Transportation Modern & Cool

- Bill Curtis Davidson, Accessible Transportation Solutions & Business Development Lead, IBM

Just Add Followers – The Key Ingredient to Telling Your Brand Story and Getting Results

Panel Discussion with Shoutlet, Bare Escentuals & IBM, Moderated by TechCrunch
- Sandy Carter, Vice President, Social Business Evangelism and Sales

As a reminder, make sure that you don't miss next week's webcast: "From Liking to Leading": Transforming Your Business with a Next Generation Platform for Social Business

In the webcast Ray Wang, Principal Analyst & CEO, Constellation Research and speakers from organizations like Prudential, Genworth, Czarnowski and Celina Insurance to learn how the right platform for social business can drive competitive advantage. The broadcast will also include a demo of IBM Notes and Domino and IBM Connections Content Manager (and I hear that it's going to be an awesome demo!).

IBM Connections Coders: Get Ready for the Appathon !

2013-03-04T08:00:00.000-04:00

The past several blog posts have been about cool new apps built for IBM Connections and how they were announced at IBM Connect. Needless to say, I'm extremely happy with how the IBM Connections ecosystem has grown and I want to keep growing it!

To that end, at IBM Connect I talked about the Appathon which has just started. In case you missed it, I wanted to make sure you were aware. For this contest, the IBM Connections category will have five $1000 prizes and the deadline for submission is June 23, 2013 so there's plenty of time to get started !

If you haven't done any app dev work for IBM Connections, I would like to suggest 2 steps to get started.

1) Get familiar with the SDK: http://bit.ly/ibmsbtcommunity and you can even play *today* with the SDK over at http://bit.ly/sbtplayground. The playground is a web-based live demonstration of the JavaScript libraries exposed in the SDK.

2) If you missed IBM Connect, you can still get access to most presentations and get going creating apps for IBM Connections. A good presentation to check out is SHOW301: Becoming an IBM Connections Developer by Rob Novak. To access the rest of the presentations, click the image below:

Now, get coding and good luck!

Questionmine Brings the Power of Surveys and Video to IBM Connections

2013-02-28T11:22:00.001-04:00

At the IBM Connect 2013 conference, Questionmine demonstrated their latest integration with IBM Connections.

Questionmine provides the ability to create interactive webinars with video surveys to engage the audience. This can help you generate real-time feedback and accelerate decisions.

Leveraging the activity stream and OpenSocial support within IBM Connections, Questionmine can quickly distribute videos to users. As the video plays and gets to a specific time, the question comes up and the user can respond instantly. After the response has been submitted, the video continues to play. To analyze all the data, Questionmine provides a dashboard for administrators to go in and get insights.

In the following demo, you can see a marketing manager at Pepsi creating questions and then sharing them as part of a video within IBM Connections and request feedback, specifically to see what others think about a new TV commercial that's going to go live soon.

To learn more, check out their website or if you are going to SXSW next week, check them out at stand 344.