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.

Cloud Based Knowledge Management System

We wanted a product that would help us manage our knowledge better. The product is good , but the overall speed / refresh rate is poor in-spite of us using more than 50 mbps.

Pros

The search features , quick customer care responses and online tutorials.

Cons

The speed and the sense that they were learning the functionalities of the product on the job.

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.