Zimbra Introduces a Free Version of Community 8

Zimbra, a provider of unified collaboration and community software, today introduced the latest version of its community software solution, Zimbra Community 8.0, which extends the power of online communities for customer support and private social networking to remote and mobile workers.

New to Zimbra Community 8.0 is a free edition designed for small businesses and individual users.

"With the release of Zimbra Community Free Edition, organizations of all sizes can now benefit from our team's experience of powering more than 3,000 communities globally to improve real-time employee and customer collaboration, support, and engagement," said Rob Howard, chief technology officer at Zimbra, in a statement.

Additional enhancements of Zimbra's latest release include advanced analytics that drive enhanced contextual search capabilities, a new mobile interface, pre-built templatesand a redesigned user interface that includes automated learning tools for community managers to speed adoption.

"As a result of the mobile-first era, organizations demand tools to support users on the go. Plus, businesses are looking to deliver the power of social business networking in a quick and simple manner," Howard said in the statement. "Our new release addresses both of these needs. Zimbra Community 8.0 provides a fast track to community engagement through pre-built templates that decrease costs and deployment time, and extends the community experience to mobile users, giving employees and consumers access to their social communities at any time, on any device."

Key features of Zimbra Community 8.0 include the following:

• New mobile interface that automatically adjusts its screen size to reflect the device size, allowing businesses to expand self-service support and employee collaboration to all modern devices and major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Zimbra also extends this user experience into a full-featured mobile application for Android and iOS devices.
• Starter kits with pre-built templates.
• Automated learning tools with Zimbra's guided tour, prompts that explain how and when to use social applications, and tips that simplify member profile creation and the building of personal and professional networks.
• Context-based search with ingrained data from community analytics.

In addition to the free version, Zimbra Community 8.0 is offered in standard and professional editions. Additionally, for a full-featured test drive, organizations can try a 60-day trial with pre-populated content that demonstrates a complete production community while showcasing the new user interface and features of the latest release.

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