This is not a drill: A user case that lead to early adoption

Using Shelf in support of my consultancy/advisory tasks related to the development of an incubator hub in Belgrade, Serbia. Tasks require a lot of information coming in and out and disseminated to a wide variety of management, staff and stakeholders. We have been extremely glad to get our hands on the program. Not only does it support our organizational ethos of trying out new information technologies whenever we can and as they become available, its also been ideally suited and fit for our purpose. Its really smoothed and integrated our workflows and was just what we were looking for.

Pros

Shelf is really easy to set up and get going very quickly and is incredibly intuitive to use. Its a great tool not only for managing knowledge inputs in a wide variety of formats but also for group and task based working. The web clipper is great for capturing information on the go and actually a lot of fun to use. The file permissions system is super efficient for setting up and breaking down work/interest groups. It ensures everyone gets what they need to know and gets a chance to appropriately share and contribute. Its strongly supportive of the informational needs of the multi layered management structure of the organization as well as for disseminating information and updates to its general membership and stakeholders.

Cons

Although its already integrated with the three most important cloud storage sites and we hear more are on the way, we've already become firm Shelf fans and will continue to use so we'd like to see some fast-tracking so more become available sooner than later. We also hear email integration is on the way. Right now and until it comes, it would be useful for user email lists to be generated internally.

Excellent resource for maintaining quality control and communication across our organization

My overall experience with SHELF has been incredibly positive. First and foremost the customer service and personal attention has been wonderful. I never go more than a few hours without answers to my questions and they are always ready to listen and work on any issues I am having no matter how minor. I really feel like they take their clients wants and needs into account as they develop updates and the response that I have gotten from my own organization has been overwhelmingly positive.

Pros

This software is incredibly user friendly and I have really appreciated the ability to create separate libraries for all of the different stakeholders in my organization. It makes the navigation of the resource super intuitive for my staff and allows everyone to put their hands on what they need exactly when they need it. The ability to store and share a multitude of different file types as resources has also been invaluable.

Cons

There is not much I don't like about the software but one update that I am eagerly anticipating is the ability to upload and have a master copy of a resource in my organization library and have it replicated in other libraries. This will cut down on the amount of uploads and also allow us to have stronger version control on resources that we use across the organization and across our different regions.

Our 'walled garden' called Shelf

We were searching for a archiving solution that would package our company's offline and online resources (designs, documents, ideas, etc.) into a value add, easy to find, easy to use tool for our customers. Shelf provided the exact solution. Similar to how Google provides valuable search options, Shelf give us (the originator) a way to package resources and then offer in a secure walled off 'garden' , so our customers can 'harvest' those resources.

Pros

Having a "Google like" (search by tags) generated system of classifying and organizing online/offline content onto one cloud platform is transformational.
By allowing the end user (in our case, customers) to search via tags, then find>view>download any and all content relating to our relationship with them, the overall 'findability' and value of our resources increases expotentially. The value increases because it's not just sitting in some obscure Dropbox, it's growing and being harvested in "our walled garden" by our customers.
For genre specific content, we can upload new content, tag with appropriate genre related tags and automatically 'push out' the material. Soon as the tags are applied, then all members of that genre have access to the material AND are automatically notified. Versus the old method of copy>paste individual files into each customer's Dropbox folder.
The thumbnail display, which is truly amazing, provides a visual reference to the items searched for and shortens the final mile of the search to the speed of light.
Tagging is an art and Shelf customer onboarding walks you through the learning curve (changing from the file folder based system).

Cons

Still working on versioning, but the workaround works for us.

User Friendly with Great Features and Functionality!

Pros

The top 3 features of Shelf for CMDW, Inc include Sync, Search and Sharing. Shelf syncs with Google Drive and Dropbox to help users better organize and access files. Once files are synced, users can search for files via keyword(s) - even if you don't remember the title or when it was created. It's quick and easy to drag and drop files or folders to an updated private or shared folder from there (or simply leave in the current folders, as Shelf retains the original filing properties/locations during sync). Shelf is already setup with four permission levels - along with a "groups" feature to making sharing at specific access levels a breeze.

I should also point out that Shelf works well with all types of files and media, including documents, audio, video and more - which is especially important for the creatives on our team!

There are plenty of organization and collaboration tools out there - I've tried several, but Shelf has hit the UX (user experience) nail on the head. It's visually appealing and less intimidating for my clients and team members who are less tech savvy. The onboarding process for me was actually pretty fun. The demo was informative and tailored to my unique organizational needs. Customer rep really listened to my challenges and showed me how Shelf can solve many of our current problems. I'm really excited to finally have a functional solution for file management. No more lost hours searching and starting over from scratch!

Used as replacement of our Confluence wiki

Pros

Personally, i love using Confluence but it was difficult to get our company onboard. We needed a product that was more flexible and easier to organize for our company's internal knowledgebase. After a pretty extensive vetting process we selected Shelf because it allowed our team to continue using Dropbox, Drive and Slack while giving us the ability to manage our most critical docs in a centralized place. The features that make shelf unique are it's dropbox and Drive syncing, advanced search and filtered search capabilities, the ability to add additional meta data like tags and badges and the web clipper which enables our team to also use Shelf to capture youtube videos and web articles for training purposes.

Cons

No product that tries to address knowledge management issues is going to be perfect.. Even knowledge managers at our firm have trouble keeping track of information across teams and departments so no solution is going to be a one size fits all. I prefer a wiki method of building knowledge bases and Shelf doesn't yet offer this feature but overall we're very happy with Shelf.

Shelf - great product for document management and accessibility

I have been impressed with the ease and simplicity of the product. Our team transitioned pretty fast and adopted Shelf as a primary source for documentation. The support / sales team were very helpful and responsive when it came to any questions that I had. We really like the product and foresee it having a long life with us.

Pros

Easy organization.
Being able to link websites / videos / pdfs / documentation easily with a plugin.
Ability to tag / find documents easily with search feature
Preview ability with website.
Feedback ability for each addition.
Overall look and clean design

Cons

No easy way for version control - minus uploading multiple documents and renaming each update

Sifting Through Unstructured Data Just Became Easy

Shelf''s uploading, indexing, and search abilities are the smoothest and most intuitive I have encountered -even among content mining tools. Creating a Gem to contain all of the information I have found on a particular subject or for a specific project enables me to quickly find and access it at any time. No longer must I copy and paste news articles into Word documents and save them. Instead, I simply select Shelf's "Capture Article" function, and it does all the work for me. Then I can tag it with keywords, take notes, and highlight text only to be able to search through my notes on files too. My greatest complaint is the lack of a RStudio package integrating the two. This would allow me to seamlessly create Gems to use in all of my research projects. Even so, Shelf still allows me to use my collection of articles, videos, and other forms of data to far more easily complete my research projects than before i started using it. The International Peace and Security Institute (IPSI) uses Shelf to write literature reviews and for other research purposes. But it proves to be invaluable when crafting our experiential training programs. Instead of attempting to coordinate each member of our team's separate projects and research. Shelf indexes our cloud storage so that we can easily find anything other team members have done. Not only does Shelf sort through each team member's files so we can make better use of our time, but it also enables us to take notes on others' files. With IPSI's recent move to OneDrive, Colin Kennedy and the rest of Shelf's staff have supported us every step of the way to ensure we were as prepared as possible for a swift integration of OneDrive and Shelf. Their excellent customer support, thoughtfulness, and high quality product guarantee IPSI will be using Shelf for all of our file categorization and collaborative needs.

Perfect solution for all forms of media - audio, video, pictures

Pros

Content is easy to find and searchable for all users based on tagging system, which is easy to use; content can be shared across all of our teams; reduces duplication; affordable; syncs with Google drive and drop box; very easy to drag and drop files and folders

Cons

There is no built in CRM tool, and this would be really useful t have accessible. Would also be great if this would integrate with Outlook. Takes some time to put the content you want on the platform but well worth it once it is set up and ready to use.

Shelf helps our marketing team be more collaborative and efficient

Pros

- Shelf is great for project research and managing advertising versions and sales collateral for our marketing team
- Easy to organize various iterations and revisions with custom and company tags, badges, groups, organization library, folders, etc
- A powerful search tool that keeps what the team needs within reach. We can search inside documents & images and filter by version, date, users, content type and even different locations
- Shelf has been an Evernote replacement for our team. It's a much easier and intuitive way for marketing and product teams to collaborate on content research.

Cons

Cons; would like to see an integration for Slack. Our team uses Slack and it would be helpful to be able to pull in our attachments and links into Shelf so we have a more comprehensive experience.

User-friendly with professional - and quick - support to help navigate any challenges.

Ability to easily - and securely - share resources with our global movement.

Pros

We're an international organization, and needed a platform that would be affordable and accessible globally. The staff at Shelf.io are incredibly customer-oriented and constantly seeking feedback to add new features and upgrade the system. The library is intuitive to use from both an administrator's and user's perspective. The search function is robust, making it easy to find relevant resources. And, the ability to have specific user-groups for certain documents is a huge benefit for us. Without question, an amazing resource for the price.

Cons

I do wish we could customize the look (e.g., co-brand with logos, colors, etc.) - but really, if my only major complaint has to with aesthetics, the product certainly is working for us.

Great experience, friendly, knowledgeable, no sales pressure which was AWESOME and APPRECIATED!

Easy CMS for users with NO TECH experience. Deepens our value to our members by providing not just our content but valued content from external sources in 1 easy to find, easy to search, and easy to share online platform.

Pros

We like the ease of sharing files and different resources across our membership. The ease of adding both internal content via OneDrive and external content with their Web Clipper is not found on any other product. Having the ability to customize user groups with specific roles in their group is a great feature. Allows us to promote people to roles in a group but not on the overall platform. The ability to make certain things public and certain things private allows for easy sharing and linking from website and social media. The search feature is the most impressive feature, allowing users to search from a wide variety of content across the entire platform. Don't forget about the ability for authors to get emails alerting for new comments to easily respond and address certain questions.

Cons

The lack of a built in CRM tool and/or linking via api keeps the product from certain users but is the best CMS on the market.