Lift-off! Buzzy launches on the IBM Connections Cloud Catalog
Watch out Space-X!!! We’ve just made it super simple to deploy Intelligent Instant Apps for IBM Connections Cloud customers (and yes, it works for IBM Connections On-Premise customers too).
IBM Connections is one of the world’s leading enterprise collaboration platforms used by both small and huge companies. As an ex-IBM employee (one of over 400,000 employees), I used to live my life inside IBM Connections. For the most part, it made collaboration a lot easier. It’s an awesome product!
So how could Buzzy make an awesome product even better?
Buzzy is an intelligent instant application platform add-on to IBM Connections (both Cloud and On-Premise). Users can create their own apps in minutes, they’e live on browser or mobile instantly. Non-technical users can tweak or create there own forms and approval processes for scenarios like field reporting, approval workflows.
We traditionally see two core scenarios of Buzzy being deployed in the corporate:
- The IT team/Business Partner use it as a quick / fast development tool to reduce their application development backlog. Yeah sure, Buzzy may not solve every problem, but it’s FAST and it works!!!
- Make Buzzy available to the masses, allowing citizen developers to create and manage their own apps providing improved productivity and streamlining business processes, within their direct circle of influence.
So how can Buzzy specifically bolster IBM Connections capabilities?
- External users. Working with people outside of the the core communities often needed a simple way to inject their input without exposing them to the rest of the specific community’s content and workings. For example, a Sales Management Community, being able to tap into the results of hundreds of Sales Field agents (some of them contractors) who are visiting customers making sales calls. The sales agents use a purpose build Buzzy field reporting app, that captures important info from the field. The sales management team want to be able to see the summary reports of the field agents and also be able to drill down to a customer visit level and respond privately to an individual agent, if needed… all without having to leave the Connections community. There are tons of other scenarios: Registrations, Surveys, Approval Workflows etc… Cool, Buzzy makes it easy to inject real live business data and processes from Connections and non-Connections users into Connections Communities!!!
- Transaction-based / Workflow applications. Ability to use custom forms and simple workflow to handle capture of structured data that can easily be exported and reported on. Buzzy also provides the ability to inject simple workflow approval capabilities to help streamline business processes. For example, a simple expense or travel approval process.requires users who live outside of a specific community, they get access to just the Buzzy app, get notified when they need to approve something. The Community users can interact with these applications directly from the Connections Activity Stream (Embedded Experience) and Buzzy Community Widgets. Buzzy also is integrated with Stripe, for actually transacting, if needed.
- Mobile. Quick easy access to these custom applications, no matter where you are. Buzzy works on desktop (browser), mobile browser and also has native iOS and Android apps. Apps created on Buzzy are instantly available across all these platforms, leveraging mobile capabilities like notifications that improve user interaction. So if users are mobile, it’s quick and easy to interact with Buzzy applications. This is critical for apps, eg Workflow Approvals… where where mobile notifications have a massive impact on speeding up business processes.
(PS offline mobile applications are coming soon with Buzzy — watch this space!)
With Buzzy, anyone can create an intelligent app that is integrated with IBM Connections.
Over the past 6 months, we’ve been working closely with IBM and ISW (our partner and a leader in this space) to integrate Buzzy with IBM Connections and bring “Intelligent Instant Apps for IBM Connections” to market.
What does this mean? Let’s look at an example: a regularly recurring corporate conference organized by a core team in an IBM Connections Community. Everything from conference planning, execution and post conference follow-up happens in the community… well at least amongst the core team.
But what about tying in the broader sales team (perhaps hundreds of users) to ensure their important customers and prospects are invited to the conference, to get an idea of any competitive topics that should be addressed, to get case studies organized, and so on? Now what if some of the sales folk are external contractors? Getting them engaged has always been tricky and traditionally happens outside of IBM Connections via simplified email threads. Not ideal.
What if in addition to the broader sales team, the conference team also wants to reach out to customers to get abstracts, ideas for content, references and also to tee-up important meetings during the conference? Again, in most cases the same simplified mess of email threads ensues.
Now what if each of these extensions outside of the core team could be a series of integrated microapps? One for each of the scenarios, with some basic workflow, directly integrated with IBM Connections Activity Stream and Connections Files?
Ta-da! Enter Buzzy. Develop instant apps in minutes, for users within and external to IBM Connections.
Check out the video on some of the things you can do.
Getting started with a FREE trial license is as simple as heading to the IBM Connections Cloud Catalog and signing up. The Buzzy and ISW team will be added to your own private Support Buzz and we’ll help you get up and … Buzzing!!!
More info:
