IBM Connections

IBM Connections is social software that helps you use the collective knowledge of your organization, your partners and your customers by building new connections.

IBM Connections is social software for business. It empowers business professionals to develop, nurture, and remain in contact with a network of their colleagues; respond quickly to business opportunities by calling upon the expertise in their network; and discuss and refine new creative ideas with communities of coworkers, partners, and customers.

By empowering people to easily connect with employees, partners, and customers, IBM Connections can help businesses, government agencies, educational institutions, and others realize the following benefits:

• Task execution is faster through quick access to information from an expanded professional network
  Increased efficiency and effectiveness of business processes by using existing skills discovered through your professional network.
• Decisions can be made with confidence knowing they were vetted by experts across the organization and reflect past experience.
• Innovative products and services can be developed using the experiences and knowledge of communities of employees, partners, and customers.
• Sustainable competitive advantage can be created by leveraging innovation from across your value chain and building stronger relationships.
• Exchange ideas with, and benefit from the expertise of other people using Forums and Blogs.
• Expand your professional network through social analytics based recommendations for people to connect with, and communities to join.
• Build vibrant communities that encourage participation with sub-communities focused on key topics of interest to the members.
• Access profile information, search for expertise, and view status quickly.
• Stay informed of the latest updates from across your social network.
• Access your social data while on the go.
• Extend your social business solution by accessing people and information in several of your existing IBM solutions such as IBM Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Quickr, and IBM enterprise content management (ECM) systems - IBM FileNet® Content Manager and IBM Content Manager.
  

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• Task execution is faster through quick access to information from an expanded professional network

• Increased efficiency and effectiveness of business processes by using existing skills discovered through your professional network

• Decisions can be made with confidence knowing they were vetted by experts across the organization and reflect past experience

• Innovative products and services can be developed using the experiences and knowledge of communities of employees, partners, and customers

• Sustainable competitive advantage can be created by leveraging innovation from across your value chain and building stronger relationships

• Exchange ideas with, and benefit from the expertise of other people using Forums and Blogs

• Expand your professional network through social analytics based recommendations for people to connect with, and communities to join

• Build vibrant communities that encourage participation with sub-communities focused on key topics of interest to the members

• Access profile information, search for expertise, and view status quickly

• Stay informed of the latest updates from across your social network

• Access your social data while on the go via the micro-browser or the device specific application

• Extend your social business solution by accessing people and information in several of your existing IBM solutions such as IBM Sametime, IBM Lotus Notes, IBM Lotus Quickr, and IBM enterprise content management (ECM) systems - IBM FileNet® Content Manager and IBM Content Manager.

• Finding the right people and content at the right time can turn a web presence into a social experience. IBM WebSphere ® Portal Server, Enable and Extend customers are entitled to IBM Connections Files and Profiles thereby providing an accelerated path to becoming a social business.

• IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 customers are entitled to IBM Connections Files and Profiles thereby providing an easy path to becoming a social business.

• Extend data protection by integrating Connections with IBM® Lotus® Protector for Mail Security. IBM Lotus Protector for Mail Security now provides virus protection for files uploaded to Connections files, communities, wikis, and activities.

• Add security and real time policy management controls with Vantage for IBM Connections. Vantage for IBM Connections helps social business organizations remain compliant with key regulatory and corporate requirements by delivering additional security and compliance benefits beyond native IBM Connections implementations.

• Google Play store (link resides outside of ibm.com)

• Apple App Store (link resides outside of ibm.com)

• BlackBerry App World™ (link resides outside of ibm.com)

• Collaborate with community members using activities, blogs, wikis, forums, and shared files, including rich media files

• Customize the community by selecting a theme for the user interface, and choosing the arrangement and selection of widgets

• View statistics on discussion forum usage and highlight important topics by pinning them for the community

• Upload files and securely share them with others

• Tag files so they can be easily located

• Add recommendations and comments

• Moderate file submission

• Reduce inbox "bloat"

• Create wikis that are standalone or associated with a community

• Create wiki pages; enter and edit content

• Compare wiki page versions to see what was changed

• Subscribe to wiki pages to be notified of changes

• Comment on pages

• Post a status message informing your network of what you are doing

• Locate people and expertise using a tag cloud

• Post messages for your colleagues on their profile page

• Create a blog for use by the members of a community

• Embed a video in a blog posting to make it available to readers

• Moderate blog entries

• Generate ideas and gather feedback on ideas. Get consensus on best ideas.

• Import and export bookmarks from and to a browser

• Create an activity for use by the members of a community

• Stay up-to-date by scanning the new list format for displaying updates from across your professional network

• Subscribe to people or tags in the watchlist to focus on the updates that are most important to you

• Expand your professional network

• Find content and communities that might interest you

• In the Home Page application, this widget recommends content that you might find interesting based on your existing community membership, network connections, tags, and so forth.

• In the Communities application, the Recommendations widget suggests communities that you might want to join.

• Do You Know: This widget recommends people for you to add to your network based on your existing connections, tags, organizational relationships, and actions that you have taken in the different applications.

• Things in Common: This widget helps you identify what you have in common with a person. For example, the widget might display a list of the communities that you and the profile owner both belong to, or a list of the tags that you have both used.

• Who Connects Us: This widget allows you to view the social path that links you to a person when you are viewing that person's profile. The social path displays as a list of people who link you and the profile owner.