Messageboard or support area only for paying customers?

[Deezt]

Hi I see that some users are Scalix stars etc, but is there a way so that paying customers can be identified just so it is easier to tell who is window shopping and who is commited to Scalix and trying their best to make it work?

[sg]

There is a support area for paying customers.

Take a look at: http://www.scalix.com/enterprise/support/

[Deezt]

Hah just I tried to post I got a phpbb error could not connect to database.

sg all I see though is for opening support tickets but imho it would be nice to talk with other people who are not just running a server out of their basement but are taking things seriously, or to be able to identify said people.

[florian]

Understood, however the reality of it is, it's really hard to manage (we would need to start associating forum accounts with existing customers, some of which may rather prefer to stay anonymous, etc.).

As I know a couple of the people involved personally, I know that quite a number of people here are either resellers of ours (especially some of those contributing!) and a good number of commercial customers as well.

Taking the "next step", as you suggest, is difficult, as it would also be blurring the line between support under SLA and community discussions; it may also set wrong expectations because if you pay, you are looking for a timely response, right?

I guess for the time being things will remain as they are - if we see opportunities to improve, we'll follow up on it.

Florian

[Deezt]

Maybe you could have written in bold underline font point 40 that the forums are not support. I see that resellers have a vested interest in making the product better, I have a vested interest in it chugging along and working

It would of course require associating forums names with customers but this is how I have seen things work for other open source applications (Although the heck if I can remember which ones at the moment). I think I get some people would want to be anonymous and it probably would not be wise to broadcast that User A is a paying user and works for this company to the world but just an idea.

As while I don't expect a timely response it might help resellers/scalix support gauge better if they are talking to existing, or potential customers, or people who have zero interested in spending any money.

[florian]

Well, I see your point - where and how would you put that 40 point message? The pages say at their top "Scalix Community Forums" and they are mostly linked in from the Scalix Community and Community Edition web pages.

I just checked and see that they are also mentioned on http://www.scalix.com/support - although it seems that we tried to make clear that it's a self-help, but maybe we should be even clearer on this.

I'll forward this to the website people and kick off a discussion on how to improve positioning.

Florian

[Deezt]

Personally I would include the message when someone purchases a license from a reseller and you fire off an email to them with all the important details.

Eg there is a self help forum that you should for sure read if you haven't already. If you don't have an account yet click here to register, and then include whatever kind of code you want to tell phpbb that hey hey this is a customer. If you want to get complicated could let existing forum posters "upgrade" or update their message board account if you will.

Just would be one more avenue to help provide better support in my opinion. Then if someone is a customer support could be proactive and fire off a PM phone them up and see if they want to open a support ticket. For example we are paying but to be honest I have no idea how many points we have or service calls if any.

Back to the mistunderstandings and expectations around it, I wouldn't expect a timely reponse but at the same time is it wrong to think that maybe if 2 people are having problems, one is a paying customer one is not that the customer might get a fraction more attention?

As I see it there are three basic groups, paying customers, potential customers evaluating, and enthusiasts using it at home. But yes it is a tricky situation for sure to juggle. But I do believe other companies out there are tackling this same problem so maybe they can offer some advice on how to manage it all.

But yeah makes me feel better to hear some action may be taken or atleast debated (:

[florian]

The key point is - it's pretty much impossible for our support team to monitor the forums and react under any kind of SLA. And given the volume of posts, it's also next to impossible to just look for stuff that comes from commercial customers.

Honestly - and I just asked for that wording to be changed on the website - the statement that support team is monitoring or moderating this forum is a bit too much; they are contributing to it when they are idle, and some of them even do in their spare time, which is much appreciated and demonstrates their dedication to the product. They will, however, always cover commercial support tickets that come in through other channels first. Given the number of customers keeps growing, obviously the volume of tickets also does, and given tough economic times, we are hesitant to scale up the support team in the same way, so in effect the support guys get less time to spend on the forum, which may be a pity for some here enjoying the free support, but from a commercial and economic standpoint, it's the only way to go for us.

Fortunately, more customers and downloads also means more users and I am very happy to see that the community - i.e. customers, resellers, free users - has become a lot more self-sustaining over time. We keep monitoring it and step in if things really go sideways badly in the forums, but many threads and questions end up being resolved without our involvement. Which I see as a good sign, because it means that the community as we have it and as we're proud of (and that's why we keep giving away a lot of software functionality for free) is pretty healthy and balanced as it stands.

Again, will keep thinking about some adjustments to improve this - I've pointed some people to this thread already.

Florian

[Deezt]

Okay one last point it would be great in my opinion if we could get some official scalix folk to idle in the IRC channel. Last I was there it was just two friends from Germany, but I find IRC channels on other topics an amazing free community tool. But it is hard to get many people to go through the effort of installing something like pidgin or MIRC if the channel is empty.

[florian]

Right... and also keep in mind... as soon as names from our support team appear on that channel the fact that IRC or IM is so immediate creates an expectation of SLA or to-be-expected response; it's also very tempting for those folks to immediately react to a "smallish" question coming in through that channel - and honestly, we can't really accept that while we try to keep support resources dedicated to the official tickets for various customers at different support levels, some of which have premium support with a guaranteed 1h response time. Every minute counts....

and for me myself - i monitor so many communication channels alread, IRC for whatever reason hasn't ever been one of them and ... I'd like to keep my personal sanity by avoiding adding it.

Florian

[RSisco]

So would this make me (a community user) less likely to help those that are identified as paying customers - knowing that Scalix is paying more attention to them in here than me? I really feel the purpose of the community forum is to create a level playing field for everyone - including us "free" users who try at every opportunity to help further develop their product.

By the way, just because I am a community user doesn't mean that I am "just running a server out of my basement" and not "taking things seriously". I use Scalix in a production environment and am every bit as committed to it being a successful and stable product as the user who has an enterprise version. The only reason I have not purchased an enterprise license is that I have not had a need for paid support yet and I don't require more than the 10 premium users. I am also still working out kinks in my server setup, etc.

[Deezt]

Yeah there are exceptions to every case, but there are many people who are running it at home and getting uppity. That is great that in your company you currently do not need more than 10 premium accounts, but not everyone has that luxury.

Bottom line is the majority of the useful things I use often to fight with our server have come from the forums, not from the wiki which is often way out of date, and not from the Fakt book.

I am just frustrated still, but the latest connector has turned things around and I will migrate eventually to the new server. I understand there can be immsense pressure to release software asap, but wow things were really terrible in my office last summer.

[florian]

Thanks - We're working hard on quality and features and to make Scalix a good experience for all the various types of use(r)s. And to be clear - everyone using our free stuff is very, very welcome - we've received tons of good feedback over the years, got to the bottom of product issues with the community's help and those who've been happy were more than helpful in spreading the word, doing voluntary peer-to-peer marketing. Some have actually moved up to commercial versions for various reasons, not the worst one being that they have outgrown the capacities in terms of premium users. All-in-all, for me Scalix Community Edition has been a huge success.

It's clear that as a commercial company we have to see where we make our cut, so some features and functionalities and services will only be available for those that pay. On the support side, we have a wide range of entitlements available, covering many situations. This forums space, however, for me is the great equalizer where all comes together, good and bad, rants and raves. I firmly believe that's what a forum should be, hence it's name. I'm not alone in making this call and we have different opionions even inside our company on these topics, but for the time being I don't see a problem with what's happening, at least not a big one, so there is nothing to fix.

We certainly want to further enhance our commercial offerings, and that may have a stronger component of self-service and interactive feedback. We may need or want to create a new place for this. I'd think that the forums will, even then, still remain the most vibrant and active place on the Scalix site.

Watching this for a long while now - I think I signed up with my account in Dec 2004 and have received daily digests ever since (well, almost - 3 days missing now - you may have noticed that we've upgraded the forums phpbb software on Monday; digests are missing right now, but will be back today or tomorrow!), I'm quite happy to see that after a phase where people were mostly talking about problems, I see an increasing number of posts saying that something works well - obviously, such feedback is appreciated very much by me and the dev team, it's the one thing we work very hard for to get more of. So - I'd hope that this is not only temporary, but rather a stable trend, as that means we're doing something right.

Anyway, so long,
Florian.