IBM Connections 4 and Kudos Badges!

With the release of IBM Connections 4 we are very pleased to also release full support for Kudos Badges and Kudos Thanks on Connections 4.

Our Kudos Team has been working busily away for the last couple of months quitely working on ensuring Kudos is fully supported on Connectiosn 4! In addition though they have been excitedly taking advantage of new capabilities in Connections 4 such as embedded experiences and the OpenSocial Activity Stream. Some awesome new features such as being able to "Like" and Comment on badges and awards that users have received from Kudos. These capabilities really do add significant value to our mission of encouraging User Adoption of IBM Connections! We look forward to working with our clients all around the world to upgrade to Connections 4 in the coming weeks!

So to show off the new capabilities we prepared the following video and screenshots of Kudos Badges for IBM Connections 4!

Kudos Badges Leaderboard for IBM Connections 4Kudos Badges Profiles for IBM Connections 4Kudos Thanks for IBM Connectoins 4

If you would like to trial Kudos Badges (on either IBM Connections 3 or 4!) let us know!

Kudos Badges for IBM Connections 1.3

The team at ISW has been working hard on the latest release of Kudos Badges, Version 1.3! Since Lotusphere we have had our clients provide plenty of feedback and ideas on how to leverage Kudos Badges to encourage user adoption of IBM Connections and these ideas have been added to our development cycle for the products.

Here is some of the new features and capabilities in our latest release:

Kudos Leaderboard

Our new Leader Boards are Context Aware and feature Time Based Ranks to be more relevant and competitive.

• The Context Aware Kudos Leaderboards display the ranks relative to the person logged in. This lets the user see his immediate competition with the option of navigating through the ranks.
• Time Based Ranks on the Leader Boards can now be filtered based on Time enabling new and existing users to start afresh and to always keep the competition alive. By Default the time intervals are set to 30 days, 180 days, 365 days and All-Time but they can be changed to suit your environmen. 
• Leader Boards in the Communities are now based on Content and Members in the Community! The Ranks in a Community therefore reflect the actual contribution from the members to the Community’s content.

Kudos Profile Progress Widget

Encourage your users to get started in Connections! - The Profile Progress Widget displays a progress bar indicating a Profile’s maturity level and gives users ideas to improve it based on what the Profile is lacking. This can include content items such as Contact Information, Tags, Background, and Photo's, as well as Actions the user should take such as join a community, create a blog post, tag another user etc! This widget uses existing Kudos Metrics to measure in real-time the level of completion of a Profile. What makes this feature really powerful is that it is completely configurable allowing you to fine tune it to your environment and what you would like your users to do!

Multilingual Support

Kudos Badges now has the option of defining and editing Badges in all the languages supported by Connections 3.0.1 with full character support. This capability is clearly required for global organisations that utilise IBM Connections across multiple languages. The great thing about how this works is that it is on a per user basis so the users can choose which language they want Kudos Badges to display in, exactly the same way as IBM Connections does!

Kudos Filters

Easier More Powerful Configuration of Badges and Ranks - In addition to Kudos Metrics we now have Kudos Filters. Filters can be used on Base Metrics to narrow down the search criteria with the use of Parameters. This makes the configuration of Badges and Ranks much more powerful. You can create Metrics and Filters for every single action that someone can take in IBM Connections, as well as Actions that other users take on another users Content!

Improved Kudos Awards Engine

The Kudos Engine responsible for awarding the Badges is now enhanced for performance and scalability. This enables even the largest IBM Connections implementations to utilise Kudos Badges as well as allowing you to award users more frequently for better feedback to the users.

We have already started working on Kudos Badges 1.4 with some exciting new capabilities and if you have any ideas on how Kudos Badges can help to further improve user adoption of IBM Connections we would love to hear from you.

If you would like an update on Kudos Badges please Contact Us or one of our various Partners around the world.

Meet Intravision - Kudos Badges Partner based in Denmark

Well we seem to be on a roll with our 3rd Kudos Badges Partner signing on. Intravision are the creators of the awesome OnTime Scheduling Suite and are clearly IBM Connections guru's so we are very pleased that they have decided to partner with ISW around Kudos Badges to work with our customers in Northern Europe.

IntraVision is an IBM Premier partner with it's base in Denmark, Northern Europe. Intravision's focus is to add pervasive scheduling and coordination functionality to IBM Domino clients and IBM Connections. We take pride in serving more than 450.000 users every day with our OnTime suite products. Intravision's consultancy business is to a large extend based on helping our clients with all aspects of Social Business implementations, be it based on the trusted and well established Lotus Domino technology, the innovative and game changing IBM Connections or as the case often is - a combination of the two. They assist their clients through the entire process from identifying processes that supports the business strategy to the implementation of the technology with a particular focus on adoption. Done / Done for Intravision means solutions delivered and adopted by the customer.

Great to work with other innovative IBM Partners around Connections and to also work with a fellow IBM Champion Mikkel Flindt from Intravision. So if you are interested in learning more about Kudos Badges for IBM Connections and you are based in Northern Europe then please get in touch with the Intravision team.

Meet TimeToAct - Kudos Badges Partner based in Germany

I would like to introduce our latest Kudos Badges Partner, TimeToAct. TimeToAct are based in Germany (Colonge) and are the creators of the CAT (Connections Administration Toolkit) product. They are experts in IBM Connections are we are very pleased to have them join us as Partners to provide local support to our Kudos Badges clients in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

TIMETOACT GROUP is a leading IBM Business Partner with over 100 employees at six offices throughout Germany. Professional services for IBM Collaboration and WebShere software comprise system integration and line-of-business application development. TIMETOACT has a created many assets, best practices, tutorials and an administration product (CAT) for IBM Connections.

So if you would like to receive some more information on Kudos Badges and you are based near TimeToAct they will be happy to help.

Meet Collaboration Matters - Kudos Badges Partner based in the United Kingdom

I am very pleased to announce ISW's inaugural Partner for Kudos Badges. Based in the UK I am sure Stuart McIntyre and Collaboration Matters don't need an introduction to most IBM Connections users around the world but here is it anyway:

Collaboration Matters is one of the UK's leading social software consultancies.

Based in the beautiful Cotswolds area of England, they have constructed a dynamic team that can call on some of the most innovative minds in the social collaboration field. We operate throughout the UK as well as building strategic relationships with organisations in mainland Europe and the USA to help us serve the needs of our customers wherever they may be based.

Collaboration Matters has extensive experience in designing, implementing and driving adoption of IBM Connections, in addition to over 15 years working in the collaboration software space.

So if you would like more information around Kudos Badges and you are in the UK, Stuart and his team of IBM Connections Guru's will be able to assist.