Has anyone found a good alternative to Pulse yet?

[dcarlile]

The idea of this product is so cool. I desperately want to like it. But alas, it's a hot mess. I've installed it and done trials on two different versions now, hoping they would fix some of the core problems. But as others have noted on this board, clearly Pulse is not a priority for Madcap. So I'm curious, has anyone else found a good alternative? My company really wants social collaboration and I know there are a lot of products out there. But to do something that does not center around our documentation/knowledge base seems like a bad idea. We've invested a lot in our knowledge base. I want something that will showcase our Flare output and provide integrated search capabilities.

Have you found anything that works? Have you found anything that looks promising? I'd love to hear about it. Thanks.

[islandzal]

I looked at Pulse a few years ago and decided we didn't need to go there yet. We now really need stats on our internally hosted sites. I am back to considering Pulse but reading all of the lackluster reviews and comments has really discouraged me!
We don't really need or care about the social stuff...more the stats on page hits, search terms, and perhaps rating the content.
So I'm interested in hearing about alternatives to Pulse as well...
Thanks!

[techwriter31]

I looked at Pulse a few years ago and decided we didn't need to go there yet. We now really need stats on our internally hosted sites. I am back to considering Pulse but reading all of the lackluster reviews and comments has really discouraged me!
We don't really need or care about the social stuff...more the stats on page hits, search terms, and perhaps rating the content.
So I'm interested in hearing about alternatives to Pulse as well...
Thanks!

Have you considered/tried Google Analytics? You can embed the GA code in your master page(s) for tracking. It's been a while since I implemented GA for our Flare website. At the time, we couldn't track search terms and I'm definitely not a GA expert. I'm guessing there may now be a way to do this with Flare and Google Analytics?

[deblockwood]

It's been a while since anyone posted here, so I think it's time we ask the same question. Has anyone found a good alternative to Pulse?
We implemented Google Analytics last year, and it was helpful. But we want to take the next step and get analysis reports on search words. Anybody have ideas?

Deb Lockwood
Flare/Capture/Analyzer user

[Psider]

I can't comment on Pulse or alternatives, but I did find this article about tracking search terms using google analytics:
https://mike.kelley.consulting/blog/how ... tml-output

[deblockwood]

@Psider - Thank you very much for the link to Mike Kelly's post. I was very excited to try the solution that Mike recommended but, unfortunately, we are still not able to track the search terms in Google Analytics.
I appreciate the suggestion.
Does anyone else have a possible solution or insights?
-Deb

[Jbleasdale]

Whats wrong with GA?

I am tracking search terms with it. Its free, easy to implement and gives you a vast amount of data well beyond what Pulse would.

You should also consider doing a bit of custom coding to add the bits you need, it would probably end up cheaper. A great Flare author from the forum kindly implemented some feedback tools in my Flare project and that combined with GA is more than enough for what I need.

I think the main question should be... what do you WANT to do?