How many users access IBM Connections on mobile devices? - Kudos Analytics

Just posted a quick demo video of Kudos Analytics. We often get asked if we can report on how many users are accessing IBM Connections via a mobile device. The video demonstrates this and a few other related reports.

Who should be part of my IBM Connections Community? Kudos Insights knows!

One of the challenges many organisations have is the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing;)

How many times have you made a call on a customer to then realise that one of your colleagues called on them a week before?

How many times have you been working on a project or research only to realise that someone else in the organisation, maybe located elsewhere, has been working on the same task, or even already done it?

IBM Connections is a great tool for breaking down these communication barriers however even still sometimes we just don't make the connections needed to keep the communication flowing.

Lets look at the customer example above. How about we create a Connections Community around the customer so we can get everyone on the same page and make sure we approach the customer in a consistent manner. Great idea. That will work. However how do we know who to invite to the Community? We already know some of the people involved, but in many cases not everyone. How do we know when someone from a different departmentor division of our organisation is working to sell to another division/department within our customer's organisation? This can happen all the time in big or small organisations. Well the answer to how we know is Kudos Insights!

Kudos Insights is a relationship analytics tool that helps you to make connections and find the right people to be involved in. No longer do we have the problem of not knowing who is communicating with a customer/supplier/partner, or talking about a particular project or topic. From the brochure:

Kudos Insights enables organisations to rapidly build communities in IBM Connections by identifying potential members to invite into the community based on a common interest such as a customer account or a project. Kudos Insights can help community managers instantly answer the question “who else in the organisation has recently connected with a client” or “who else is involved in a particular project” such that they can be invited to join that community.

The community manager can then reach out to the individual and invite them to be part of the community. This is very powerful for organisations that are spread across multiple locations and have limited real account visibility.

So how does it work? Again the brochure tells it well:

Kudos Insights leverages the TrustSphere relationship analytics capability. The TrustVault™ Relationship Analytics server integrates with existing email infrastructure such as IBM Domino® or Microsoft® Exchange®. Relationship data extracted from the email infrastructure is transmitted using a secure API to Kudos Insights and is used to provide essential Relationship Analytics for your organisation. Only metadata is analyzed in order to protect employee privacy and confidentiality. TrustVault™ Relationship Analytics server can be run either as a cloud service (such as on SoftLayer), or can also be installed on premise.

Well here are a couple of screenshots for you:

IBM Connections - Kudos Insights Community BuilderIBM Connections - Kudos Insights My Network Builder

We of course will be at IBM ConnectED in Florida in a few days time so if you are attending come and see Kudos Insights live at our showcase pedastal - B29! We would love to hear your thoughts and ideas. And don't forget you can win a Sonos PLAY:1 while you are at it;)

Kudos Boards 1.2 - Linked Boards,To Do Progress,Board Templates & more...

During the bustling time of the Xmas and New Year period the Kudos team were busy putting the finishing touches on our latest release of Kudos Boards for IBM Connections. It is a great release incorporating some new ideas and feedback from our clients around the globe. We are at a point now with Kudos Boards of not just focusing on making Connections Activities more intuitive and productive for users, but also focusing on creating additional features and capabilities that make Activities really rock.

I have recorded the following quick video to demonstrate just a few of the new features and I will also grab a few screenshots below.

Link Cards to Board

One of the challenges with Activities is that sometimes a single Task can be a full project in themselves. Often it is the case that not everyone in the Activity needs to see all of this detail and just want to know about the overall task being done. Do you have tasks that are really a project in themselves?  Now you can manage that To-Do in a whole other Board.  Simply create a 'Board' type card, and either create a new board or select an existing board. The To Do Card is still on the Original Board however you can also link directly to the more detailed Linked or Associated Board to drill down into the specifics of that task. Very cool!

Tile Progress bars (complete, overdue, incomplete)

Have a lot of Activities. Want to see a snap shot of the progress across them all? See at a glance your progress through all your Boards, and whether any items are overdue!  Hover on the bars to see the overview for the status of y our tasks.

Update window title based on page

Have multiple Kudos Boards tabs open?  Finding it hard to keep track what is what?  Now you can easily distinguish between different Board tabs you have open.

Added Multilingual Support

With our clients coming from all around the world multilingual support is important of course. When we first built Kudos Boards we did so in a manner to support different languages and we have finished this off. The first alternate language thanks to our great partner Whitesoft is Czech.

So if you would like to check out the new features or have a trial contact us via the Kudos web site. We would also love to hear your ideas on how else we can improve Kudos Boards and IBM Connections Activities. Last of all we will be exhibiting at IBM ConnectED 2015 in a week so come by have a look. Oh and don't forget you can win a Sonos PLAY:1!

Kudos Boards for IBM Connections is ready to roll! Social Connections here we come!

Following on from the announcement of the pending release of Kudos Boards at IBM Connect 2014 we are now ready to roll!! I am very please to announce the full release of Kudos Boards. Post Connect we have been feverishly working away to finalise Kudos Boards for IBM Connections and have completed all of the capabilities we wanted to deliver in the initial release. We have had Boards in a pre-release pilot for the last couple of months, and have had heaps of feedback from our awesome customers and partners around the world. We have lots of additional capabilities we will be adding over the next few months however we feel it is now ready for showtime!

The Kudos mission is to increase the user adoption, measure performancea and ROI, and increase user productivity for IBM Connections. Our 4th Design Goal for Kudos is to Increase User Productivity Through Clever Design. And this is exactly where Kudos Boards is focused.

Kudos Boards creates a visual interface, based on the Kanban methodology, for IBM Connections Activities. Thru the use of a visual interface users are able to leverage the Activities capability in a more intuitive and personalized way. Drag and Drop, Click to Change, Quick and Easy. Sometimes Activities can become a little overwhelming for users....Soooo Many Activities......Soooo many tasks and entries.....where do I focus? Kudos Boards fixes this problem via the My Boards interface by enabling users to focus on what is important to them, sort and manage their Activities in a personalized way, colour code, categorise, pin boards, and access their important Activites/Boards quickly and easily. Once in a Board they can intereact and use the Activity in a more intuitive way. All the time keeping the Board automagically in sync with the Activity...in real time! Magically refreshing in front of your eyes. Very neat stuff! This will increase the usage of Activities, which will result in happier users, more engaged users, leading ulitmately to increase in adoption of Connections overall.

Off course a picture (or a video:) is worth a thousand words so I have recorded the below video showing the latest release of Boards.

I am just about to pack my bags for a trip to Social Connections so for everyone that is going to be there will be able to see Kudos Boards first hand. If you can't get there however please reach out to us via www.kudosbadges.com and we will be happy to provide a trial version or schedule a web demo just for you.

ISW helps CEMEX integrate IBM Connections and Forms Experience Builder with SAP

ISW has recently been working with one of our great Kudos clients, CEMEX, on a few projects extending IBM Connections. One in particular is a great example of how the IBM Connections Activity Stream can be extended to include events from 3rd party applications. In this case CEMEX are using SAP. SAP generates a lot of events that require action from users. For example an Expense Request Approval or a Purchase Order Approval. By integrating these events with IBM Connections we are able to deliver these events via the Activity Stream and then using an Embedded Experience with Open Social Gadgets, the user can view the work item, take action such as approving or rejecting the item, all without leaving IBM Connections. Being able to stay within the context of Connections results in an improved user experience, as well as a quicker approval process.

The second part of this project was to also integrate Forms Experience Builder with SAP. CEMEX wanted to deliver an improved user experience by developing more intuitive forms within their WebSphere Portal intranet - CEMEX Shift. Using the same techniques as with Connections ISW was able to integrate well designed electronic forms so that when they are submitted by the user the information is sent to SAP to continue the business process.

The following case study has all the details:

ISW helps Cemex integrate IBM Connections and Forms Experience Builder with SAP

If you are interested in learning more come visit us at our Kudos/ISW booth at IBM Connect - Ped 113.