Vuuch 4.0 Enterprise Social System Announced

Jan. 11, 2011 - PRLog -- Vuuch, creator of the first enterprise social system (ESS) for manufacturers, today announced the availability of Vuuch™ 4.0. Vuuch is social technology software that transforms the way product development teams interact. In contrast to consumer social networks and general business social network platforms, which flood team members with a stream of information of questionable relevance, Vuuch is specifically designed to foster social interaction on the deliverables required to develop and enhance all types of products. Vuuch “knows” products: it knows how a product is defined, it knows what deliverables, including CAD files, the product consists of and, most importantly, Vuuch knows which people are connected with which deliverables. Vuuch combines what it knows about people, products and the relationships between them in a social platform tailored for product development.

“Many users are asking how they can use social technology in their businesses,” said Chris Williams, CEO, Vuuch. “They have experienced social networks in their personal lives and are searching for a way to adapt social technology to business use. In particular, companies are seeking new ways to enhance their product development processes. Vuuch 4.0 answers these requirements by offering social technology that is purpose-built for the business of product development. Vuuch complements CAD and PLM and builds on these widely-deployed technologies to enhance social interactions by dealing with the unstructured information that CAD and PLM do not manage.”

New and improved features in Vuuch 4.0
Support for SpaceClaim® Engineer via a new Vuuch plug-in. SpaceClaim enables all engineers to design, edit and manipulate CAD models, even if they are not expert CAD users. The combination of SpaceClaim and Vuuch couples 3D communications with social technology. The new Vuuch 4.0 plug-in offers SpaceClaim users the ability to create and respond to product issues and requirements using the Vuuch social system directly from SpaceClaim. By using SpaceClaim with Vuuch, enterprises have a powerful new way to apply technology more broadly across more users in the company to achieve significantly higher productivity in their product development efforts.

Export to Microsoft® Excel®.  Users in Vuuch create pages representing a product or deliverable. On each Vuuch page, activities that represent tasks, issues, requirements, etc. are created. The social system then permits people who have been invited to participate in the management of those activities and pages. Over time, this institutional knowledge becomes extraordinarily valuable for reporting, analysis and regulatory compliance. Starting with Vuuch 4.0, the entire history of a page, all product pages or sets of pages, along with all related activities, can be easily exported to Microsoft Excel to facilitate these uses.

Numerous user-interface enhancements. Vuuch 4.0 has implemented numerous user-interface enhancements both online and in the Vuuch plug-ins. These enhancements are the direct result of user feedback, which has been instrumental in guiding the development of Vuuch.

In Vuuch 4.0, events – who did what and when to the Vuuch activity – can be optionally shown in-line with the actual contents of an activity. Events are analogous to status updates in consumer social networks, but function in Vuuch to allow team members to analyze the sequence and flow of activities in place with the actual content the team is working on in the social system.

On the Vuuch 4.0 web portal and in the Vuuch plug-ins for Microsoft® Office® and CAD systems, a new visualization of replies and activities is easier to read and follow than in previous releases. Due dates are shown intelligently with phrases for common time periods. Additional enhancements in the Vuuch 4.0 web portal include the ability to sort column headers on page and activity displays, the ability to discover how other users are involved in Vuuch content and filtering of activities.

Activity filtering is a powerful new way to view information in the social system that allows a user to see only what concerns him or her at that moment. Users can filter by deliverable type, time, owner and status. Filtering is also available in the Vuuch product information BOM display, permitting users to see, for example, only red status items from a particular Vuuch user from the last two weeks.

Also new in Vuuch 4.0 is an enhancement to the Vuuch email notification service that now shows the real name and email address of the user who submitted an update to the social system.

Mobile device support. Vuuch 4.0 now supports Apple® iPhone®, iPad® and iPod® touch devices via the Safari® browser included on these devices. Vuuch users can now login to Vuuch from wherever they might be, allowing issues and tasks to be more rapidly resolved and permitting the Vuuch social system to become much more integrated into the product development process.

“Vuuch is a new way of fostering team interaction in product development efforts,” said Antoine Corbeil, president, BraytonEnergy Canada. “Even when people sit right next to each other as we do in our office, Vuuch enables the team to take control of their work.  It has a large impact on our projects. Vuuch help keeps me organized and in touch with the team.”

Pricing, availability and supported systems
Vuuch is available as an annual subscription. Users who create Vuuch pages require a paid license. Other users may access those pages and update those pages without a paid license. Introductory pricing is $250 per year per Vuuch page creation license.

Vuuch 4.0 is delivered as a service, so there is no installation or setup needed. The Vuuch 4.0 web application supports major browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer®, Mozilla Firefox® and Google® Chrome®. The Vuuch web application also supports Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod touch mobile browsers. Optional Vuuch add-ins allow team members to access the Vuuch enterprise social system directly from within Microsoft Office 2007, SpaceClaim, SolidWorks®, Autodesk® AutoCAD®, Autodesk Inventor® and Pro/ENGINEER®.

About Vuuch
Vuuch (http://www.vuuch.com), the first enterprise social system (ESS) for manufacturers, is revolutionizing the way products are developed. Vuuch’s social software is the only manufacturing-specific social technology that connects product development teams together with their deliverables, cutting time-to-market and the cost of developing products while improving quality. Founded in 2009 by a team of CAD and PLM industry veterans, Vuuch’s people-centric PLM capabilities offer manufacturers a new way to improve productivity that is compatible with existing investments in CAD, PLM and desktop applications. Vuuch is privately-held and based in Wayland, MA.

Contact:
Alex Neihaus
alex@vuuch.com
+1 508 653 0072

Vuuch is a trademark of SRD Systems, Inc. All other company and product names are the property of their respective owners.