Accessibility.

Yes people with disabilities probably rely more on online communities to provide assistance for their needs. The more accessible(usefulness to their adapations not availability) online communities are to them the better.

jochemd wrote:

 

Accessibility.

Multiple, widgetized blog templates for systems with heavier focus on blogging.

To me, a blog's personality can be greatly enhanced by the blogger him/herself - so if you allowed them the ability to choose different layouts or widgets, it would be a wonderful enhancement.

SBS 4.0 has sub-groups

Not only did Paul make my day, too, but the 26K plus registered users I have in our system and community leaders who have been bugging me left and right for this one

Honestly, that does not make me sad. If subgroups were available then they would be too similar to Spaces, increasing the confusion between the two.

Chrisbrenschmidt wrote:

Well, I think some organizations are very hierarchical and the online

space could reflect that.

Indeed. That's what spaces are for.

It would be great to see that you could apply the same kind of permission

and membership options to a sub-space. They you could allow people to

request to join privet community workspaces. This would take a huge weight

of my back in have to grant access to the growing amount of private

collaborative workspace we have created for our partners.

Just a thought as I am grant access.

John Summers

Community Manager

Corporate Marketing

Claire,

That makes a lot of sense. If I had sub groups then I could move all the

Private sub-space over there.

I will for sure attend your session.

It would be great to possible meet up with as well and talk more about how

we could build partner bridges between companies. Something I have been

working on and would love to hear your thoughts.

On 10/16/09 11:42 AM, "Communities Administrator"

To me sub-groups seems to open a significant can of worms that in fact social web applications like SBS are trying to dematerialize.  If users created sub-groups and then sub-groups within sub-groups in my opinion you are continuously cutting down the possible conversation you may have.  Indeed this creates a virtual hierarchy and ultimately stove pipes.  The logic and programming for "security" would ultimately need to manage groups within groups within groups.  This could get significantly hairy when you realize the conversation you are having in a self-formed sub-group really does touch on multiple verticals within an organization that was not foreseen when the sub-group was created.

When building out our communities I have yet to see or hear use cases that would point to creating more hierarchy as the solution.  In most of my experience more hierarchy creates more and many times unnecessary complexity over time.  Rather, I think most of these use cases really are hinting at object level secure access granularity.  Jive SBS 4.0 begins this process by letting me as a user add documents to the system and not assigning them to a space, group, or project, but rather to my profile -- or shoebox if you will.  My "sub-group" is controlled by whom I let see and access these documents and how they converse with me on the document itself.

Message was edited by: Christopher Holmes Should have ran spell check the first time ;)

One thing that I've been asked is about email alert digesting. I guess some folks feel overwhelmed by the number of email alerts they might receive when they follow a community or group.  Digesting them into a single email at a regular interval might be useful.

On the other hand, they probably don't realize the value in being able to respond to a thread via email.

My list, in no particular order,  would look something like;

1) Native Iphone & Windows Mobile app

2) Microblogging

3) Integration with the Microsoft Office Communicator Stack for IM, Presence etc

4) Hugely upgraded Analytics capability for hosted users (This sounds like its on the way!) - extending right down to community managers

5) Subgroups - The whole Space Vs Group thing seems religous - I would do away with spaces

6) Security around RSS feeds for hosted users

7) 'New Groups' widget

8) A much upgraded editor that doesn't make you want to tear your hair out - undo feature, support for cut/paste from Microsoft docs, cut/paste on right click, - remove the voodoo random features that make it so unpredictable!

I am sure there are more - looking forward to seeing what's going to be available

Harry

I second the Office Communicator Integration for IM and presence.

That would be a very useful feature to test various permissions.

When you are an admin, you can do everything, so sometimes it is good to know what a non-admin user sees.

Not sure how far you've dug into the 4.0 feature set but we did a bunch of things around permissions, two of the things we did might address your statement above: a) we created a type of admin account that has the ability to edit system configurations in the admin console but *doesn't* have access to see all the content, this was implemented so that you could grant someone in IT the ability to login to the admin console and view the log files or change a system setting while not granting them the ability to see all your sensitive content and b) while you can't impersonate another user directly, we did add the ability in the admin console for you to check whether a given user can see a particular space, here's a screenshot:

hth,

AJ

SuLyLa wrote on 12/4/2009 11:08 PM:

I would love to post on behalf of someone else. That would R O C K !!!!

If you haven't updated your installation in the last two months you have

a webservice API method that allows you to create new threads and

messages while impersonating somebody else. And trust me when I say that

it is absolutely no fun when everybody from your community can

impersonate anybody else. Although it does attract some attention when

regular users start posting on behalf of the administrator.

AJ

As far as we can see if you are a hosted (outside the firewall) user and use RSS feeds from Jive SBS into other internal (inside the firewall) apps then the RSS feed is in the clear (unencrypted) and could be compromised on route from  the host datacentre to the firewall. The same appears to be true for email notifications of new items being posted, they also are transmitted in the clear.

Our security folk aren't happy about this

Harry

- ) ability to do anything without having a restart - i.e upload plugins, and template changes, and general system property changes.(although some of these randomly take effect without a restart?)

- ) get the homepage load size down from the massive 1MB+ to something sensible.

- ) Any kind of content mangement integration. (although I think I have seen a news article about that, which sounds promising).

In terms of functional changes:

-) Projects within groups.  I've seen a lot of comments about increasing the features of groups because of their ability to be created ad-hoc by the community.  We'd love to offer people the ability to manage small projects within their groups.  I suppose sub-groups may allow this to a certain extent.

-) Personal content area. It's frustrating that I have to always create content in a group or community.  I'd love to be able to have it within my own area, then 'share' it with others.

My company is currently migrating from a SharePoint-based community with 28 "sites" to a Jive community with 8 sites.  This will be a huge improvement for many reasons, but one of my biggest worries is that my users are going to miss the granularity of their email alerts...so my killer feature announcement is simple, but it is tag- or tag group- based email notifications.

Thanks Cameron.  Unfortunately most of my users aren't interested in RSS.  But for those who are, we'll pass on the word.

Radical modularisation. At present Jive SBS is pretty monolithic in the sense that it's a singular entity with pretty much a global approach to say theming, analytics, or widgets. Thus the one killer feature would be to make spaces much more self-sustained, almost federated spaces allowing easy localised customisation in terms of looks, function and reports. Whilst some of this is possible at present it's not easy and certainly not as flexible or sweet as some of Jive's open source rivals.

Some things I would love to see:

1. Native iPhone application (dont forget the security layer)
2. Object level security and granularity (not just documents like in SBS 4)
3. An Excel Spreadsheet application
4. A plugin model based on OSGI
5. A new Web Service platform that is heavily based on the OpenSocial API's
6. Widget platform based on Google OpenSocial API's/Google Gadgets (in other words turn the Jive User Experience into a Google Gadget container)

Some things I think really need to be done:

1. The editor is tough to use (Check out how the Apple editor works in their out of the box Wiki service on the XServe)
2. Tag Cloud love!  Wish it was configurable (use space or certain deliminter)
3. Decoupled search so that we can set up seperate instances that are "index servers" rather than running it all coupled to the product application server
   

Calendars is a huge request at our company as well, Ted!

# 2 is photo gallery -- our field staff have had to resort to a hacky use of the discussion thread.

Where are photo galleries in the roadmap? I keep hearing about customizations, but posting photos online seems to be a base expectation these days -- particularly for social media tools.

I don't suppose any of you would positively receive the response that much of what you're asking for is currently available as plugins that Jive Professional Services has written and delivered to many Jive customers, under a Services SOW (at additional cost)?

It is correct to assume you'd rather have these items as "in the product" features, yes?

Oh...and are these plugins available for purchase and somewhere they could be browsed for?

Nova Newcomer

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Absolutely. I will admit to being a bit tongue-in-cheek with my original comment.

Someone likened the model to buying a new BMW. The base price seems very reasonable until one realises the cost of metallic paint, air con, passenger safety bags and all the rest . Much prefer a basic but all-in package.

Hi Chris,

I'm going to forward your comments to our PS folk, and see what we can do to implement this great suggestion. Thanks!

Erskine

There is a danger that Jive will become the BMW of the Social Media World - Ever tried to buy a BMW? You have an idea what you want and what you can afford, you go to the dealer and have a test drive and then you sit down to order it. Only then does the dealer bring out the options book and you work out what you want, with all the options that you thought were standard your BMW now is around 30% more expensive than you thought.

Please think about putting this basic functionality into the core product. Photo Gallery, Events and Virus Scanning seem core to me

Harry

IMO there is a middle-ground here.

Create a plug-in marketplace so people who can't wait to deploy features can do so ASAP. They'll have to pay for their impatience, but if it's a killer feature for them, it will be worth it.

Keep all those plug-ins, especially the most popular ones (maybe as measured by real dollars spent on them by customers) in the queue for addition to the core product. Be ethical, Jive, and build into the foundation product those features your customers truly want, rather than try to make extra money selling cool stuff as add-ons.

I'm not for a minute saying Jive is *not* being ethical now -- I believe Jive is acting in customers' best interests and fairly. But, as this thread has shown, there is a real danger of Jive creating a perception that they are gouging customers or nickle-and-diming them with add-on after add-on expense. Customers are confused about the changing pricing arrangements and the whole concept of PS customizations.

So, by making it an imperative to be strictly ethical and transparent about how and why you are handling these issues, you'll earn customer loyalty and understanding. That's my two cents!

I echo Harry, Ian and Wolfgang's thoughts.

By the way, I don't think Jive is intentionally trying to delude its customers. I see this as a learning experience for them.

They are by far the most innovative company in this space, aggressively developing inhouse and forming partnerships in the marketplace to extend it's product. I understand there are times when modules might involve third party agreements - and I think JIve is starting to realize this now, based on where they are and feedback they've gotten from customers (like me).

But for the enterprise, this is problematic and I agree Jive will need to figure out how to level out is base terms. For us to approve an enterprise deal, we did a three year TCO and long term contract. And that modeling was time consuming and complex. And the budget had to be approved through many layers and locked in. Without better pricing forecasting in this area - it becomes extremely difficult for an enterprise evangelist like myself to go back and say I need more money.

I get the theory behind why the plugins might be extra, initially. But many of the plug ins should be foundational.

So I do think Jive will grow in this area as well with our feedback in this area. Having said that - isn't this an interesting problem to have - that a company is so innovative we WANT all the big things it delivers?

+1 for:

1. Mobile accessibility - ability to read and respond to threads

2. Email digest

3. Improved text editor

See y'all soon!

1. Stickies

2. Android/Windows Mobile App included standard

3. Mobile version for WAP devices

4. "Thanks" Option

5. Correct Answer/Helpful Answer from email

6. Rate answer for root poster

7. Registration: For single select list items offer drop down or type ahead option

8. From Admin console choose to show what profile info is displayed with post

9. Search widget.

10. Post Question/Discussion to Twitter/Facebook/Myspace status to improve chances to get an answer

11. Status update on jive would have two options. Post to Community, post to all linked social networking sites

12. Delegation calendar. If one of my mods goes on vacation then I want have it on a calendar and for another mod to get additional permissions for the period of time the mod is out. Also so I can see where there are future cases where I might not have coverage.

13. Moderator profile with customizable permissions. I'll give more detail if people would like it

14a. Moderator tools. Help answer no-replies from oldest to newest.

14b. All threads must be read by moderator. Have a widget that feeds in posts by moderator profile read/unread status.

15. Integrated search. Right Now Technologies. Search on forums and bring up both threads and FAQ's from Database or search in RNT and also bring up threads. Look at Logitech's forums if you want to get an idea.

16. Mod/Admin option to Mark/unmark thread as question.

17. For people migrating to Jive. Have an option to mark migrated threads as questions

18. Online status: Include in posts, widget for friends status.

19. Option to restrict Blog post to specific community.

20. Option to restrict Poll to specific community

Chew on these first. I'll have some more undoubtedly.

Mark

How is this different from the current Status Update feature?

jennifer.bouani wrote:

Microblogging

It'd be nice to have clickable URLs in Status Updates, BTW...

I agree on the clickable URLs in status updates and even linking to docs -- perhaps on a doc you just created add an action to send to status...like internally tweeting a document or discussion

If that were the case, it would be cool to have a desktop app that would act similar to a twitter reader and be able to see a stream of people's activities. Salesforce is doing something like this with Chatter.

Nova Newcomer

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Ability to preview an Excel spreadsheet

That feature wasn't working perfectly in the 4.0.0 version but we worked out some kinks and it's available in the 4.0.1 release.

Add a “sticky” option. It would be helpful to be able to  keep certain a blog, discussion or document at the top of the area for future  viewing.

You should check out the 'featured content' functionality we added in 4.0.

hth,

AJ

Based on our installation using 3.0.8

• integration with Google Chat, tasks and Calendar
• display a tag cloud for a space or group from the general tag cloud
• moving a project
• archiving a space, group or project
• excel type wiki page
• ability to change the word "document" to file/page

• and a group calendar

are you talking about this Google Forms Macro?

and there is also this Google maps Macro (note the comments further down re spreadsheets and Calendar) ---- I wonder why this is not part of the default installation?

This thread begs the question . . .

How can customers influence product direction, feature priorities and get feedback on what we've asked for as a collective user group? ? ?

I for one try to influence product strategy by working individually with Jive. But there are many things on this list that are important, very important, to our users. And think as a customer group we could benefit by talking to each other and helping Jive prioritize our requests.

Certainly I'd like more exposure to the answers asked above. 

In addition, I still think a widget store would allow the Jive customer community to leverage great ideas, while not having individual companies invest a lot of money in development that other companies have already mastered. Smaller companies have much to gain from custom widgets, but not often the budgets to take on custom development, but they might have budgets to purchase widget licenses.

Nova Newcomer

COMMUNITY MANAGER

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I agree with Claire. I think a clearer understanding of how customers can influence product strategy would be nice.

Nova Newcomer

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Why not pilot Jive's new ideation module for this?

Can we get some more targeted organization on the Feature Discussion

space?

Perhaps pull some RSS feeds of particular topics and even tag groups.

I think it would be great to have a more usable experience for this

space.

Nova

Nova Newcomer

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Thanks Olivia -- looking forward to it.

When's the 4.0 upgrade coming?

Nova Newcomer

COMMUNITY MANAGER

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olivia.teich wrote:

Our Product Design Team is also kicking off a Design Partnership Program to work more closely with a few of you. More info on that coming to http://www.jivesoftware.com/jivespace/community/features next week.

Did I miss this announcement?

Also, note that Olivia was "announcing" these new discussions simply 

by posting on this thread. She knows that participants in this thread 

automatically receive email notifications when it's updated. She 

realized that this thread's participants represent a Jive customer 

"rockstar" lineup, so she announced the 2.0 Way.

from my iPhone

On Dec 30, 2009, at 2:48 PM, "Michelle Merino" <communities@jivesoftware.com