Online Community Software Review

Prepared by Eric Leland, Compumentor - July 2004

 Introduction

 The purpose of this project is to provide ([CLIENT]) with a high level vendor review of online collaboration/community building tools.  

Products considered in this review include Tomoye: (http://www.tomoye.com/), Gomembers (www.gomembers.com), Groove (http://www.groove.net), IMIS (Advanced Micro Solutions) - http://www.advsol.com, Memberclicks (http://www.memberclicks.com/), Kintera (http://www.kintera.com), Icohere (http://www.icohere.com), Isoph (http://www.isoph.com/), Intranets.com (http://www.intranets.com), OfficeZilla (http://www.officezilla.com/), Convea (http://www.convea.com), Blackboard: (http://www.blackboard.com/), CommunityZero (http://www.communityzero.com/), Cvent (http://www.cvent.com/), Accrisoft (http://www.accrisoft.com/), Acteva (http://www.acteva.com/), TIMSS (http://www.tmaresources.com/)

Goals and Methodology

Goals

 [CLIENT] expressed the following goals for this project:

 Facilitate a high-level assessment of [CLIENT] strategic direction with regard to establishing online communities

 CompuMentor consultant Eric Leland has prepared this document on the basis of a meeting with [CLIENT] staff and through vendor research in order to meet these goals.

Methodology

 CompuMentor facilitated one meeting to discuss [CLIENT] strategic goals in developing a community, and to identify where possible the attributes [CLIENT] seeks in an online community tool or tools and their level of priority.  CompuMentor drafted these findings and submitted to [CLIENT] for comment.  Based on these findings, CompuMentor conducted broad research into 18 tools and assessed them against the findings, dividing the tools into three groups based on their capacity to fulfil the needs of [CLIENT].  The final filtered group of tools were assessed comprehensively against the findings through vendor literature research, phone conversations with sales and technical staff, and user reviews where possible, and described in comparison to one another in a matrix developed out of the findings.

 Tools at the first level of analysis were judged based on whether they satisfied a majority of the core needs of [CLIENT].  Tools that did not raise significant concerns as to its suitability for [CLIENT] needs were then move to the second level of analysis.  At this point, CompuMentor contacted each of the vendors and conducted 30-60 minute conversations with sales and technical staff to outline Astro’s core needs, and determine which three products most closely align to them.  

 CompuMentor recommends that all of the products eliminated of first review would not be appropriate choices for [CLIENT].  Second Tier products likely have the capacity to provide the functionality required, but not in the best combination of features, price and sustainability/support requirements.  First Tier products CompuMentor found to be the most appropriate for [CLIENT] to consider. 

 Please remember that these are recommendations based on CompuMentor’s interpretation of [CLIENT]’ needs as described in the findings, and should not be considered final.  CompuMentor recommends that the next steps in this process involve [CLIENT] finishing the strategic development of the new online community initiative, and develop a plan for comprehensively assessing the requirements of stakeholders and the community it will serve.  Testing and prototyping potential solutions will also be critical to identifying the specific functionality supported by each, and its potential for success by the [CLIENT] community.   

Findings

 The following findings resulting from a needs assessment meeting between CompuMentor and [CLIENT] in July 2004, and described [CLIENT]’ needs in an online community/collaboration tool. 

Core Features Required

• User Administration:  A capacity to manage logins and passwords for users, assign users to groups, and to set preferences per users and groups that controls access to the virtual community in various ways
• Shared Collaboration Rooms:  Spaces available to a specific group or groups to work collaboratively on projects
• Document Sharing:  An archive and file structure for managing documents, assignment of user and group privileges, versioning.
• Project Management: Develop Projects, Milestones and Tasks with user assignments within groups.  Shared calendaring
• E-communications:  ability for groups to establish listservs and online discussion forums, ability for [CLIENT] community administrators to segment constituent base to email announcements. 
• News / Announcements:  Capacity for constituents to post news specific to groups or globally to the community. 
• Ecommerce:  A component for sales and distribution of products from [CLIENT] or resulting from the constituency.
• Events: Capacity to manage event registrations online.

Secondary or Less Defined Requirements

•  Content Management System:  A system for efficiently moving collaboratively developed knowledge items onto the [CLIENT] website, and for generally allowing non-technical [CLIENT] staff to maintain and update the website.
• Email Integration with Online Message Boards:  Some ability to tie together email communications to the virtual community message boards, that pushes out information to prompt constituents to use the online systems. 
• Synchronous Communications:  Ability for groups to engage in real time communication, such as through web conferencing, chats, videoconferencing, etc.
• Membership Integration: Eventual tie-in of the community interactions with a formal membership structure, dues payment and profiles.
• Viral Marketing Mechanism: A system for users to promote content and community to others, such as a “tell-a-friendâ€? feature.
• Polling:  Capacity to create simple polls and surveys to assess/evaluate programs and particular issues.
• Reporting:  [CLIENT] has not defined output requirements, but the goal is to understand to what extend are members participating in the community, so reports reflecting community members profiles, including significant interactions with community services is desired.

Architecture Needs 

• Application Service Providers:  Preferences is for solutions provided by ASPs, as [CLIENT] does not expect to support the in-house capacity to manage a larger scale virtual community system. 
• Interoperability:  The software should enable interactivity with other systems as best as possible, to allow growth towards integration of multiple deep database systems.  Needs outside of the core can be less centralized if required, for example they could be served by multiple ASP systems.

Other Boundaries: 

• Cost:  [CLIENT] expects that an appropriate system would exceed $50,000 on initial implementation, but the hope is to find a solution within the 10k-50K range.  [CLIENT] plans to raise money once the needs have been finalized and systems evaluated for initial and ongoing costs.
• Users:  [CLIENT] estimates the required user capacity to be 500, with expected growth over 3-5 years to 5,000. 

Review of Tools

 The following is the survey and assessment of a selection of tools that support various levels of online community/collaboration.  This is not an exhaustive list of tools available.

Products Considered for Review 

• Tomoye: (http://www.tomoye.com/)
• Gomembers (www.gomembers.com)
• Groove (http://www.groove.net)
• IMIS (Advanced Micro Solutions) - http://www.advsol.com
• Memberclicks (http://www.memberclicks.com/)
• Kintera (http://www.kintera.com)
• Icohere (http://www.icohere.com)
• Isoph (http://www.isoph.com/)
• Intranets.com (http://www.intranets.com)
• OfficeZilla (http://www.officezilla.com/)
• Convea (http://www.convea.com)
• Blackboard: (http://www.blackboard.com/)
• CommunityZero (http://www.communityzero.com/)
• Cvent (http://www.cvent.com/)
• Accrisoft (http://www.accrisoft.com/)
• Acteva (http://www.acteva.com/) 
• TIMSS (http://www.tmaresources.com/)

Products Eliminated on first review (website and product specifications review) 

• OfficeZilla:  Comparable to intranets.com – web based intranet collaboration tool.  No fee for service options (service is free), and strict limitations on file space per account.  Very limited customization options.  Great to prototype a collaborative environment but not scalable for larger communities or for [CLIENT] needs.  Could see this as a good tool to prototype communities without great expense to see what core intranet features are useful for various [CLIENT] constituent groups, before establishing a more expensive and permanent solution.
• Accrisoft: Although billed as a collaboration suite in reviews, the product focus is web content management, its collaborative functions are primarily oriented around content posting and not exchanges between participants.  Profiling, communications,  and ecommerce capacity is limited out of the box.
• Memberclicks:  Focus is on smaller organizations, its feature set across the board is too light and constricting.  Collaboration is limited to a very simple listserv and basic message board.  No document or group collaboration spaces.  Focus is on membership recruitment, outreach and basic intramember communications. 
• Cvent/Acteva:  Terrific Event Registration and ecommunications vehicle, very light sales and membership functionality, little to no collaboration tools.  Could be great tools for a separate event registration system. 
• iMiS:  It’s more enterprise level than Kintera, core strength is membership and association management.  The problem is that it is even more robust in the member, donor and event areas, but the same functionality as Kintera for ecommerce, and less in the collaboration space – does not meet several collaborative criteria for [CLIENT].  There is the option to customize with iMiS, but you need to use iMiS resellers to do this which is quite expensive.  Layering on the internet access is required for each module, none of them have internet built in.  This makes this product much more costly for remotely hosted applications.  Its quite an expensive option, which should have a much greater emphasis on the intranet component for [CLIENT]’ needs.
• TIMSS:  The alternative to IMIS - enterprise level membership system for large organizations.  Quite expensive, and has an emphasis on internal management (accounting, human resources) as well as ebusiness, and reduced emphasis on events.  Again this is a very expensive option with less emphasis than required on collaboration.
• GoMembers:  Another membership management ASP with stronger collaboration tools than their nearest competitors (iMiS and TIMMS), but does not include basic intranet tools such as shared calendaring, whiteboarding, group collaboration, etc.  Strong ecommerce integration is a plus, but still does not meet the core community building needs of [CLIENT].

Second Tier Choices (required a conversation with the vendor, more detailed look at literature): 

• Intranets.com:  A leading web based intranet tool targeted at small to medium sized businesses.  Strong standard project collaboration tool, weak elearning/ecommerce tools and highly corporate interface.  Has many pricing levels, scalable to growing communities.  Typical business intranet tools including document sharing, calendaring, basic project management, discussions, light data management, announcements, constituent group management.  Gets quite expensive as members increase, $4,000/month for 1000 members.  The system is geared around collaboration within a business, focusing on prospects and lead development and less on the learning and content sharing aspects.
• Kintera:  Comparable to GoMembers or iMIS.  Strongest functionality is membership management.  Kintera has a unique groupware functionality for a Membership ASP that contains tools for groups to collaborate online and share data called “Friends Asking Friendsâ€?.  After conversations with Kintera, it is clear that this collaboration is highly structured towards developing and encouraging fundraising among groups.  It seems geared towards associations, who might share fundraising data from the home office to its affiliates, and help encourage affiliates to collaborate online to mine this information for leads and donations.  If the central goal of [CLIENT] was to decentralize and expand fundraising capacity through constituent collaboration then this product might make sense, otherwise it has limited capacity for project collaboration defined and led by constituent groups. 
• BlackBoard:  This is an enterprise level school management software, that contains a sophisticated elearning tools.  Strongest functionality is elearning/online course management.  The BlackBoard Learning System and Portal System provides expansive online classroom management tools and discussion/collaboration spaces that are highly configurable.  It is not a generic community, but tailored towards educators, and uses university terminology throughout.  The additional modules available expand the system into university administration functionality, which is an area [CLIENT] is not planning to expand to. 
• Groove:  A very nice collaboration software, with a unique feature that uses members client systems to some extent to store community data.  Highly configurable and scalable, available as a local installation or hosted solution.  Strongest feature is collaborative project management and document sharing, weakest is usability.  Although it has nearly all the collaboration features [CLIENT] requires at a more affordable price than comparable enterprise level collaborative suites, it requires each user to download a client application to join the community, and this application only works on PC systems.  This is a significant barrier first by creating a significant hurdle to jump before entering the community, and preventing a significant segment of computer users (Mac/Linux) outright from using the system.
• Convea:  The target is to build communities within a business, and is configured to work like common business tools (very similar in function to Microsoft Outlook).  It’s a strong business groupware tool, stressing efficiency and project management over relationships, networking and team building.  There is also no ASP option.  It contains most of the core collaboration features, but does not add much knowledge building value as do the first tier tools below. 

First Tier Choices (detailed conversations with vendors, product reviews, testing where possible) 

• Isoph:  A enterprise level “Learning and Collaborationâ€? tool.  Company is very integrated in the nonprofit community, participates in conferences and offers great free resources.  Isoph Blue is a great mix between some of the typical eLearning tools focused on educational institutions such as BlackBoard, and standard intranet suites such as intranets.com.  Its product mission is closely related to [CLIENT]’ focus, which is to integrate learning into practice, not learning necessarily as an end itself (Blackboard), nor project collaboration toward an economic goal (intranets.com).  Thus it focuses on “idea generationâ€? and has highly integrated/advanced ecommunications tools.  It still has a “courseâ€? focus, but emphasizes the development and sharing of curriculum.  The typical scenario is that a group would run online trainings/courses, and expand these to include collaboration tools such as ecommunication, document sharing, etc.  The specific course may end but the materials would live on in the particular group defined, and interactions among members continue.  It is not designed for project management, folks working toward a set goal. 
• Tomoye: Most similar to Isoph, a bit more of a business/networking edge to it rather than education and knowledge creation.  Product mission is to support “Communities of Practiceâ€?.  Probably the easiest of the first tier to set up and manage by both users and administrators, a very slick user interface.  Strongest integration of individual community members with their community contributions, encourages involvement in the community. It does a terrific job highlighting the membership and leadership roles within each community, and is highly configurable from the administration interface to create and manage communities and permissions.  Includes metrics reports to gauge community participation, allowing community leaders to reach out to inactive members to encourage participation.  Not an appropriate tool for virtual collaboration on a set of project tasks with a workflow, but great for generating knowledge and discussion around topics within communities.  Not an ASP, but has a terrific feature set worthy of a close look.  Also has an interesting third party consulting group that supports implementation of Tomoye called Knowledge in the Public Interest (http://kpublic.com/)
• CommunityZero:  This is the lowest end product among the first tier choices.  It has all the core features [CLIENT] requires except registration.  It does not have many of the secondary features, and may not scale as much as [CLIENT] growth demands.  Its strength is in the emphasis of community over intranet, including strong ecommunications among online members, strong membership profiles, document sharing.  Its key strength is that you can start small and scale far, if not quite to enterprise system levels.  This allows for a more phased entry into a system assuming [CLIENT] does not feel it will grow out of the the maximum feature set.  User interface is less inviting, weaker promotion of community members and less integration of authors with content than other tools in the first tier. 
• Icohere:  Founded by educational and organizational development specialists, the software is designed for a nonprofit audience.  It is enterprise level, costing approximately $40,000 per year just for the technology for 500 participants, not the data migration and community design consulting.  Communities within the application can be established with members having multiple roles and

 Comparison Matrix

 The following detailed information was gathered from product literature, reviews where available, and phone conversations with sales and technical staff of each vendor. 

General Learnings

 [CLIENT] collaboration/community building software requirements most closely align with software under the rubrics of “elearning�, �learning community� or “practice management�.  Software classified as “intranets� or “project management� tend to accentuate the tools of sharing and collaboration, over highly developed user interface design that promotes relationship building, fluid discussions or idea generation.  

 Overall, the better fit systems in this review lack strong event registration and ecommerce components.  While some of the expensive solutions can be customized to include these, the deep feature sets typically required for registration and ecommerce needs typically are not provided and thus the custom solutions these vendors offer end up unsatisfying.   They tend to be weaker in the project management sphere – while many will offer some level of task management and shared calendaring, the role assignment and management aspects of these are not tightly integrated.  Community systems also tend to lack the membership management component, they are less focused on who has paid dues and more on interactions between and among communities and groups.

 [CLIENT] can widen the field of options by considering ecommerce and registration as separate ASP solutions.  From a strategic standpoint, it makes less sense to separate project management from the core community tool, as project management relies heavily on interaction among a team and splitting this environment would create a significant barrier to effective collaboration.  Most of the collaboration software solutions in the First and Second Tier can be configured to appear in a private internet space, whereby members can gain authorization to this space through approval via a separate membership ASP or registration ASP.

 While many of the solutions reviewed include the ability to do polls, the specific capacities are all over the map.  Isoph for example has an advanced assessment tool whereby multiple formats of questions can be answered with an advanced capacity for back end reporting and analysis.  Other systems such as CommunityZero have simple polls, one or a few multiple choice questions and very limited reports.  This variation in feature set is true to some extend across the spectrum of features listed above, getting much more specific about feature requirements will help narrow the search for an appropriate tool.  Polls could be another feature to consider outsourcing as a separate ASP, as there are many highly developed surveytools available (SurveyMonkey, phpQuestionnaire are two examples)

 The more advanced tools such as Tomoye and Icohere add a very important layer of relationship building.  The features and functionality of these systems focus on attribution of members to their participation.  It is very easy for community members to learn about one another, through their direct profiles, individual community contributions, or in collaborative conversations.  This personalization can help increase adoption of a community to interaction within a virtual environment.  In other systems such as CommunityZero, intranets.com, this aspect is there but de-emphasized, the tools of exchange are highlighted but the understanding of who is in the community is much less evident.

 One powerful tool to determining whether to separate tools using multiple ASPs is to analyse reporting requirements, and determine which of those reports requires data that is integrated across the information.  The more integration required, the more costly/difficult it becomes to retrieve this information if it is maintained in separate systems. This process would best occur in an information planning process.

Recommendations

 As this is a high level overview based on many as-yet undecided strategic directions and requirements, we do not recommend any software above at this time.  Initial impressions do confirm that the enterprise packages such as Tomoye and Icohere do provide a significant leap in the capacity for community members to learn about one another and engage with one another.  For a phased approach to community development and in prototyping functionality, CommunityZero and even intranets.com provide most of the functionality [CLIENT] requires at much less cost than enterprise systems.   Lower cost systems tend to promote features over interface, and present more like a box of tools rather than a community sharing knowledge. 

 We do recommend a series of projects to pursue before selecting a system:

 Project #1: Strategic Planning

Finish the planning in progress to develop the online community concept in fuller detail.

 Project #2: Environmental Assessment

Survey the [CLIENT] target communities and stakeholders to understand their collaborative needs, along with risks and barriers for communities with whom [CLIENT] hope to engage.

 Project #3:  Information Planning

Develop planning groups of stakeholders and community members to determine the interactions important to the community, the information required for these transactions and how it is viewed/manipulated, foundation technology infrastructure needs, then determine the best tools to use in support of these. 

 Project #4:  Tools Review

Redevelop the comparison above to include features to compare and ratings/filter criteria as required.  Approach vendors with questions and engage in demos and prototypes. 

Resources

 Isoph Elearning Primers:  This company is very involved in the nonprofit community (compared to the other vendors on the list), has written great free resources for evaluating collaborative software

http://www.isophinstitute.com/whitepapers.aspx

 The Sophist: Another Isoph resource.  Online periodical with great discussions around communities, elearning and more.

http://www.isophinstitute.com/archives.aspx

 Collaboration First, then Knowledge Management:

http://www.cmswatch.com/Features/OpinionWatch/FeaturedOpinion/?feature_id=109

 Guide to E-Learning

http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk/guide2elearning/2-9/

 CMS Review:  Only a few specifically collaboration softwares are on this list, but it’s a great site for seeing comparisons across many combinations of software

http://www.cmsreview.com/

 TechSoup:  Shorter articles with technology advice to nonprofits as well as online discussions, integrated with TechSoup Stock which distributes software to nonprofits at very inexpensive rates.

http://www.techsoup.org