Wallace Frist explains how they use GroupWise Instant Messenger to work in real time with co-workers, and see productivity increases associated with a secure corporate IM. Unlike most Instant Messengers, which broadcast messages in plain text across the Internet, GroupWise Instant Messenger is designed for secure corporate collaboration. You can chat freely about company business, financials, secret projects, etc., without worrying about the information being hijacked. With a corporate instant messenger you can trust, you’ll be amazed how much work you can get done in a little bitty window. Here’s a great example of how you can use it to collaborate in real time.
In our environment we are split up over multiple geographic locations and even within our building, our IT department is split up into multiple locations. In order for us to be productive we rely on GroupWise Instant Messenger, a corporate IM that we can trust.
With GroupWise Instant Messenger we are able to get stuff done quicker. We can see all of our online contacts and ask questions of each other and receive nearly instant responses. We can broadcast a message or just select a single person or even multiple people to open up a conversation with. We can also save our conversations to refer back to if needed.
Not only does this corporate-friendly Instant Messenger save time from walking over to another area to talk to a peer, or sending an urgent email and waiting for a response in hope that they are checking their email, but also is a more viable option than a phone call. Sure one can argue it can be quicker to talk than to type but we spend many hours on the phone helping end users so leaving a voice mail is an option, but not a good one. Who knows how long it may take to get off a call and how many voice mails you may have waiting? GroupWise Instant Messenger brings multi-tasking to its pinnacle. We can be on the phone while simultaneously having multiple, separate IM conversations. This is why GroupWise Instant Messenger is our preferred method of communication.
GroupWise Instant Messenger works without the GroupWise client so you can take advantage of the limited license mailbox option and just use WebAccess [See Note at end of article]. We have a lot of remote users that just use WebAccess, but they still chat with us.
If you are using the GroupWise client, GroupWise Instant Messenger integrates well with it. You can configure preferences and manually launch it from the GroupWise client under Tools>Messenger, and you can even take advantage of having the GroupWise Instant Messenger client launch when GroupWise starts up by selecting the appropriate check box under Tools>Options>Environment>General tab.
We have been rolling out GroupWise Instant Messenger one department at a time as each department gets wind of it and requests it. We started with just our IT department, and no plans to setup any others. But after other department heads noticed how well it was working for us they wanted it. Since GroupWise Instant Messenger is fully customizable it made it easy for us to employ this departmental approach with policies.
Default policy: Installed by default during the initial setup of GroupWise Instant Messenger. If a user gets the client installed, he/she will be put into this policy if nothing has been configured for them in ConsoleOne.
Custom policy: We prefer to break our policy up by departments for better organization and give the users the ability to search for and add more contacts as needed.
Within the properties of each policy you can customize what the group can do including archiving all message sessions, searching for other users to add to their contact list, and even creating and using chat rooms.
Within each policy you can setup the users who belong to it and under Policy tab>Contact List you can define what contacts they have on the initial opening of the client. You can create folders and add users to the appropriate ones. And yes, you can add users from other policies.
You can let the users add more contacts or lock it so they cannot. If you lock it, they will always see what is in the contact list even when it is updated. Updates will not show until you restart the agent. If you let them manipulate their own contact list, once they make a change they will not see any more updates unless they delete all of their contacts and login again.
Speaking of our IT department alone, even though we may sit miles apart, we are now closer than ever before. GroupWise Instant Messenger is great for team building and has made order from chaos by bringing a borderline dysfunctional group together as one unified team.
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