New potential hosted kayako customer and feature requests

[marcuso]

I have not started on the free trial yet. I have some questions (and suggestions) based off of what I have tried to piece together from reading the forums thus far:

Can hosted Kayako integrate with user management from Joomla? If so, do I just need a webhost that will allow external access to the MySQL database that Joomla is on? How good is the Joomla integration? Are there any other CMS systems that Kayako integrates with?

I am suprised to see that on this site, there are three different logins (support, forums, and purchasing). Isn't there a vBulletin integration? If so, why not use it? It seems to me that as the showcase for what the software is and what it can do, the implementation is a bit cumbersome....

Can hosted Kayako be easily skinned?

I am under the impression that hosted Kayako does not support multiple domains? Why not? Can someone explain multi-domain support? Does it only support receiving support request from an additional domain, or does it allow a support desk team to act on behalf of different domains (i.e. support multiple business presenses independantly from the user/customer perspective). I believe that Cerberus supports this funtionality, is this correct?

Why doesn't hosted Kayako work with custom domains? Why do I have to use a URL that is not related to the company? It seems like it would be a waist of potential SEO for my company which would offset the benefits of having it hosted. It would seem quite trivial to implement functionality (tell customers to point a support.mydomain.com DNS entry at your IP address....)

Sorry to sort of rant about this point, but I think having a helpdesk solution implemented by an ASP would be huge benefit to customers. It is one of the reasons that I initially focused my interest on Kayako rather than Cerberus. Unfortunately the functionality is reduced, forcing most customers to rely on custom installations on various hosts (sounds like a nightmare support issue). Wouldn't it make more sense to bring Kayako-hosted up to speed, feature wise with the installation package?

[supportskins]

Can hosted Kayako integrate with user management from Joomla? If so, do I just need a webhost that will allow external access to the MySQL database that Joomla is on? How good is the Joomla integration? Are there any other CMS systems that Kayako integrates with?

Yes you can integrate this with Joomla provided your Joomla MySQL database can be remotely accessed.

I am suprised to see that on this site, there are three different logins (support, forums, and purchasing). Isn't there a vBulletin integration? If so, why not use it? It seems to me that as the showcase for what the software is and what it can do, the implementation is a bit cumbersome....

I suppose this is a good suggestion. Kayako can look into it.

Can hosted Kayako be easily skinned?

Yes, it can be skinned.

I am under the impression that hosted Kayako does not support multiple domains? Why not? Can someone explain multi-domain support? Does it only support receiving support request from an additional domain, or does it allow a support desk team to act on behalf of different domains (i.e. support multiple business presenses independantly from the user/customer perspective). I believe that Cerberus supports this funtionality, is this correct?

You can support more than 1 domains by forwarding the email addresses to your hosted account email. You can also look into the satellite helpdesk feature of the software which will allow you to support your multiple businesses/domains.

Why doesn't hosted Kayako work with custom domains? Why do I have to use a URL that is not related to the company? It seems like it would be a waist of potential SEO for my company which would offset the benefits of having it hosted. It would seem quite trivial to implement functionality (tell customers to point a support.mydomain.com DNS entry at your IP address....)

This is how Kayako's hosted system has been developed as. ATM there is no work around for this.

Sorry to sort of rant about this point, but I think having a helpdesk solution implemented by an ASP would be huge benefit to customers. It is one of the reasons that I initially focused my interest on Kayako rather than Cerberus. Unfortunately the functionality is reduced, forcing most customers to rely on custom installations on various hosts (sounds like a nightmare support issue). Wouldn't it make more sense to bring Kayako-hosted up to speed, feature wise with the installation package?

Although I am not too sure if I got this correctly, Kayako hosted solutions are installed within minutes after you place the order with their system. Besides the custom domain, I believe it is quite an efficient system and you should consider it.

HTH