Currently Being Moderated

This latest release is like a giant sandpaper exercise for Clearspace. Now that it's been in the wild with hundreds of large enterprise customers and hundreds of thousands of users banging away at it -- not to mention a team of Jivers sitting alongside these people with their clipboards taking notes -- we've learned quite a bit about what works and what doesn't. What did we hear from our customers?

 

  • Fix the RTE (rich text editor)!
  • Make everything social
  • Make it easy to find and follow people
  • Better email / mobile integration
  • Make it easy to customize
  • Make the conversations contextual

 

The RTE feedback was easily the loudest. Nothing will happen if you can't get people to create content easily. So we built what I consider to be the best web RTE on the planet. It's such an enjoyable experience, and makes a world of difference for our customers trying to boost adoption and participation. You have to try it out.

 

We also really boosted the social features in a way that works for everyone -- not just the Facebook generation. Now it's easy to find people, connect with them, and set up or join groups on the fly. You can also deliver the collaboration on any web page with just a code snippet -- for instance, an e-commerce page on snowshoes could show all the conversations about that snowshoe, or a supply chain application could show all the conversations about that supplier, or posts made by people who work for that supplier.

 

You should really check out the new features for yourself or take a test drive. This is hands-down the best all-around social software application on the planet. I couldn't be more proud of what this team has created.



Aug 19, 2008 10:03 PM Guest Jacob Mathai  says:

Looking forward to this. A better RTE should help drive adoption. Why did you pull the chat integration out?

Aug 21, 2008 1:45 PM Guest Kevin Crossman  says:

Not only were issues with the RTE a fairly reasonable adoption issue, the fact that you addressed the shortcomings as the first bullet gives me great feeling that you understand those issues.

 

When will v2.5 documentation be available? More details about the customization features would be helpful.

Aug 21, 2008 2:36 PM Rob Alexander Rob Alexander    says in response to Jacob Mathai:

The chat integration was pulled out?    We were counting on that and planning for it! What happened?

Aug 22, 2008 12:06 AM Aaron Johnson Aaron Johnson    says in response to Kevin Crossman:

hi Kevin,

 

You can read the beta documentation (which itself is beta, forgive us for anything that's beta-ish) over here:

 

http://www.jivesoftware.com/builds/docs/clearspace/beta/

 

Cheers,

 

AJ

Aug 22, 2008 4:52 PM Guest Kevin Crossman  says in response to Aaron Johnson:

Gotta say I'm impressed by the breadth of that documentation. Another upgrade over the 2.0 equivalent.

Aug 25, 2008 2:38 PM Guest Phil Nieman  says:

Dave,

 

  I would love to hear more about the "Conversation Everywhere" function in the new 2.5. It sounds like it could really answer a lot of community issues, but I would like to hear a little more.

 

Thanks,

Phil

Aug 25, 2008 7:14 PM Guest David Banes  says:

Is the 2.5 upgrade FOC for existing 2. users?

Aug 29, 2008 5:07 PM Aaron Johnson Aaron Johnson    says in response to Phil Nieman:

hi Phil,

 

You can read about the community everywhere feature here:

 

http://www.jivesoftware.com/builds/docs/clearspace/latest/CommunityEverywhere.html

 

Cheers,

 

AJ

Aug 29, 2008 5:08 PM Aaron Johnson Aaron Johnson    says in response to David Banes:

hi David,

 

I'm not sure what you mean by FOC, but if you're asking if 2.0.x customers can upgrade to 2.5, then the answer is yes, without a doubt.

 

Cheers,

 

AJ

Sep 1, 2008 5:58 AM Guest Aden Davies  says in response to Aaron Johnson:

I think this looks excellent.  I have some colleagues saying things like it wont scale as well as Lotus connections and such things like that.  I think this si more to do with the fact they are sceptical that it wont integrate with lotus products i.e. Notes and Sametime.  Is there any info available of the scale and integration possibilities of this product? i.e. how big will it go and what will it work with? 

Sep 13, 2008 11:21 AM gialyons gialyons    says in response to Aden Davies:

You can get an idea of scaling here: http://www.jivesoftware.com/builds/docs/clearspace/beta/RecommendedEnvironmentsforClearspaceDeployments.html#ExampleJVMSettings

 

People can create, comment on, and edit content in Clearspace via Web browser or any email client out of the box. That means you could write or comment on a Clearspace blog, ask or comment on a question, write or comment on a document, or create a task using your Notes email. Or Gmail. Or BlackBerry. Doesn't matter.

 

Also, you can integrate Clearspace with just about anything, but if you're specifically asking, "what connectors are available with which applications," a la Lotus Connections and Quickr and Sametime, then the answer is that there are no connectors or plugins available out of the box. However, since Clearspace's API is quite robust, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a Notes 8+/Sametime 7.51+ plugin using said API. More details here: REST - http://www.jivesoftware.com/builds/docs/clearspace/beta/RestServicesReference.html; SOAP - http://www.jivesoftware.com/builds/docs/clearspace/beta/ClearspaceWebServicesDevGuide.html