Avantages
ThoughtFarmer's ease of use, and the easy deployment on-premises (although a cloud option is available) helped us implement our new Intranet on time and budget while providing users with a top-notch experience for corporate news, events and navigating different processes in our organization.
Social features (likes, commenting, @ mentions) really empower our employees to have a voice be more engaged with our strategic direction, operational insights and celebrating milestones with the recent addition of Shout-outs.
From an extensibility perspective, the platform allows for page templates and widget creation (in browser or with modern development IDEs) and it is now based on React, so page loading and navigation is fast and responsive. Customizing with your own fonts. corporate color theme and images is quick and painless. Need to go a bit further? You can add your own CSS or JavaScript to fill in any gaps from the out of the box theming engine.
A recent overhaul of the search experience brings the experience to what you would expect from enterprise search with the addition of best bets, predictive search, etc.
The people directory is beautifully crafted and thanks to the Employee Directory Connector you can bring your users and their active directory properties (such as department, job title, phone, email) in just a few clicks. For authentication, SAML SSO is an option.
The admin area is intuitive and very powerful as many options are configurable in the UI.
Inconvénients
There are only 2 security roles, admin and user, so roles like help desk or others might get exposed to settings one might not want them to have.
From an integration point of view, would like to see more integration with Office 365 as we use it for more day-to-day collaboration. A SharePoint integration is possible, but not sure if it will also work with SharePoint Online.
We initially looked into ThoughtFarmer as a way to connect multiple offices and keep our entire company aware of corporate initiatives and news.
Avantages
After a bit of a learning curve, it's very easy to use as an administrator. Once you understand the concept of adding pages/forums/groups etc, everything is based on that concept. The search functionality is excellent and used extensively by our staff. Being able to give people access to different areas/content or message everyone/individual groups makes it a very useful tool for a multi-office company.
Inconvénients
If there is anything I would suggest it would be to have more integration with MS Office documents. Being able to edit documents directly in the software would be great. But on the whole it's an extremely useful software!
Avantages
The software is super easy to use from an administration perspective. Not only is it easy for us in the IT Department, we've been able to train most of the management staff on how to run their own pages and make changes.
Initial setup took some tweaking to make it our own but Thoughtfarmer support was very helpful whenever we had issues or needed suggestions. The modules themselves on the back-end are very customize-able and we've rarely needed anything besides the tools laid out for us by the software.
Inconvénients
One of the only cons for our organization is that Thoughtfarmer had lacked any good form integration but it seems they improved this with the latest software release.
Our company did not have any Intranet at all when we purchased ThoughtFarmer, so it was overwhelming to try to imagine how to sort and categorize all of our documentation. We utilized ThoughtFarmer's professional services to help us with it, and it was worth every penny!! They were so great to work this - their process is easy to follow and allowed us to get all of our staff involved. The results were a very logical and easy to follow Information Architecture that I'm not sure we would have ever gotten to without their help - certainly not in the time frame they made it happen in!!
Avantages
Using this software is like riding a bike - takes a little practice using all the different features, but once you've done it a bit, it's a piece of cake!! I don't have to go back to notes to remember how I made something work a certain way - it's all very logical and easy to do time and time again.
Inconvénients
I guess what I liked least about the software is that it uses rich text editor which is a bit different from Word, so it took a little bit to get used to. But that's stretching trying to find something negative to say... lol
The product is great and the support as well. Everyone I talk to is very professional and very responsive. I would definitely recommend it to others.
Avantages
Easy to use. It takes a few moments to get used to the card system. The administrative tools are great (especially with the new version 9)
Inconvénients
If some0one leaves the company, we need to transfer the user's ownership to someone else. We don't always have the replacement right away. There is no way to know once the pages are transfered who it belonged to. There could maybe have a sort of history log as to who had the pages so that we could group them then transfer them to another person (maybe if someone changes departments and transfers them to another)
Avantages
The easy-to-use platform makes it simple for anyone in our organization to post content. The message boards and alignment with individuals' roles has made it much easier for us to communicate with targeted groups and virtually eliminated the mess of mass emails we used to live with.
Inconvénients
The lack of integrated form-building/workflows in the system is limiting, but we've found ways to work around this in most cases. The platform does allow you to embed Wufoo forms, but it's not as elegant or efficient as truly integrated forms that could be linked to the user's identity.
Avantages
ThoughtFarmer turned our intranet from an outdated repository of information to a dynamic site for employees. The kudos feature is great, and the news feed is really good. Very easy to use - all kinds of people (with varying tech savviness) have been posting news items. I like that we can target the audience, e.g. post specifically to leaders.
Inconvénients
Adding header images doesn't quite do what's expected in terms of resizing images. I don't love that almost everything you do ends up in the activity feed, i.e. people creating pages and adding events to group calendars. Not all relevant to the whole organization and it makes some of the more pertinent information harder to see.
Avantages
Our organization has used ThoughtFarmer for 5 years and we have found it to be an invaluable communication tool that is quick to learn and intuitive. Collaboration has been made easy using this social intranet, regardless of the location of staff or their schedules. Technical support is delivered quickly and reliably through both their helpdesk and the helpful community site.
Inconvénients
ThoughtFarmer's workflow elements could be more robust, but each software update adds more and more workflow pieces.
Fantastic, quick customer service responses; we love that it is Canadian; user-friendly interface on the front and back ends. Would reccommend to anyone.
Avantages
I feel like I do not need to be a developer or programmer to click around the back end with ease. The front end is also extremely easy to use for our staff, many of whom are older or less comfortable with using the internet as a whole.
Inconvénients
I don't have much to say about what I don't like; I suppose our organization has had some very custom needs lately and it has taken some time to figure those out and get them set up, but ThoughtFarmer has done their very best to work with us and get them implemented, and it is shaping up.
We use it as an intranet supporting workplace collaboration as well keeping communication flowing thru the organization.
Avantages
It's easy of use. Our staff was not very tech savvy when we started and easily adjusted to this product. Their home page is well thought out and customizable giving you the news you want at your fingertip.
Inconvénients
Nothing comes to mind about this software. Customer support is only challenging since we are hosting the software on premise so needs our IT staff on hand to get issues resolved.
Employee engagement
A great way to disseminate information
a social experience at work that helps users hear and be heard
Avantages
The ease of use and how easily certain aspects can be customized are probably my favorite parts. But, it seems worth mentioning that the implementation process was also pretty enjoyable and informative. I feel like we learned a lot and were able to really launch something that our employees would engage. And they did.
Inconvénients
There isn't a particular part of ThoughtFarmer that we don't enjoy. The only issue I have is... I wish it had a learning management system integrated. But, that's more of a just a wish/request.
Avantages
The platform is very user-friendly which is helpful in our organization since our colleagues range from tech-savvy to comfortable with technology to not too familiar with technology!
I like how you can link a document to other areas of the platform, and when you make an edit to the original, it makes it on the other document as well, efficient!
Inconvénients
To be honest, I have no complaints at this point in time. I have been using the program for 6 months and when I need help, I ask, and the response time is quick, and I have not come across anything that isn't fixable!
Avantages
Customizable, user-friendly interface. Predictive search function is excellent. The staff at ThoughtFarmer provided excellent training for our team to get our intranet up and running and made it easy for us to transition from our old system to the new one.
Inconvénients
We are happy with the software overall. There are a few areas where we'd like to be able to sort/alphabetize tables but these are fairly minor details.
It's easy for employees to add content to the Intranet, also to connect all employees in the company
Avantages
The product is easy to use, there's very little reliance on IT, customer service is great, usually get a response within a few hours
Inconvénients
n/a, software has been continuously enhanced over the past 5 years, new features added to make the product more engaging, the company listens to its customers, and tries to add requests to the roadmap
Support team and Account Manager are very responsive in a timely manner.
Overall, TF team is constantly fishing for feedback to improve their solution and service.
Watching what other clients did with their TF intranet and sharing best practice is inspiring and gives us ideas.
Avantages
Easy to create content, administer and navigate
Inconvénients
Form or registration feature is an add-on service. But not necessary for our business since we use shared documents for this.
Avantages
They have excellent support and really embrace the "social" side of Intranet. User's like its simplicity and clean interface.
Inconvénients
Not much. Would like to see more content management features and Box integration. An easy way to create custom (branded) iOS intranet Apps would also be nice.
Timely distribution of staff and organization information;
Better staff participation
Interactive and more interest from staff overall
Avantages
Straightforward to administer and easy to train people on how to use it. It synchs with AD;
Looks good on the front end. The support is good and they are quite prompt in replying back with an answer.
Inconvénients
The features can be more intuitive, as some editing features on the front end can be a bit confusing for irregular users or novice users. It needs a cropping tool or some kind of picture editor on the front end.
A modern looking, feature rich intranet which draws people together.
Avantages
No hassle, quite flexible, easy to use, no infrastructure needed. Most of all - no programming skills required.
Inconvénients
Could have even more flexibility and I think it will.
Avantages
The dedication we got from the team have been over whelming. The exercises and training's we received were well worth it for our IT staff and for our end users.
Inconvénients
Besides getting used to it there hasn't been any complaints. Our users love it and really enjoy the ease of access we get.
An easy to use Intranet portal with social capabilities that enable employees to be more engaged.
Simplified infrastructure for on-premises, no need for massive server farms.
Great setup and onboarding experience with their professional services team. Their support staff is stellar, fast and caring for your needs.