On December 4, HCL Digital Solutions held its first Software Launch Event in Tokyo. They presented the new versions of Domino, Sametime and Connections, all of which will be released in December 2019, and surprised with new announcements.
We watched the broadcast from Tokyo as part of an Icon Switzerland event together with customers at the University of Zurich. We summarize a part of the announcements and highlight some favorites in the following post.
The keynote and the Offering Managers’ presentations
The overall announcement was somewhat shorter than expected. The aim was to give the participants an opportunity to inform themselves via the videos published shortly after the event, with product demos and further information.
Richard Jefts led through the keynote and emphasized again how important this launch is for HCL. The investment in products such as Domino and Connections is not a flash in the pan, but a long-term plan with a specified goal, which was also proven by the outlook on Domino v12 and Connections v7.
Danielle Baptiste was responsible for the news about Connections, with version 6.5 already available a few days before the event.
Danielle emphasized during the presentation that Connections, unlike other solutions, focuses on the people. So it’s not surprising that HCL puts a lot of emphasis on user integration and engagement.
With some of the new features, such as Connections Touchpoint and Connections Invite, onboarding, even by external users, becomes easier and more personalizable. It is also possible to easily integrate the content of Connections into existing portals or websites by using the new HCL Connections 6.5 Social Sidebar.
The cooperation with our long-standing partner ISW has allowed HCL to completely rework Activities and to offer an excellent solution for task and project management with Kudos Activities Plus.
Unlike Domino, Connections has only been with HCL since summer 2019. Nevertheless, the team has also reworked the user interface in addition to the new functions and the optimization of system resources. The continuos enhancement and improvement of the user interface is another clear goal for the announced version 7 of Connections.
Our internal Connections environment is already updated and runs with version 6.5. First experiences and more details about the features, we will deliver in further reports.