The Touchpoint Preview Program

What’s New in this Iteration?

As you know, we have just released a new iteration which means that there have been some changes and enhancements added to Touchpoint.  Please note that with any new iteration, you may need to re-enter your credentials.  Please keep them handy when you upgrade.  If you don’t remember them, contact TouchpointSupport@opentext.com.

Login:

1. The “Use SSL” button has been removed.  The use of SSL is now decided by the server administrator, and all the clients use the server’s setting.

2. The login page has been changed a little.  You will see the server as the first entry.  It remembers your credentials for a particular server, so once the server is entered, it should fill in the other credentials.  If it doesn’t remember your credentials, re-enter them.  Your Domain is now shown in the Organization list box (for now).  As always, if you forget your credentials, contact TouchpointSupport@opentext.com.

3. If you change your password, any “remembered” password on the login dialog on that machine is forgotten. 

Places:

1. The 3 buttons for toggling Chat, Content Panel, Place Bar have been removed from the Place.  You can still use these functions through the View Menu.

2. The Snapshot button has also been removed; snapshots are now on the Edit Menu.

3. Forward/backward buttons have been added.  This allows you to go to page back and forth though content that was shown in the content panel.

4. New Things added to a Place will have a light bulb indicating that it is new.  Modified Things are shown with an icon that looks like this: 

5. New Place Home Page reports have been added:  Modified Things, New Things, Upcoming Meetings.  Select these reports by using the Place Properties from the File Menu.

New Releases every few weeks?!?

Every few weeks, the Touchpoint team releases a new “iteration” of the software which provides new features and enhancements to our user community. To prepare for this upgrade, users are emailed an announcement of the upgrade and a request to log out for a period of time while the server is upgraded.  Users will receive another email when the server is again ready for use.

Following the upgrade, users should login to Touchpoint as usual.  An informative message will appear that a new release is available and asks if you want to do the upgrade.  Answer the prompts and it will automatically update the client for you.  Following the upgrade, you should be able to access Touchpoint as usual (contact TouchpointSupport@opentext.com if you have ANY trouble).

As you might have guessed, we have an iteration coming this week! Stay tuned for more…

Touchpoint Feedback

Now that you’ve gotten a chance to work with Touchpoint a little while, what do you think?  We’re really interested in your feedback and have some specific questions to get your wheels turning…

1. Are the”Did you Know” messages helpful? Do you use them, or did you turn them off as soon as you had the chance?
2. Was it difficult to figure out how to share something? What about viewing something that someone else was sharing?
3. What’s that little feature that you really like? What’s the feature that is really annoying? What feature would you like to see that is missing from the product?

All feedback is welcome...

People, Places and Things

The basic metaphor for Touchpoint revolves around three concepts:

• People = folks you work with to get stuff done
• Places = workspaces that act as a hub for
• Things = objects (documents, meetings, screenshots, etc.) used as tools to work together

The attached ppt deck shows how these elements fit together naturally to create a work environment that (we hope) can make it easier to get things done.

Would be interested in your thoughts on the concepts.

Download project_featherlite_touchpoint_041115.ppt

A little history...

A little trivia for those interested in the genesis of Touchpoint...

In January 2003, I was finishing up some grad work at MIT focused on the management of emerging technologies.  Through a series of events, I happened to connect with Open Text, and we kicked off a joint, six-month project focused on the "future of real-time collaboration."   

Gathering both primary and secondary data (the work involved more than 130 companies across more than 30 industries), we sliced and diced to try and get a better "feel" for where the market was headed.  The result?  A hundred-page document describing the convergence of presence, instant messaging, web conferencing, and team workspaces.

Internally, our CTO turned the analysis into a proposal, rounded up a team of extremely talented folks, and secured management approval to move forward.  (Despite the fact that I would be an obvious drag on the team, they invited me tag along as good luck.)  We started coding in January 2004, and started using Touchpoint to build Touchpoint in March of the same year. 

At Open Text, the Touchpoint Community grew over 2004 from our initial team of 4 to almost 600.  And today, although the actual development team is still very small, the user community includes groups from every part of the company: sales, services, marketing, HR, and development.

The Touchpoint Roadmap

Touchpoint is designed to deliver a “graceful blend” of real-time and asynchronous collaboration. Although conceptually simple, we think that the combination is very powerful, offering today's IM users an “IM++” experience that combines presence, instant messaging, web conferencing and team workspaces. 

Our current plans for the Touchpoint business are, well,  also simple:  (1) aggressively launch a critical mass of attractive features in v1; (2) systematically improve the platform during 2005 through a unique rapid development process.

The figure below shows the current roadmap for the product.

Welcome to the Livelink Touchpoint Preview Program!

Welcome to the Livelink Touchpoint Preview Program!   Your voice counts...

Over the last six months, Touchpoint development has been driven by an innovative process that has engaged more than 500 Open Text employees.  Every few weeks, the core development team has released a new “iteration” of the software, pushing the changes to the growing community through the auto-update feature of the client.  In return, the community has responded by providing feedback, bug submissions, feature requests.  The result has been magic. 

The Preview Program is designed to extend this process to you, expanding the scope of the community conversation that has shaped the product to date.  Livelink Touchpoint v1 will ship in July. Between now and then, we’ll be listening carefully to your feedback.  We anticipate that if we do it right, the process will be extremely rewarding for both of us.