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OpenText Vibe

Score6 out of 10

9 Reviews and Ratings

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What is OpenText Vibe?

OpenText Vibe (formerly Micro Focus Vibe) is a web-based team collaboration platform developed by Novell, and was initially released by Novell in June 2008 under the name of Novell Teaming. Novell's acquisition by Micro Focus was completed in April 2015.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about OpenText Vibe.
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Finding your Vibe in the storm of production

Incentivized
Cori FowlerView profile
Project Manager in Professional Services at American Technologies, LLC. (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • RSS Feeds: As a project manager (at the time and still am in a sense) being updated as information is posted helped me to stay on top of progress as it happened. The feeds also allows me to foresee problems before they happened, coming in like Super Woman to save the day...kidding (or am I?).
  • Customizable workspaces: While we've got our video project workflows down to a science, our website projects are a different monster. Because we offer customized websites, each client's needs are different from the next. Vibe's Workspaces reflects this - not only for our projects, but for the users as well. Everyone has a different way of organizing their thoughts and with Vibe no one has to fall in line with cookie cutter layouts...or at least they can start out with one and develop it into their own.
  • My god MOBILE DEVICE Support: I know many many many project collaboration tools have migrated to the mobile device platform - but I found that a lot of times, features are limited. I'm always on a go and can't always access my Surface for a brief look at what's going on. But when you fall in love with a platform, it makes it all the better that it is usable outside the confines of my desktop box.

Cons

  • Export calendars or sync calendars with programs like Outlook.
  • Easier way to print or create reports on projects (completions status, tasks left to be done, etc.) for paper trail lovers. The workflow process is nice, but it takes time to configure. Most of my teammates weren't quite in love with that aspect.
  • Instant messaging for those of us who don't like the phone and want to keep project related work conversations in the same window.
  • I really wish there was better is a way to display videos. In video production, we're always trying to find ways to share our progress and being able to do so in the same platform without one having to download it would have pushed Vibe to a 10 star rating.

Return on Investment

  • Increase team efficiency for sure.
  • Able to provide better customer service because project status and details is plain to see and in plain English.
  • Because Vibe is so feature rich, the downside is having to train new users on how to use it which takes time away from other tasks.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Exchange, Joomla!, Dropbox, OneDrive

Novell Vibe the beauty and the beast.

Rob Zweistra
backup & Recovery specialist in Information Technology at Rademaker BV (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Novell Vibe connects GroupWise mail with Vibe natively which means you can access Vibe from within the mail product.
  • Once forms and workflows are set up, the access structure on who sees what or not is very effective.
  • You can use Novell Vibe as your main intranet with everything from wiki's, blogging and more fully automated and still in synch with your internal organisational structure.
  • After playing with it for a while i found that through jsp it is highly configurable.

Cons

  • Having build lot of websites over the years this is one of the most user unfriendly systems I [have] run across. The learning curve is very steep and a lot of stuff is not findable on the internet.
  • The Java used under water has some quirks that makes working with the interface almost undoable. If you make a tree and you change something in that tree it is completely reset to the top level every time so the workflow is broken constantly.
  • There is no copy option in the tool which is strange as 80% of the things you build is the same or similar with minor adjustments like a different color code. Like the previous remark this makes the workflow constantly interrupted.
  • The learning curve for a regular user is also a little too steep. They can do too much and it goes beyond the daily things they need to do with it. To configure Novell Vibe so that the user is protected from doing or seeing too much is a lot of work which means you will have to hire an FTE to manage Novell Vibe alone.
  • Because the end product depends on the use of jsp pages a lot it requires you to hire a specialist with a big salary-tag to build it for you. once it is up and running changes will be very dependant on the guy you hired to build it!

Return on Investment

  • The testing has provided us with a lot of wasted time in figuring out how it works even with the original manuals.
  • If we were to implement it in the real environment we would like to see a lot of improvements.
  • We have to invest more time to convince management that this tool is the way to go. We hope that Novell Vibe 4.0 has the improvements we are waiting for.

Usability

Vibe Review

Incentivized
Richard Johnson
IT Systems Manager in Information Technology at Helms Bros (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Workflow management is where Vibe excels
  • Shared file access
  • Shared calendar

Cons

  • The most pressing improvement is in printing. In speaking with Novell techs Vibe was designed as a web tool, no paper necessary. However in the real world our folks love their paper printouts. Vibe utilizes views for various functions. A print view that's easily configured would be an awesome upgrade.
  • Customized in JSP. Vibe is completely customized using JSP. I don't know it. I'm not a programmer. I can work things out, but programming isn't my forte.

Return on Investment

  • Saved us money and time in maintaining our inventory. We send vehicles to various sites, some off-site, an now we know with precision where and what state they are in. What happened to that vehicle?... look in Vibe!
  • Easier document management. Looking for a doc? It's in the Sales workspace folder.

Why to Consider Novell Vibe as Your Next Team Collaboration Solution

Donna Moyer
Technology Mentor and Strategist in Information Technology at Biztechflow (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • Novell VIbe is extremely easy to install and very intuitive to use
  • Novell Vibe provides a secure environment for teams to collaborate
  • Novell Vibe provides the ability to create complex workflows to streamline an organizations process

Cons

  • Novell Vibe could be improved by adding the ability to print forms that are completed during a workflow or information entry

Return on Investment

  • Novell Vibe has increased employee efficiency by providing a central file repository for our team.
  • Novell Vibe has increased our customer service capabilities by allowing our team to track customer projects and support issues more effectively.

Experiences with Novell Vibe

Incentivized
Jason Preuss
Web Development Specialist/Senior Research Analyst in Information Technology at W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • You can create electronic forms with powerful workflows behind them. This allows for supervisor approval/rejection of forms. The workflows also allow for email alerts when certain stages are met.
  • Built in social media tools. Each employee has a feed which other employees can follow.
  • Allows employees to create teams in which they can chose members and rights.

Cons

  • The product has a small user base, have had problems finding solutions online.
  • Upgrades are not as frequent as they could be.
  • Need to know JSP to do advanced customizations.

Return on Investment

  • It has improved communication. Before often people who needed to know certain things weren't getting the information, now it is delivered automatically.
  • Made forms more efficient.

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