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HCL Connections is aWeb 2.0enterprise social softwareapplication developed originally byIBM and acquired byHCL Technologies in July 2019. Connections is an enterprise-collaboration platform which aims to helps teams work more efficiently. Connections is part ofHCL collaboration suite which also includes Notes / Domino, Sametime, Portal and Connections.^[1]

Connections was announced atLotusphere 2007, and Version 1.0 shipped on June 27 that year.

HCL Connections has the following components:

• Homepage – aportal site which can federate information from many sources.
• Microblogging – primarily used to stay current with updates from across the social network through the home page
• Profiles – asocial network service – primarily used to find people in the organization by expertise, current projects, and responsibilities. Home page, microblogs, and tags.
• Communities – a collaborative space for people to work together with a discussion forum space.
• Ideation – Provides the ability tocrowdsource ideas
• Media Gallery – Used to share photos and videos and stream those videos from the server
• Blogs – ablogging service.
• Bookmarks – asocial bookmarking service.
• Activities – a task management tool for groups of people to work together on a specific project or task.
• Files – acontent library for storing, sharing andrevision management of computer files.
• Wikis – aWiki system for publishing and editing content.
• Forums – anInternet forum system where people can ask questions, share their experiences, and discuss topics of common interest.
• Search – for searching across IBM Connections.

AtLotusphere 2010,IBM previewed features being planned for future releases,^[2][3] including:

• changes to howuser-generated content is moderated
• compliance/auditing capabilities
• additional integration with IBM WebSphere Portal and Microsoft SharePoint
• expanded mobile support

HCL Connections uses open standards includingATOM andRSS to integrate with other applications, and provides aREST-like API for developers.^[4]Widgets can be added into HCL Connections, including those fromGoogle Gadgets and other services as well as custom developed ones.^[5]

HCL Connections has been described as the leading product in enterprise social software market^[6][7][8][9] andIDC named it the worldwide leader in market share in 2011.

The ten HCL Connections components are built on a set of services according to theservice-oriented architecture concept. These components take the form ofJ2EE applications which are hosted onIBM WebSphere Application Server. This design allows the components to be hosted independently of each other and to support very large scale deployments.

The Homepage serves as aportal for user's social collaboration.Out of the box HCL Connections provides 20widgets^[10] which can be customized by the user.

IT administrators can add new widgets and Open social gadgets for use by users.

The Homepage module also includes a 'recent updates' display which shows changes such as new content posts and status updates which are relevant to the user. A system to update the users status viamicroblogging is also provided.

Profiles provides an online directory of people within an organization. People can be located by criteria such as keywords, names, responsibilities, interests, projects they are part of, expertise, business relationships, tags, or their location.^[10]

A person's profile typically contains their name, job role, base location, reporting chain and details about the IBM Connection bookmarks, activities, communities and blogs in which they participate. Profiles can be customized and new fields added.^[11]

Bookmarks is asocial bookmarking service which allows people to bookmark web-content,tag it, and share it. Bookmarks can be located via keyword, tags and the person who created the bookmark.

In addition to simple searching, Bookmarks can dynamically refine search results with the user identifying users or other tags of interest to them.

Bookmarks can output bookmarks via standardfeeds and provides an API so that third-party tools can integrate with it.^[12] As of Connections 2.0.1, the API can be used for:

• Searching bookmarks
• Getting a list of bookmark tags
• Getting a list of popular bookmarks
• Adding bookmarks to a Web page
• Adding a list of bookmarks to a Web page
• Adding popular bookmarks to a Web page
• Creating bookmarks
• Deleting bookmarks
• Retrieving bookmarks
• Updating bookmarks

Activities is atask management system which enables groups of people to easily collaborate on a task. Activities are structured in a nestedtreehierarchy where entries, to-do items and sections branch off from the root activity.

Any non-section entity in an activity can containrich-text and custom fields forfiles,links,text, people anddates. To-Do items can also have a due date and a person the To-Do is assigned to.

Wikis are a new capability added to IBM Connections 2.5 which facilitate the collaborative creation of web content. Wikis are collections of pages about a particular subject. Wiki members can edit or comment on the pages, or add their own pages. Teams can use wikis to create a central place to collaborate on a project.^[10]

Files is a personal file-sharing service that is part of IBM Connections 2.5, used to upload, share, tag, recommend, and comment on files.^[10]

Communities enablead hoc and planned collaboration around a project or area of interest. A Connections Community can have its own media gallery, event calendar, ideation, microblogging,blog,forums,bookmarks, activities, feeds,^[13] member list,Wiki andFiles.

Blogs provideblogging functionality for groups and individuals.

Forums is used for discussions. It was added as a component in 3.0, and was previously part of the Communities component.

HCL Connections integrates into existing applications via plug-ins. Out-of-the-box, the following plugins are available, most included as part of the license:

• HCL Notes
• HCL Sametime
• Microsoft Office including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
• Microsoft Outlook
• Windows Explorer^[14]
• Microsoft SharePoint
• RIMBlackBerry
• AppleiPhone /iPad /iPod Touch
• Google Android Phones

Other integration with Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office Communications Server hasalso been done.

ISVs have also integrated into the IBM Connections platform, such as Trilogy Group to addSocial Project Management for complex projects, ISW &Bunchball to add agamification layer,Blogs which serves as a native iPad blogging app for IBM Connections.

• Official website

• Collaborative software
• Content management systems
• Document management systems
• Portal software
• 2007 establishments in the United States
• 2019 mergers and acquisitions

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