We are pleased to announce a new Release of our Enterprise Microblogging Service Communote. The new version contains significant changes in the administration area, e.g. the creation of user groups and license purchase option.

The User and Administration Manuel for Communote is now available. The user manual is in the download area, the administrator manual is in the administration area within the Communote application prepared for download. Both documents are also in German and English available at our website.

Communote remains free up to 10 users. Starting from July 1st 2010 user credits will be charged if you are using Communote with more than 10 active users. For the month of July 2010, you will automatically receive free credits for each active user in your system. Credits can be easily purchased through the administration area in Communote starting at maximum 1 € per User (excl. VAT) and month or even less if you purchase larger amounts of credits.

Communote is now available for download at our website for installation within your company (Windows/Linux). Many corporate clients requested this option besides our existing online service. The initial system configuration can be done via web interface. Communote supports Postgres and MySQL database.

Before going more into details for features and improvements, I would like to give a brief outlook for our next release. Shortly we will provide the desired “Following” feature for blogs, people and notes. In addition, we will provide a direct messaging function.

The following features are now available:

New administration area

The Communote administration frontend  has been significantly improved. The new design and structure makes it easy to facilitate the administration of the system.

Support for user groups

This feature allows to create and assign user groups for Communote. User groups can be assigned to a blog with rights. The administrator can define groups and add users to a group or even a group to a group.

Rights Synchronization

Basic functionality to synchronize and transfer user rights in third party applications such as Microsoft SharePoint, Atlassian Confluence or LDAP is implemented.

Public Access

For an integration scenario the use of this feature is very interesting. It allows anonymous access to the content of Communote Blogs without login. This is helpful for the introduction of microblogging within the company and increases the range of information from Communote significantly. A two-stage safety mechanism prevents random access, as the general administrator must release the function and the blog manager must also explicitly enable public access.

Configuration settings

System Messages to inform other Blog Members that the rights in the Blog changed are now per default turned off. System messages e.g. in a sensitive area can be activated now for each blog. Many Users asked for this Feature.

For XMPP and e-mail notifications, the Permalink to a note can be turned off in the administration area.

Furthermore numerous small usability improvements and Bugs have been fixed.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

The new version contains significant changes in the administration area, e.g. the creation of user groups and license purchase option.
Communote remains free up to 10 users. Starting from July 1st 2010 user credits will be charged if you are using Communote with more than 10 active users. For the month of July 2010, you will automatically receive free credits for each active user in your system. Credits can be easily purchased through the administration area in Communote starting at maximum 1 € per User (excl. VAT) and month or even less if you purchase larger amounts of credits.

From July 1st 2010 Communote will be available for download at www.communote.com for installation within your company (Windows/Linux).

Further information on new features as well as our licensing model will be available soon on our website.

A possible answer to these challenges are Enterprise Microblogging solutions, such as Communote, for open communication about topics and projects. However, verifiably benefits and the Return on Investment (RoI) of the so-called Social Software such as Enterprise Microblogging is still missing. In cooperation with the TU Chemnitz and the Communardo Software GmbH a convergence to the solution is made within a thesis by Alrik Degenkolb.

In this blog post about the current state and approaches of the thesis, a model has already been presented, which can assist in the calculation of the RoI and showing the success factors of Enterprise Microblogging.

Help us with the identification of particularly valuable applications of Enterprise Microblogging and make a contribution to a first approximation of the Return on Investment. By participating in the survey, you help to make the value of Enterprise Microblogging visible.

[https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NQNSYC7]

The answers are carefully evaluated and after the completion of the survey the results of the thesis and of the survey will be published on the Communote blog.

We look forward to your active participation and feedback to the survey.

We are happy to announce the offer of starter kits for Communote – Enterprise Microblogging for your company. Our offer consists of three parts: a workshop, a starter kit, and coaching, which can be ordered altogether or individually.

Workshop “Social Communication – modern communication with micro messages”.

In a first workshop with different target groups within your company, potentialities and fields of use of Microblogging for the internal communication will be identified. The result of the workshop is an agreement on the following process and a plan for the implementation of Microblogging. This is the base for a complete strategy and the development of an action plan for “Social Communication” in the enterprise.

The workshop can also be conducted as a management workshop. A visual and interactive workshop method will be applied.

The price includes a prior briefing as well as a documentation of the results.

1.250 €

Starter Kit “Communote – Enterprise Microblogging”.

Our starter kit contains a Communote license for 50 users (1000€ surcharge for 200 users), support for the installation of Communote behind the firewall in your company, design adjustments of the Communote interface and a workshop for the implementation of Communote into your company, on site.

2.950 €

Coaching „Implementation of Social Communication“:

We help you with the implementation of Communote – Enterprise Microblogging in your enterprise. We accompany you for 3 months and advise you individually on the implementation of Communote in your enterprise.
In particular, this contains the following services (total amount of work: 4.5 PD)

• Conceptual support for the targeted use of Microblogging
• Weekly telephone support
• 14 days of coaching/workshops
• Blog monitoring and community management

3.750 €

If you opt for the complete package, consisting of all three packages, the total price only accounts for 7.500€ (instead of 7.950 €).

Start today and improve your productivity by using Microblogging- the fast and targeted communication with micro messages – in your company!

If you have any further questions, or if you need individual advice, please do not hesitate to contact us. We would be obliged to send you an individual offer, as well as our current GTC’s.

Please contact us to arrange an appointment.

Contact:
Jens Osthues, team leader Communote
jens.osthues@communardo.de, +49.351.83382-270

All prices do not include VAT and travel expenses.

- Time Zones Support
- “Read More” functionality for long notes (>300 character)
- Resend User Registration E-mails upon Request
- new “@” icon
- Tag Filtering Bug Fix
- Fixed Forward for Business Account Registration Page
- IE Browserspecific Bugfixes
- User Image Bugfix
- Performance Optimization

Release notes v1.1.0
* New Design
* Redesign and Rework Create Post View
* Writing notes without choosing a blog
* Tab structure for blog, all notes, @forme
* Show User profile for authors
* Thread view
* Allow answers to answers
* Inline Editing of notes
* Inline Answering of notes
* New Paging
* Permanent Links

With the new release Communote is commercially available from now on. The Pricing is 1 € per user per month for online service and license fees for installation behind the firewall starts at 1000 €. Communote remains free for up to 10 user with full functionality.

Thank you to our Beta User for the Feedback to make Communote even better.

Communote Enterprise Microblogging will present new Features, a new Frontend and interesting integration possibilities.

You’ll find us at the pavilion for Mobility&Collaboration Hall B0, Booth 305/E.

Looking forward to your visit.
Please make an appointment at jens.osthues@communardo.de.

Furthermore, we are about to finish a major development step for Communote. Very soon, you will be able to register for an enterprise account of communote that provides your company or team with your very own, totally separated installation of Communote. Also, development of the Communote mobile client and XMPP interface implementation is making good progress. Please stay tuned for more news about this topic.

As the technical development goes on we are going to increase our community activities. For this reason there will be more blog postings and twitter updates. You can reach me as your community manager also via email to martin(at)communote.com.

There was a valuable feedback last week via Twitter that our beta testers feel lonely. The background for this is the deactivation of public (visible/writable to all) postings by default for security reasons. Now we have at least one public microblog with introductions and hints in the beta testing zone. Beside of that we are working on a demo version with real-life use cases inside.

Finally we are working on website improvements. Very soon, registering with Communote will become easier and there will be a convenient way to send feedback to the team.

This is how Communote looks like:

We will report live from the event via our Twitter account (twitter.com/communote) and this blog.

The Communote team is looking forward to meet many of you in Hamburg. See you there!