Scalix Technical Suport Feedback

[SidebandSamurai]

Hello,

I had posted this in another forum because I am upset with support from Scalix. Here is the first post I placed there

Code: Select all

Hi Everyone,

This is absolutely ridiculous. I call Scalx for support, and I get a message "I am sorry we are unable to take your call right now, Please leave a message and someone will promptly return your call." then it reports "Sorry but this mail box is full" WTF! I need help with this issue and no one is available to take my call?!!!

<shaking my head> this is not good.

Sincerely,

Sideband Samurai

Here is the continuation of this thread, which I was gong to post beneath this original. I decided it would detract from solving my issue, so I have posted it here. I have tried to be as objective about this as I can. I have tried to make sure my feelings on this issue were set aside and state just the facts in this matter as I see it. I am hoping that this post will improve customer service here at Scalix. Your comments on this issue would be most appreciated. Maybe I am wrong. But this is how I feel. Thanks for reading:

Code: Select all

Well now I wonder if this 800 number for the US actually forwards to an Overseas location.  Its 2:12pm here on the Pacific cost, and it would be 10:00pm GMT or 11:00pm in Germany.  That would explain why I can't get through.  Their phone system is not very helpful, and this is very frustrating.  Especially when you pay good money for a product and get absolutely NO support when you really need it.  I am not looking for free support either, I would be willing to pay for it.  but it appears I am not even given that option.

What if I had an actual emergency where the data base was corrupted and I needed help right now?  With no one to talk to, my company would be down until I got some type of assistance from the forums.  Though the forums have been a great source of information, as well as fielding general questions, and in Scalix defense they have answered some interesting questions, this should NOT be the chief area of support.  A company should not rely on their customers to support an enterprise product such as this.  Especially when you have a mail server and its absolutely critical to a companies daily operations.  If this was Scalix's chief area of support why has Scalix not stepped up to the plate to answer or even acknowledge my question?  I will not accept the answer "we are short on staff".  or the another excuse "we are over worked"  sorry that does not fly with me either.  The company must hire enough staff to properly support its product, or be willing to pay the over time to make sure support is available.

I want to make myself very clear, I am not saying that this practice (that is using forums for product support) is not acceptable.  Microsoft uses this method all the time. What is not acceptable is not having access to support personnel that are intimately familiar with the product.  Microsoft has support services open 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  Again, Microsoft is a large company, it makes proprietary software, and it can have its problems, but the support structure for their products are in place and firmly embedded.  Why, because most people have bought and accepted what Microsoft does as good.  Not many large corporations use Scalix.  Again I want to be clear, I said NOT MANY, there are some and how do they get support?  I don't know.  Looking at their "Contact US" page only gives me a HTML form to fill out that looks like it gets sent to a sales department.  No information on support hours or how to get in contact with them.

My company is small, (under 20 users).  When Scalix decided to reduce the Free licenses down to 10, I understood the need to do that.  I supported the product after using it for 2 years and paid the fees.  If I was using the software in community mode, then I would have no legs to stand on, but I am paying for the product, a certain expectation of service is expected when that happens.  To have a company ignore a problem, I am not saying this is happening, but the evidence would lead you to believe that, is unprofessional. 

My customer is asking some serious questions, one of which is Mail is not getting delivered to the Outlook Inbox on time, which is very serious, and I can't provide an answer.  This does not make me look good at all.

Lately I have seen the forums becoming less and less active, and this is a concern for me, as its customers or users are not checking the forums often enough to answer questions.  Then as a customer I get more and more frustrated.  To the point that one day my patients will be at an end and I will recommend that we install Exchange instead just to ensure that proper support channels are in place.

Your feedback regarding this post is welcome either from Scalix or the community.

Sincerely,

Sideband Samurai

[mxx]

2 months ago I needed support too. I opened the ticket through the portal and got an answer 1 day later. In case you need help NOW this isn't an option of course.
I must also say that I've made the experience that they won't answer or mail you often unless you specify "urgent" or how they call their highest priority level. Unless you do that you get 1-2 mails a day and things are progressing very slowly. That's at least my experience with two tickets..

Scalix isn't dead, it's dying slowly it seems to me.

Ever took a short look at Zimbra forums? Whenever google takes me there and I take a short look, I get a strong feeling that I was a very fool..

Long gone those days where lots of users were around and even Scalix technical stuff wasn't too shy jumping in and give helpful answers on a very frequent basis. It would be quite unfair to say that they don't do that sometimes any more, but it's QUITE rare compared to let's say 2-4 years ago...

I'm afraid too..

Thank you Xandros for improving things so much, it's just a bit.. too much.








P.S.: PLEASE make this OL2007,CALENDAR/TASKS/CATEGORIES patch available already! IT'S RIDICULOUS!

AND WHY do you drop support for CDO when your ACTIVESYNC SOLUTION is far away from working flawlessly?!? Who's marvellous idea was THAT?

[florian]

AND WHY do you drop support for CDO when your ACTIVESYNC SOLUTION is far away from working flawlessly?!? Who's marvellous idea was THAT?

Scalix hasn't dropped support for CDO. Notify dropped support for CDO in THEIR NotifyLink product, so I guess on the "marvellous idea" you may wanna talk to them. On the ActiveSync side, it would be more useful if you specified what exactly is not working flawlessly in the appropriate place; this generic statement doesn't really help anyone.

On the support side, a 1 biz day response time is as per SLA for normal support contracts; initial response is faster in many cases if I look at the stats. I've pointed out this thread to the support manager and I assume he'll contact you to understand the details of your concerns.

Cheers,
Florian.

[mxx]

Hi Florian, thanks for answering.

I wasn't the 1st one asking about CDO support being dropped.
But in my case our Notify provider told me that there won't be support for Notify Scalix CDO after 1.5.

If there's just Notify to blame I apologize, BUT supporting an updated version of a 3rd party product over any kind of interface requires both parties to work together. At least that's obvious to me. Who's the one to blame I don't and can't know of course.
I remember some time ago Scalix officially recommended and supported Notify though. Since Scalix-ActiveSync this has changed and so I get the strong feeling that Scalix isn't very interested in working with them any more.. Generally this is understandable, but in this early phase not a nice move.


Regarding ActiveSync, I mentioned losing Data like contacts on the phones on a regular basis. Not all phones seem to be affected. But for example the iPhone, which is by far not some kind of niche product, for sure is. This seems to be a common problem with different phones when you take a closer look inside the appropriate forum.
I don't think there's any need to get into details as it's all there to find.

http://www.scalix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=14415&start=23
http://www.scalix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=14167
http://www.scalix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=15249


As you mentioned some time before, ActiveSync is in its early stages. That is OK. But that's also the reason why users seek to working around those problems in the meantime until it's more mature. And it's bad news for us if Notify will stop working using CDO.

[florian]

Hi,

I wasn't the 1st one asking about CDO support being dropped.
But in my case our Notify provider told me that there won't be support for Notify Scalix CDO after 1.5. If there's just Notify to blame I apologize, BUT supporting an updated version of a 3rd party product over any kind of interface requires both parties to work together.

Actually, in this case it doesn't. CDO is a Microsoft Interface, part of MAPI, Outlook, Windows. The way in which we support this is through our MAPI Connector; there is a special version of this connector for Notify, but that hasn't changed in any way and is still supported, as ever.

I remember some time ago Scalix officially recommended and supported Notify though. Since Scalix-ActiveSync this has changed and so I get the strong feeling that Scalix isn't very interested in working with them any more.. Generally this is understandable, but in this early phase not a nice move.

We haven't moved. Our position towards Notify, the support we provide to them and else hasn't changed in any way. Actually, we just recently fixed an early 11.5 bug that they had reported as they are using pre-release versions of that software. We had to move forward on the ActiveSync and BES projects, because that's what market demanded from us. It is understandable that Notify would have preferred to remain the only supported mobile solution together with Scalix, but that position wasn't defensible, and Scalix is all about choice. Again, if they take further business decisions regarding their degree of support for Scalix over various technologies, there is very little I can say or do about it. I cannot - obviously - recommend a third party solution over our own products, although you may note that NotifyLink is still (and, as long as they provide support for Scalix at all, will remain!) listed as one out of multiple wireless/mobility solutions for Scalix.

Regarding ActiveSync, I mentioned losing Data like contacts on the phones on a regular basis. Not all phones seem to be affected. But for example the iPhone, which is by far not some kind of niche product, for sure is. This seems to be a common problem with different phones when you take a closer look inside the appropriate forum. I don't think there's any need to get into details as it's all there to find.

Well, the problem here is - it generally works. I've been using ActiveSync and Iphone for almost two years now, with very little problems. The issues that exist - and I don't question that - are likely to be bound to very specific scenarios, and possibly related to data, environment, session situation, clients in use and many more things. We need original logfiles, data samples, etc., to be able to analyze that; typically that goes beyond what's possible on the forums. We're seriously looking into any support case logged into our Tech Support team, but there is only so much we can do with regards to free support on the forums.

As you mentioned some time before, ActiveSync is in its early stages. That is OK.

Well, not sure that I've said that. It's working quite well, and in my opinion the best way forward is to iron out the remaining issues and focus on it. At least that's what we are focusing on....

Cheers,
Florian