IT Glue vs. Square 9 Softworks

IT Glue is well suited to any size managed service provider that requires a secure central knowledge base. IT Glue also integrates well with N-Central to automatically populate the configurations tab with all the relevant Workstation, Printer, and Server information making client on-boarding a breeze.

Incentivized

Square 9 Softworks is well suited for unique needs within companies. We have built, renovated, and optimized custom workflows within our archives, designed highly specific interfaces with our ERP platform, and Square 9 Softworks has answered the bell through it all.

• Flexible Assets are custom questions or forms that you get to create to keep the kind of documentation that *you* want. Our team has done this, and have developed a comprehensive system in our documentation that is better than anything we've ever had.
• Tagging. This feature is so helpful when interlinking related items in the documentation system. IT Glue makes it so easy to tag other configurations, including printers, firewalls, phones, etc.
• Public sharing of knowledge base articles. Often our clients need to know how to do something. We can add pictures, step-by-step walkthroughs that save us and them a ton of time.
• iFrame embedding. There's some flexibility to the web pages that have been helpful for putting other things, such as Cognito Forms in.

Incentivized

• The software is very flexible, and the technicians were great at implementing our customizations for the PO project.
• While indexing fields in Global Search, the Key Free tool works great.
• Global Search is well-organized. It's easy to navigate and find your documents.
• The process for completing your project was well done. Communicating with individuals at Square 9 who were responsible for different aspects of the project was easy.

Incentivized

• So far we have enjoyed the functionality of ITG with one exception:
• The search feature is severely lacking. We have thousands of articles in this knowledge base but the search window is about 1" wide and only shows the first few words of each article. Within our system, those first few words are often the same "SYSTEMS: How-To...". If we are searching for a system, we will have no alternative but to manually try to find this document by browsing through folders within ITG.
• Unfortunately ITG has not responded to a flurry of enhancement requests around this feature, that go back quite a while.
• The functionality that would make this a killer app for us would be a dedicated search page that displayed results like a Google search page.
• Ability to export all client documentation if the client moves to another provider.

Incentivized

• Overall, it is not as stable as other software. Some errors could not be fixed, such as a form going forward without approval because a user pressed "enter" twice in a row.
• I probably only use 20% of the functionality. Beyond that, I'd have to pay for development. We did that once, and the project that we paid for never was implemented. They allowed us to request a design before my time that was so complicated that they never got it to work. Once I came on board, I implemented a much simpler solution.
• Our upgrade took much, much longer than expected, and was disrupted by so many software issues.

Incentivized

Overall IT Glue meets every need that we need it to. IT is easy to use and convenient and we have not had very many issues with it since the inception. I would easily recommend it to anyone who needs this software.

Incentivized

We are definitely renewing our SmartSearch. This is the only place all of our companies contracts and regulatory filings are kept. Our company would lose track of all expiring contracts if we did not renew. We would also need to spend many hours figuring out a new organizational system for all of our files, as well as savings the documents from SmartSearch onto the computer.

The interface is excellent and very easy to use. As long as the text you input into the system can be easily read, you will have no problem finding it with all the different categories offered. Sometimes, the slider on the right can blend in with dark backgrounds, making it hard to see.

Incentivized

The items I am searching for are easily found. They are found in at least 95% of the searches. The failure rate generally is related to another employees user error or a template error set up by our Square 9 team in house.

Incentivized

Square-9 can get this product out to you in almost the same hour your order it. We got ours very fast.

Other than a few access outages, ITGlue is always up and available to us. Their ability to export Playbook, that contain our customers data, and securely send those over to them is amazing and are produced pretty fast. We have IT Glue linked with several other services and software and we have not found that it slows anything down.

Incentivized

With the PDF projected viewer, the document retrieval-to-display can drag for a second more than some systems, and the capture workflow if you overload a server array can also drag, but those are the only two issues we've ever seen with this product, and they are not serious issues at all.

No problems with support when needed it. Their answers on how to handle DR/BC situations when ITG is down are not stellar. They don't seem to get the business risks of their suggestions to just give the xls backup to engineers (aka give all passwords of ALL clients to engineers in an unencrypted flat-file where it is easy to copy, print, etc.)

Incentivized

Support is always extremely helpful and responsive. Whenever we have a question, it is simple contacting them and also setting-up an appointment, if necessary. Scheduling the appointment is easy and they are willing to talk on the phone, which is not always true with software companies. Their report support tools are also really east to use.

Incentivized

It would have been higher, but the training is a bit muted for the lesser qualified office equipment vendors who signed up as partners to sell and support it. The more experienced ECM vendors and customer end-users will find the training very good, but a bit slow.

I think the implementation could have gone a little smoother than it did. Now that I know how to use the software, I could do it myself. I feel that as an organization, we could have been a little better prepared. If the consultant was more aware of what we were looking for, they could have assisted in setting up some workflows for us as per the contract. But because we were not prepared, the initial implementation process was a little painful. That said, adding a document management system to ANY business kinda means everyone has to re-think the way they do their work which can be difficult for some staff.

Incentivized

Currently, we are evaluating using Sharepoint instead of IT Glue as documents and items are searchable within the document instead of by title. We feel that by only searching by title and the type it hinders the speed at which information can be found easily.

Incentivized

SharePoint and Square 9 Softworks are similar in some ways and totally different in others. They both do workflow, although Square 9 Workflow gives administrators more options. They both have a repository, although Square 9 GlobalSearch is more structured in terms of customization. Using field values allows for more exact search capabilites. Square 9 AI tools allows administrators to get the correct data off the page more precisely with less effort.

Incentivized

The scale-ability is quite good actually, but you need competent sales/support folks providing it to you, so the scale is set right for the demands of your system use. Some resellers are not good at doing this, some are fantastic. If you are scaled correctly at first implementation, you'll be very happy with this system.

• We've had a number of false starts on getting all of our clients' assets documented. The culture shift just has not happened yet and there is a general lack of trust in the data.
• It's nice to not have to go hunting for information about client assets anymore. We can be much more productive this way.

Incentivized

• Reduction in human error through manual data entry process now being automated
• Reduction in cost due to automation allowing the function to not require a full time employee
• Reduction in time spent performing the previous manual tasks. Example: on our consolidated shipment days, it could take doc clerk 2-3 hours to prepare master document package. This has been reduced to 30 minutes or less (depending on size of shipment and time needed for OCR to complete)

Incentivized