Community Portal Host a secure portal for your candidates and participants

• Your Own Private Beta Portal

  Feature

  Connect provides your beta participants with simple, secure, anywhere, anytime access to provide you with feedback.

  Benefit

  Your fully branded beta portal will increase both participant performance and internal team adoption by offering a simple, structured mechanism to participate in your beta program. By replacing disparate tools with a centralized beta hub, you will improve your customers experience thereby increasing participation quality and quantity. Increased participation means more reported defects and less risk at launch.

• String Customization (Localization)

  Feature	All strings in Connect may be customized instantly based on your needs, with no need for external tools or coding. This includes support for Multibyte characters, allowing for partial or complete localizations.
  Benefit	Using your own terminology or language will resonate with your participants and team members, providing enhanced results across the board.

• Custom Visual Themes

  Feature	Connect offers the ability to customize the look and feel of both the Community including colors, logos, and favicon.
  Benefit	Providing your own unique brand experience will help build a closer relationship with your participants and customers, and establish your beta portal as an official element of your company.

• Beta Promotion

  Feature	Connect allows you to promote your betas, allowing users to submit your beta opportunities to social networking sites (Facebook, Digg, Del.icsio.us, etc), as well as subscribe to RSS feeds. These feeds can promote public (open) beta tests, or announce beta opportunities that users may apply for.
  Benefit	Connect's beta promotion system helps grow your community of customers, ensuring you always have plenty of great, ready candidates matching the target market of every beta project.

User Profiling Profile your customers to select the right participants.

• User Profiles

  Feature	Connect's custom User Profiles allow you to easily build forms which collect the exact information necessary to fully profile your beta candidates.
  Benefit	Comprehensive User Profiles further increase your ability to recruit the right participants who match your target market and goals, every single time. In addition, User Profile forms are always a click away when reviewing participant related information within beta projects.

• Test Platform Profiles

  Feature

  Connect's unique Test Platforms allow you to collect custom information detailing the specific products your participants own and use which affect the quality and experience of your own products.

  Benefit

  In today's environment few products stand solely on their own. Compatibility with 3rd party products can be your highest risk factor. By factoring related products into your beta recruitments you can ensure adequate coverage that will expose costly defects, allowing your engineering team to resolve these issues effectively and efficiently. In addition, Test Platforms can be attached directly to user feedback, reducing needless repetitive input from participants, resulting in superior feedback quality and quantity by countering the law of diminishing returns.

• Community Surveys

  Feature	Connect's Community Surveys allow you to quickly expand your users profile database with the specific information of your choice.
  Benefit	Community Surveys further extend the depth of your user profiling capabilities. Community Survey results may be utilized in recruitment, community level reporting, and whenever viewing user information.

• Automated User Ranking

  Feature	Connect's User Ranking functionality allows you to develop a detailed history for each beta participant by scoring them automatically (or manually) based on their performance.
  Benefit	User Ranking ensures that your best participants are on your most crucial beta projects. User Ranking also allows you to identify and reward your top participants for their valuable contributions to your success, motivating them to continue participating heavily in your future beta projects.

Project Management Effectively manage your beta project in less time.

• Project Templates

  Feature	Create custom reusable best-practices templates containing all aspects of your beta projects include custom Feedback Types, Content, Legal Agreements, Task Lists, User Forums, and Reports.
  Benefit	Connect's Project Templates allow you to utilize our best practices or your own, to create entire beta tests in minutes rather than days. Project Templates cover all aspects of beta projects including Custom Feedback Types, Non-Disclosure Agreements, Survey Templates, Task Lists, User Forums, System Integrations, Reports, and more.

• Targeted User Recruitment

  Feature	Connect allows you to easily recruit qualified participants who match the exact profile of your intended target market. User Recruitments may survey users for additional information, as well as pre-filter candidates by individual elements from Test Platforms, User Profiles, Community Surveys, or previous Participation performance.
  Benefit	Connect's User Recruitment tools make a time consuming task nearly effortless. By further increasing the quantity and quality of your Feedback by helping select the perfect Candidates right from the start. In addition they allow you to limit the flow of potentially sensitive information to a limited group of pre-qualified Candidates.

• User Management

  Feature

  Connect's extensive User Management tools allow you to effectively monitor and manage your beta candidates and participants. Comprehensive tools allow you to automate common tasks such as participation and User Profile update reminders. Custom Views and Filters allow you to manage subsets of users, focusing on the details you care about, while our proprietary cache system allows you to work with large sets of user data very quickly.

  Benefit

  Connect's User Management tools greatly reduce the time necessary for managing the ongoing performance of your participants, while offering a clear picture of exactly who your users are and where they stand in your beta projects. User Macro and Scheduled Macro tools allow you to save additional time by further automating these processes.

• Custom Project Profiles (Enterprise Edition)

  Feature	Organize project information into simple forms for use in Cross-Project Dashboards and to provide team members with easy access to on-going project parameters and changes.
  Benefit	Connect's Project Profiles help enforce best practices and ensure consistent process throughout your beta programs. Project Profile data may easily shared with executives to provide real-time dashboards across all projects.

Notification / Instruction Keep participants in the loop at all times.

• Custom Project Homepage

  Feature	Connect's custom Project Homepage allows you to centralize the information you care most about, keeping participants and team members informed without having to dig for the information.
  Benefit	One of the most challenging aspects of both managing and participating in a beta test is the sheer variety of activities that are necessary to keep on top of to be successful. Connect's Project Homepage centralizes all project activities, from new Content and Surveys, to active Project Manager Alerts into simple focused tabs.

• Legal Agreements

  Feature	Automate the NDA process for all candidates and participants, fully satisfying corporate digital agreement requirements including archiving, contract accessibility, printing, and user specific injected data (including name, company, address, and more).
  Benefit	Connect saves an enormous amount of time by greatly simplifying all contractual aspects of a beta program, while meeting or exceeding the requirements set by your legal counsel.

• Content Management

  Feature	Connect's Content Management System allows you to publish beta-related content such as project news, status updates, tutorials, and whatever information you would like, directly to your beta participants.
  Benefit	Easy to access beta specific Content provides direction for participants, keeping them involved and increasing their performance, while ensuring their direction is always in line with your objectives.

• Release Management

  Feature	Release Management allows you to quickly and securely distribute software builds, release notes, and unique product keys to selected participants. Releases may even be tied to feedback to track specific feedback in relation to individual releases.
  Benefit	Connect's release system drives participant performance by simplifying the process of acquiring your beta product. The release system combined with Connect’s Notices ensures that your beta participants are providing feedback on the most recent build of your product, eliminating wasted time reporting/triaging issues that have already been addressed.

• Notices

  Feature	Tailor your Participant’s user experience by pushing Surveys, Content, Releases/Downloads, Task Lists, and other important information immediately when entering your community or project. Chaining multiple Notices allows you to provide a specific path that meets your objectives.
  Benefit	Never again leave important participant communication to chance. Connect Notices offer you the ability to ensure specific content is experienced and/or completed by your users, including non-disclosure agreements and Surveys. Doing so increases participation relevance, while meeting legal requirements when necessary.

• E-Mail Management

  Feature	Connect's E-mail Management tools allow you to easily automate, template, and log all aspects of beta E-mail. Our proprietary E-mail queuing system spreads E-mail out based on real-time server load to ensure you're not encouraging more traffic than necessary.
  Benefit	Dealing with communication can be one of the most time consuming aspects of managing a beta test. Connect centralizes and automates beta E-mail, saving an enormous amount of beta project management time, while providing a clear and accessible history of all communication activity (required for Sarbanes-Oxley) in one , consistent, convenient, and searchable location.

Feedback and Activities Achieve your objectives via flexible participant activities.

• Custom Feedback Types (Bugs, Suggestions, Journals, etc)

  Feature

  Connect offers a deep and flexible system to collect, track, and organize custom feedback such as bug reports and feature requests from your beta participants. Feedback can be handled via your own custom workflow process, or sent automatically to your existing defect tracking system.

  Benefit

  Custom Feedback Types offer you the ability to collect the exact information you need to fix your bugs and achieve your beta objectives - whatever they may be. Minimizing fields to only those that are important to you increases feedback by reducing the amount of information required from testers. In addition, Connect allows you to optionally create your own custom workflow, ensuring feedback flows to and through the right people or systems.

• Project Surveys

  Feature	Connect includes a powerful Survey engine, allowing you to collect essential data by quickly deploying custom questionnaires to groups of beta participants. Surveys may be easily administered to all participants, or smaller subsets.
  Benefit	Surveys are an excellent way to gauge the spread of specific issues, or quickly gauge the perception of an issue or topic to your pool of participants. Survey results may also be aggregated with other feedback and other project data, offering even more complete views of your results.

• Task Lists

  Feature	Easily assign custom Tasks to ensure complete testing coverage by beta participants, test specific features or changes in a new build, or simply to increase participation by providing structured direction.
  Benefit	Whether you’re looking for that out of the box experience or for your beta participants to follow a detailed test plan, Connect's Tasks drive participation toward specific goals, greatly increasing your product quality by ensuring complete testing coverage.

• Discussion Forums

  Feature

  Discussion Forums offer your beta participants an outlet to share their excitement for your product in a controlled environment with other NDA’d users. You may choose to host discussions, focus them on specific topics, or simply allow your participants to communicate freely.

  Benefit

  User Forums help increase security by providing an outlet for users, while increasing participation by offering a great reason to consistently log into your Beta Portal, generally resulting in other forms of valuable participation (bugs, surveys, etc) in the process. In addition, participants will often go out of their way to assist their colleagues, removing substantial load from both you and your team.

• Collaborative Wikis (Coming in 9.2)

  Feature	Allow your beta participants to contribute directly toward your documentation, marketing, community, and related materials.
  Benefit	Connect's Wiki's provide a great mechanism for your participants to get even closer to your product, producing extremely cost effective and useful materials while driving your participation performance even further.

Reporting & Data Access Build powerful real-time analytics for actionable results.

• Targeted Reporting

  Feature	Build and distribute valuable custom reports covering all aspects of your beta test results. Include Demographics, Feedback, Surveys, Tasks, Participation, and more. Build charts, spreadsheets, documents, or even geographic maps that meet your exact objectives.
  Benefit	A Beta Test is only as effective as the resulting data. Connect's Reporting engine allows you to build and optionally automatically distribute top-notch custom Reports incorporating data covering every aspect of your Beta Program. Report Templates can cover the basics, ensuring instant access to real actionable data for all Team Members.

• Feedback Management

  Feature

  Effectively manage participant feedback via powerful tools, including custom work-flow processes which feed into your own existing systems.

  Benefit

  Connect's Feedback Management tools ensure your vital beta feedback doesn't fall through the tracks, routing your feedback (manually or automatically) to those who need it most. Custom Views and Filters allow your team to work with specific subsets of feedback, focusing on only the issues relevant to their function. Our proprietary cache system allows your team to manage large sets of dynamic feedback data very quickly, while maintaining one-to-one currency with real-time changes.

• Knowledge Base

  Feature	Connect's Knowledge Base offers a simple means to search both community and project data including participant profile information, Feedback, Survey results, Task results, User Forum discussions, Wikis, Content, Releases, and much more.
  Benefit	Beta tests can produce an enormous amount of information, spread between numerous forms. Connect's Knowledge Base helps answer questions on the fly by making all of this information available in one centralized place.

• Executive Dashboards (Enterprise Edition)

  Feature	Easily view essential information across any number of both active and previous projects, including project activity and progress.
  Benefit	Dashboards increase executive and cross-departmental buy in and understanding by offering a brief real-time overview of key data across your entire beta program.

Integrations & Other Tools Leverage the tools you're already familiar with.

• External System Integrations

  Feature	Connect can integrate with your existing systems such as BugZilla, Team Track, Akamai, Active Directory, and LDAP. A number of methods and simple API options are already available, and easy to implement.
  Benefit	Connect allows your internal teams (development, quality, etc) to continuing using the tools they're already invested in and familiar with, saving time and greatly increasing the adoption of your beta program and feedback.

• Data Import

  Feature	Connect provides simple mechanisms to quickly import existing data including users (participants, candidates, etc), User Profile information, pre-existing Survey results, Feedback (bugs, suggestions, etc), and more.
  Benefit	Your existing data is a valuable resource, and Connect allows you to continue leveraging that value.

• Data Export

  Feature	Connect allows you to easily export data including users, feedback, surveys, task results, and more. Exports may be configured to include exactly the data you care about, saved, and re-ran as needed.
  Benefit	Exporting data from Connect allows you to use your own additional tools as you'd like. From importing Connect data to a CRM, or manipulating feedback in MS Excel or Google Spreadsheet - how you use your data is up to you.