I often work with teams from other country and regions, hence HCL Notes is a very useful platform for internal company management operations. It standardized organisational work standards in most of the offices worldwide. HCL Notes also enables chat with other team around the world that I find very helpful when initiating conversation or just want to have a quick update rather than sending emails and waiting for replies. However, HCL Notes is not very efficient in web browsing and user still need to use other internet service providers.
If you have a website through which your clients engage (either sales or support) your offerings, then you absolutely need a live chat tool. Having used Zoho for a while now, I can absolutely recommend it. If you have not used a chat tool before but you have an online store then you should definitely explore this option. They offer a free trial so you can test it to see what response you get but for sales related websites, this will pay for itself.
Data sharing via small database format is valuable as they are quickly deployed, easily managed and distributed on backend email servers.
Integrated messaging allows quick communications between geographical sites reducing long distance costs.
Policy documents for registering new users, setting initial security levels, assigning default database access is managed easily with the admin client.
The simple user experience can be touted as a positive, but it is also a negative in some ways. Compared to other calendars, email and chat tools, IBM Notes looks like it is from the 90s.
We have constant issues with chat crashing. This is the main reason so many people in our organization chose to switch away from Notes.
There aren't a lot of integrations with IBM Notes and other applications we regularly use. Notes seems to have been left behind by many.
Since companies started to moved their email systems to the Exchange platform and the cloud, we are unable to find any new projects with IBM Notes, the marketing share and software price is another issue, so we have to move to another platform.
Cliq is essential software for our communication. Because we are an office of both in-house and remote employees we must have a unified communication platform to speak to another in real-time. Cliq offers us that platform in an easy-to-use format that allows for both 1:1 and team communication occurring all at once.
Easy to use for the user, most of the apps we developed, there is not much need for user training. Most of the times, we just do a demo to the users group and they can pick up from there.
It's available 24X7. We have never faced any serious issues with the connectivity. Whenever we faced issues, it has been traced to a browser issue or Windows app issue or a mobile issue.
I've been using the production for a very long time and very happy with it. Also, all the online resources and forums for notes is very friendly and easy/quick for getting help. I found out that compared to Microsoft or Oracle or any other platforms, IBM Notes online forum is the best I have seen.
Excellent support. Online training and supporting videos, and resources are more than sufficient to get started. Moreover, their support channel, especially the chat window, is very helpful and provides an instant solution to all our queries. For any complicated issue, they always get back by email with the solution and on occasions even call back.
Implementation is easy and smooth if the requirement is well gathered/documented. Notes is a RAD platform, all projects in Notes is simple in the implementation step.
Implementation is very simple and easy. Create a Zoho account (free or paid), send/ receive an invite, log in, verify your credentials and get started. Admin would have created the channels for you, and you start contributing. The entire process is smooth, and you can get started within minutes. The Admin has to work at the backend, initially, and decide on the permissions for the individual and the team and set up permissions for access to other applications too. This needs to be planned out, tested and implemented.
I've already answered this question in the previous questions however to sum it up IBM Notes stacks up VERY WELL! It has a LOT of really good business/enterprise features like enterprise-grade Dropbox-like storage, synced email/calendar/contacts, it supports a LOT of third-party add-ins, easy-to-use and friendly, very strong and robust, and most importantly it's a LOT more secure in my opinion than the competition.
Essentially the same style of platform. Aside from any "bots" (which I don't use anyways), they appear to do the same thing. But Zoho Cliq comes packed into the Zoho One platform. It's a useful component in a suite of communication tools that allows our office to work and speak to one another in an abundance of ways.
The system works perfectly well. At times, we have faced issues with the desktop application - it doesn't start, or takes time to start, or even logs off on its own. However, the browser as well as the mobile application work perfectly well, and we have never faced issues with them
ROI for us has been extreme. In the late 1990's we automated dozens and dozens of paper-based processes and created workflows for activities that had never been formalized before. Additionally all those forms with their comments, etc. have been captured in a central place to serve as audit trails.
Whenever we need faster access to data (mail or otherwise), it's quick and easy to deploy a new Domino server somewhere, setup replication of appropriate databases, and get the local Notes clients pointed to those resources. So that to me is positive ROI because it represents time savings based on user need.
Tech. Support would claim a negative ROI in terms of supporting the Notes client, Notes updates, peculiar Notes issues, and users who complain about Notes. That is certainly true to a point. The Notes client is a much more complex piece of software than, say, Outlook. But we have to remember that Notes deployments are not just for Mail but many, many applications as well. In the end I'd say we might have 1 or 2 user complaints per month, typically around Calendar issues more than anything else.
