Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space. I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV. I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can. If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add.  Ideally I’d also like to see the product which means we can schedule a demo or just get me access so that I can take a look at it.

bloomfire logoBloomfire adds new features

Yesterday Bloomfire, a knowledge sharing platform, announced that they are rolling out a few new features which which include:

  • Your Feed– delivers content and answers that are automatically curated based on an individual’s interactions with people and contributions.
  • Recent– includes the most recent content and answers.
  • Popular– displays the most viewed content and answers.
  • Groups– makes it easier for people to connect around a central topic or theme

Link to announcement

My POV

The items they added are clearly essential for knowledge sharing and are features which other vendors have offered for quite some time now so I’m glad to see Bloomfire getting up to speed.  While Bloomfire plays in similar circles as Jive, Yammer, and the like; their product is much for focused on the knowledge side of things instead of the social collaboration side of things so it’s a much more specific use case.  The company appears to be growing and has a good customer base so it will be interesting to see where they are in the next year or so.

liferay logoLiferay announces version 2.1 EE

Liferay is an open source collaboration platform and they just released an update version of their product which includes:

  • Interactive Activity feed – Respond to microblogs, comment on documents and blogs, and easily see what others are discussing, right from the Activity feed.
  • Social Office Announcements – Important announcements can now be viewed directly from the Dashboard. Announcements on sites now default to site scoped Announcements, to provide better context.
  • User Bar – Easily navigate to your Social Office sites and personal pages from anywhere within the portal.

Link to announcement

My POV

Again, crucial features to have but they are very late to the game as most vendors have been offering these things for…years.  Open source enterprise collaboration products aren’t getting that good of a reputation (from what I’m seeing) even though they can be quite powerful platforms.  I do like the Liferay UI but as far as I’m concerned their recent update isn’t about being forward thinking or innovative, it’s about keeping their head above water.

bitrix24-logoBitrix24 updates desktop app to include voice and video calls

In the new version of their desktop app, users can now leverage the capabilities of voice and video calls without having to open up a web browser.  They also added the ability to customize notification settings for the app as well.

Link to announcement

Honestly?  This is pretty darn cool!  First of all I can’t understand why so many vendors choose not to develop desktop apps for their products to begin with but the new Bitrix24 app might just be one of the better desktop collaboration apps out there today. Personally, I find the ability to make calls (voice and video) from the desktop app to be extremely valuable.  Bitrix nails it again!

logo_confluence_blue1Confluence adds “questions”

Atlassian’s Confluence recently added a new feature called “questions” which allows employees to ask questions internally and then share those answers with other employees.  The question and answers are located in a central place for other to locate/read later.

Link to announcement

My POV

Think “Linkedin answers” or Quora, that’s essentially what this new product is.  “Questions” has a lot of cool functionality such as the ability to add images, macros, code snippets, and other things.  Answers can also be voted up and down and questions can be sorted by topic.  Additionally you can connect with and find experts based on their responses.  I really like the new updates to the product which are making Confluence a very serious player in the enterprise collaboration space.

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