TrustRadius Insights for MindTouch are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
MindTouch is a versatile software that is used by various organizations for different purposes. One key use case is creating and updating knowledgebases for customers, allowing them to access the latest documentation via the web. This feature has been particularly beneficial for Cisco Infinite Video customers, who can easily find relevant information and troubleshoot issues without needing to contact customer support.
Another major use case of MindTouch is increasing the number of contributors within an organization and ensuring governance and oversight as the number of contributors grows. By using MindTouch, companies can involve both internal teams and customers in content creation, leading to a collaborative approach that enhances the accuracy and breadth of knowledgebase articles.
MindTouch is also widely employed as a solution for dynamically changing content as products mature and to stay ahead of industry changes. Its flexibility allows companies to adapt their documentation quickly, ensuring that customers have access to up-to-date information.
Additionally, MindTouch serves as an online help center where users can find dedicated and searchable documentation for software products. It is utilized by multiple departments in an organization to publish customer-facing and internal documentation, helping to update and maintain content efficiently.
Overall, MindTouch provides solutions for creating comprehensive knowledge bases, improving collaboration among teams, facilitating content updates, and enhancing customer self-service capabilities. Its versatility makes it valuable across industries, from technology companies seeking to support their products effectively to educational institutions aiming to provide a collaborative learning environment.
Used to answer common customer questions globally. It reduces the amount of resources we need for support. We are moving from a high-touch customer support model to a low-touch model.
Pros
Easy to create articles
Easy to search for them from google
Easy to organize content in a way customers can find the topics they are interested in
Cons
Once in an information area it can be difficult to zero in on the article of interest. Additional filter options could be useful.
More templates
Better batch operations to simplify reorganization and restructuring of content
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited if customers already know about it. Can be difficult to 'train' customers to use it as a first resource (instead of calling or chatting). Can be difficult to manage if there are thousands of articles. Easy to manage if there are hundreds. If content creation can be automated (even partially) this can be a good scenario.
VU
Verified User
Consultant in Engineering (Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing company, 5001-10,000 employees)
We use Mindtouch to satisfy our content management needs organization-wide. We deploy our self-service strategies on this platform as well as our internal knowledge base documentation for our customer care department.
Pros
Template creation and usage - It's so easy to create Mindtouch templates for content creation, management, and workflow processes.
Conditional Branding - Our favorite part of this platform is its ability to provide multiple branding and landing pages specific to our branding needs.
Content Management features - We also love how it is easy to manage content via custom classifications, content reuse, global variables, and content IDs.
Cons
Lack of Workflows and forms - No ability to create workflows or forms to support our content management processes.
Error Messages - Generic and vague error messages happen too often, leaving lack of support or best practices.
Customer Support - Depending on who you get, the service could be good or frustrating.
Lack of KCS Proccess Support - Even though Mindtouch is striving towards process improvements to align with the Knowledge-Centered Service model, it is not yet in compliance.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you are looking for a content management system, this is an excellent one to start with. Its template creation, multi-branding capabilities, permissioning structure, and API access gives you a very good start for digitizing and managing content. If you are looking for a content management system that is KCS approved or geared more towards ticketing/customer service, you might want to consider whether the positive features outweigh the lack of workflows and forms often needed for the KCS approval process.
VU
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 1001-5000 employees)
Mindtouch is being used corporate-wide. [It] Started out in the US and is being migrated to other offices around the globe. [It's] Currently used for in-house technical support calls only. We are transitioning to customer-facing content within the next few months.
Pros
Article search and the ability to drill down by category makes getting to the content area easy
Article creation is very easy and can be based on templates that help drive consistency
Predefined dashboards for article usage and other metrics is a big plus
Cons
Extracting content in large amounts is not possible. We are extracting, translating and importing into other language specific sites and this has become an issue. Need better exporting capabilities.
Need more API capabilities to manipulate data.
Should have better out of the box translation of content.
Should have better article usage rating. Only one like/dislike per article per person. Article rating doesn't work for internal call centers.
Likelihood to Recommend
Mindtouch is a great tool if you want simplification, customizable UI and easy to use. If your looking for advanced features like data extraction, data manipulation and translation be sure you understand the product limitations.
We use MindTouch as our primary knowledge base for our employees and external customers. It allows our external customers and employees to access knowledge base topics and helps with troubleshooting issues.
Pros
Simple GUI editing (WYSIWYG)
MindTouch has a powerful search function
Content Reuse and single document with information for internal and external customers
Currently MindTouch is mainly used by support to record our answers and solutions as well as our documentation team who publish our product documentation.
Pros
Easy to use editor.
Simple to build out structure and change as needed.
Cons
Resolution time.
Update on ticket status.
Better reporting for KCS metrics.
Likelihood to Recommend
MindTouch is really great with content that is public and requires no restrictions for audiences.
MindTouch is used to host documentation, patches, defects, and videos as the cornerstone of our online customer support web site. It is used by all customers and by internal support and field engineering personnel. It solves the business problem of helping customers help themselves with our products.
Pros
Good customization with server side and client side scripting
Highly configurable via templates
Cons
The following video discusses some limitations of the product experienced by Wind River: https://vimeo.com/226471894/b608ca79c5
MindTouch is being used as an internal knowledge repository for our customer facing technology support teams. The content is created by the support team and the support leadership relies on the associates to consume the information. MIndTouch allows the support teams immediate access to development manuals, implementation team whitepapers and keeps a running record of all the information accessed by associates.
Pros
Allows for end user customization with standard HTML actions. This is beneficial because every organization is different in not just the data needed but also the intended look and feel.
MindTouch has a powerful search function and ranking abilities inside of the knowledge base. With out this support associates would have to spend more time than is necessary researching answers.
Overall ease of administration is a strength of MindTouch. The real effort is behind the layout and accumulation of data, MindTouch makes it "easy" to access the pertinent data once the configuration is complete.
Cons
While there is power in the back end configuration aspects of the tool set there are also limitations on the layout options. What ends up happening is that every company has a very similar look and feel to the knowledge base screen.
Likelihood to Recommend
If there is a need for a consolidated view of the corporate data related to data MindTouch is the only solution I would consider. The power behind the views and history is not to be overlooked for any leader trying to gain an understanding of the consumption of information for an organization.
We are using MindTouch as a central repository for support knowledge, product documentation, processes & procedures. We started within the support department and quickly expanded to include delivering product documentation as native web content (not PDF) and now we targeting field service and deliver content. Centralizing information into a single highly accessible solution allows anyone to find relevant information quickly.
Pros
Authoring content is simple and not overly burdensome
APIs and connectors allow integration into CRM systems and anything else we can imagine
Flexibility which allows us to replace a knowledge base, wiki, PDF manuals and various team sites, Creating a single tool that delivers the right content to the right audience, all in one place.
Cons
Reporting for large amount of contributors is difficult as each has to be search separately
Advanced enterprise type of features like synonyms, full page content reuse (not just sections), use case to article linking data in search result prioritization as content reuse is not accounted for but page views are
MindTouch only searches content within MindTouch so our support website has 2 search boxes that act differently. One performs federated search across the entire website including MindTouch and the other only searches MindTouch. It is difficult to present both options on MindTouch pages but users need to also find content that is not in MindTouch.
Likelihood to Recommend
MindTouch does a great job of handling content as varied as product manuals to a knowledge base replacement. Content is easy to make within MindTouch but it is also flexible enough that content can be pushed into it from other authoring tools via APis. It does not replace our entire support website but is easily integrated into the support site for a seamless experience.
We use Mindtouch for client-facing platform documentation and release notes. While the whole organization has access, this means primarily that client-facing functions (Support, Success, Services) are the internal users of our Mindtouch instances.
Pros
Content reuse across articles and dynamically updating articles based on linked content.
Maintaining linked structures despite article name and structure changes.
Anchor implementation.
Solid WYSIWYG editor.
Cons
Multilingual content without cross-instance SSO and a special config would be great (I know it EXISTS, it's just, a big undertaking for a couple reasons on our setup).
Better visualization for instance architecture/article hierarchy would also be super.
More robust user...usage? statistics and tracking, without having custom reports run.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's great if you want to put together some articles that you're probably going to have to rename, relink, or otherwise fiddle with after the fact. It's less-great if you're trying to maintain multi-lingual instances with easy interlinking of instanced content (but really, nobody IS good at that, so).
We use Mindtouch to maintain help centers for several customer facing products. It is used by multiple teams and authors. External users access our knowledge base, and are added/authenticated as users using SAML interface.
Pros
SAML interface is great for updating user table based on passed parameters.
Good flexibility in tagging and categorizing content.
Good support for custom JavaScript and CSS (inline or site-wide).
Cons
Inflexible structure. The arbitrary enforcement of 'categories,' 'guides' and 'topics' are arbitrary and force awkward structuring of content.
Support for external editors (e.g., emacs or similar) and other tools. The WYSIWYG editor is basic, and the source view is missing tools (e.g., multi-file search and replace).
Total lack of feedback on feature requests. Over the course of our experience, our team has made multiple requests which seem to drop into a black hole. There is no feedback loop to customers on status of requests (which for users = gaps).
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited:
Help centers with simple structure, few products, that follows the structure dictated by MT.
Not well suited:
Sites with complex structure requiring alternate navigation structures.
Sites where content requires integration/feedback from SMEs. The lack of a robust draft/markup workflow (see Google docs) means users are forced to generate PDFs or cut/paste into Google docs for review, which is a major drawback.