Documentation

Documentation IBM Connections IBM Connections Cloud

12 steps to success with IBM Connections

This graphic has been around for a while (it was first published by IBM back in November last year), but it is still very useful in terms of giving guidance to end users on how to best use IBM Connections to good effect:

It is also available as a PDF to download.

Here are the 12 steps in text form:

Build your network – Add or follow someone
Advertise your skills on your profile
Update your status every day – Work out loud
Bookmark in Connections – Help yourself and others
Stop sending files in emails – One version of the truth
Stop doing work in emails – Use Activities
Create a wiki for your department – Co-create
Create a self-help forum – Q&A on hot topics
Follow – People, wikis, blogs, forums and communities
Check your activity stream daily – and comment on others contributions
Only create mission driven communities – Best practices
Lead by example

Whilst we can always quibble on details, overall I think these are great tips for any community manager to share with their users. It would probably be even better to tailor them to your own organisation’s use cases and collaborative culture.

May 5, 2017 0 comment

6.0 Documentation IBM Connections

IBM Connections 6.0 Reviewer’s Guide

written by Stuart McIntyre

The IBM Connections Reviewer’s Guide has always been a useful document, for both prospective and existing customers. It outlines the key features of the new release, particularly focusing on new features and enhancements, but also provides an excellent overview of the product as a whole.

The Reviewer’s Guide for the latest release, 6.0, has just been published:

With this latest 6.0 release, we continue to build on the strong capabilities of IBM Connections by adding new and relevant features helping our customers to more effectively run their social enterprise environments. With IBM Connections 6 we added new functionality across the board from Communities, to Files, Search, Onboarding as well as the brand-new IBM Connections Homepage – Orient Me.

The IBM Connections 6.0 Reviewer’s Guide is available as a PDF for download – no registration is required.

April 6, 2017 0 comment

5.0 Documentation IBM Connections

IBM Connections 5.0 documentation now online

written by Stuart McIntyre

With the upgrade to Connections 5.0, IBM has switched from the Wiki style of documentation repository to the ‘Knowledge Center’, which is a much improved form of the old Infocenter format.

I really like this shift – whilst it was initially great to be able to update the Wiki form of the documentation in-place, after a time very few people did this, and they were very tricky to search and navigate. The new Knowledge Center seems a much more accessible and searchable solution.

So if you’re looking to upgrade to IBM Connections 5.0, here’s the documentation you need!

June 26, 2014 0 comment

5.0 Documentation IBM Connections

IBM Connections 5.0 Reviewer’s Guide published

written by Stuart McIntyre

To aid understanding of the features and abilities of the Connections product, IBM offers a Reviewer’s Guide – a document that details all the new features available in the latest release plus a comprehensive review of all the existing features.

Compiled by the IBM Connections product management team, this guide is a fantastic resource for existing and prospective customers, partners and anyone that is looking to learn more about the Connections solution.

The Reviewer’s Guide for IBM Connections 5.0 was published by IBM today:

With IBM Connections, IBM continues to provide ﬂexibility for our customers and additional capabilities to provide a comprehensive comprehensive enterprise social software solution. In IBM Connections 5.0 we introduce major updates to features that allow for collaboration with external users, better attention management tools, and features allowing for easier management and viewing of ﬁles; all in addition to various update for all applications within connections.

This document will highlight all the new features available in this release as well as as comprehensive review of all the existing features.

This guide provides a summary of the applications that are included in IBM Connections 5.0. 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.

It is available for download from Scribd or can be viewed below:

June 26, 2014 0 comment

IBM Connections 4.0 Customizing Email Digests

4.0 Documentation IBM Connections

Customizing IBM Connections 4.0 email digests

written by Stuart McIntyre

IBM is still rolling out updates to the Connections 4.0 documentation, including this one that became available last week:

Customizing email digests
The content of the daily and weekly email digests is defined in templates that are processed by the FreeMarker engine. These templates are used for each recipient of the daily or weekly email digest. You can customize the content of the email digests by modifying the existing template files or by replacing the files with custom templates that you create yourself. You can also modify the notification properties files to add custom strings to the email digests and modify the images used in email digests.

IBM Connections wiki : IBM Connections 4.0 documentation : Customizing email digests

The format of the notifications has changed substantially in 4.0, so this is an important area to be well documented. One of the key pieces of information in there is how to remove or change the IBM logo in the notification emails – most customers will want to do this.

[As an aside, one of the requests I’ll be putting in for Connections Next is an easy switch to remove all IBM branding from the UI, connectors and emails. This is something that almost all large corporations ask to do, and at the moment takes a lot of effort to accomplish. In addition, many non-corporate community sites want to ‘white-label’ Connections and hence this is a big issue for them too. If you agree that this would be useful, please leave a comment to that effect. Thanks!]

November 8, 2012 0 comment