Erik Vos: LotusLive becomes a Social Platform

A guest post by Erik Vos of Real Connections (a LotusLive partner based in the Netherlands).

As of this last weekend, LotusLive has released significant new functionality, with a lot of User Interface improvements.

In short, LotusLive has become a social platform – let me explain why.

1. Communities
2. Tagging of Profile
3. Screen sharing on Mac OS X
4. Tungle & Vondle Integration

I’ll work through these in turn…

1) Communities

In LotusLive we used to have groups,  and you were able to share files and  collections with these groups or add a group as member to an activity. But in my opinion, that is not the expected way of working.

This is why I am very pleased to see that Groups is converted into Communities (all created groups are also converted to Communities).

A comparison of Groups vs. Communities:

Within Communities you now can:
      1.        Add members (Member, Owner, Business Owner)
      2.        Add Tags to Community (helps to find the community back)
      3.        Add Files to Community (personal files, or files from other user which you are allowed to share)
      4.        Add Forum part
      5.        Add Activities to a Community
      6.        Add (important) Bookmarks to a Community
      7.        Add Logo to Community

The good news about this that community has become the central point. But in a very flexible way. For example
      –        You can share File ABC into Community1 and into Community2 and Community3. And you only manage 1 file ABC. This is not possible in SharePoint or in Google Sites or DropBox.  (And in my opinion the reason why you should go for LotusLive.)
      –        You can start an activity inside a community ,using a template activity
      –        And you can work on a activity from within the community but also from the activity section in LotusLive or from you LotusNotes Sidebar.
      –        You can e-mail all community members from within the community

Old view:

New view:

2) Tagging of Profiles

All members in LotusLive have a personal profile where they can share information about them self with the rest of the LotusLive users, or only with the LotusLive users where they have a connection with. This personal profile has a new feature: tagging.

The good news about this tagging is that not only the member it self can give him personal tags, but also other connected members can add tags to this person.

For example I tag Stuart McIntyre and Ed Brill as Lotus_blogger to easy find the person I am looking for. But for example Stuart would tag himself as LotusConnections, Quickr etc.

Tagging was already available in LotusLive Contacts, however that was only personal tagging. I still use it but only for contacts who do not have a profile in LotusLive.

Old view:

New view:

3) Screen Sharing on Mac OS X

15% of the market has a Mac OS. But in my opinion  about 50% of all presenters out there have a Mac to present. Untill today Mac users where not able to share their screen during a LotusLive Meeting. But now we are happy. And the performance is great.

No download for presenting and viewing.

4) Vondle & Tungle integration

Vondle enables online viewing (and adding of notations) to your online files. Meaning downloading and opening a file is no longer needed. Significant time savings !  You can sign-up for a 30-day trail. After that period the price is 4 USD per user per month.

Tungle has developed a plugin into LotusLive meaning it becomes very easy to schedule a meeting with other LotusLive users using Tungle. For those who have not used Tungle yet, START USING it today. It saves time.

So that’s a summary of what’s new in LotusLive 1.3 and my views on why the changes are important.