Moving Away From Kayako

[CCSNET]

Morning All,

well the day has come, we are looking into alternatives for our kayako installation.

this has come for a number of reasons, chief among them at the moment, is a lack of vision (or at least a public one) i was prepared to wait, for an while, but I'm afraid my patience has worn thin, i spoke to a competitor yesterday and they were happy to give me exactly what there plans are for the next 6 - 12 months, and i must say i was impressed.

they don't have all the features of kayako, but these are feature we dont really use anyway.

Cheers

[IT2Be]

this has come for a number of reasons, chief among them at the moment, is a lack of vision (or at least a public one)

I agree that Kayako has been (publicly) silent about their vision but I have met Varun at Cebit and I can assure you that there is no LACK of vision at all.

As I understand it they want to come with a 'big bang' instead of pre-informing competition.

Agree or disagree but I certainly understand this and I am most happy to wait...

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi Steven,

I am sorry to hear that this is the case and that SupportSuite no longer fulfils your requirements.

The reason why we are delaying publishing details of our Version 4 product line is primarily for market competitive reasons, as we discussed here. Unlike the majority of our competitors, our 6-12 month roadmap doesn't involve simply maintenance of our current product roadmap.

With Version 4, we are shaking up the entire product line and the company. We are introducing entirely new products, services and innovations. We do not want to let the cat out of the bag too soon; we need to strike a balance between protecting our competitive weight and keeping our customers informed.

I assure you that we are building Version 4 with the same vision, spice and flare that makes our current products so popular and successful. We are going to extreme lengths to harvest as much feedback from our customers and the market as we can. We are pouring buckets of time into our R&D.

I have said before that everyone should expect to hear an increasing amount from us about the elusive 'Version 4' in the coming few months; we are gearing up for that. Hopefully you can stay tuned

[CCSNET]

Thanks Jamie, to be honest all i need to hear, is that V4 will be announced, or shipped, or something, in the next x months.

I'm not bothered if you want to keep it under wraps (to be honest it makes good business sense) . I just want to know it isn't a white elephant.

Many Thanks

[Jamie Edwards]

Hi Steven,

I really appreciate your understanding.

Normally if a company is working on or has a surprise product up their sleeves, there wouldn't be any talk of it at all.

However, it has been impossible for us to do that - we needed to collect feature requests and feedback from customers for this next version, and we needed to inform customers why we may not be including X particular feature in the current line of products.

At the same time, everyone knows that certain parts of V4 are coming - from the hundreds of feature requests posted here, to which we have said "Yes, we'll be including that". However, it is difficult for us to demonstrate even these parts without revealing what else is up our sleeves.

We won't let you down!

[John Haugeland]

Originally Posted by CCSNET

this has come for a number of reasons, chief among them at the moment, is a lack of vision (or at least a public one)

Well, the reason we're being quiet about it is there are a number of blatant clone companies out there, so we're trying to throw a monkeywrench in their plans.

v4's actually pretty well along; it's what I work on all day except during release phases. The module TODO list is mostly clear, and most of the new interface goodies are in place.

We really can't talk about what we're doing, though. It's the difference between the clone factories taking a year to half-catch-up in features or two years (and frankly I don't know that any of them have caught up in interface quality yet.)

We have a lot of legitimate competitors who do their own thing and aren't just following us around imitating us. This is about our other foes - those people who say "ooh I can knock that off for a quick $20", then make a half-working product, sell it through a mass script site and let their customers suffer defects and lost tickets.

Those people sell at bargain basement prices. By the time someone's done experimenting with them, that person generally thinks the whole idea of a ticket system is broken given their experiences with some random fly by night cowboy coder who got far enough to look competitive and take their money. I cannot ethically point out these companies, but they're pretty easy to find if you're curious. Once a month or so, one of our customers or service providers stumbles across one and sends us an "oh man have you seen this" mail.

I mean, have you ever used a bugtracker? Bug trackers have it worse than almost any other software vertical I know of. 90% of bug trackers out there are just awful. There are exceptions - we've for example become very fond of JIRA, I personally rather like Flyspray, and Bugzilla is rock solid - but most bug trackers are defect ridden, slow, inconsistent and inflexible.

So think about the first bug tracker you used. Unless you're very lucky, it was like digging out your soul with a soup spoon. Now, think about that kind of vendor, but in our market, and put yourself in our shoes.

Wouldn't you be keeping quiet too?

I commisserate with you - I know it's very frustrating not knowing what's coming up. It's also frustrating for us; we have this awesome new product, we're semi-using it internally, and we want very badly to spend all day bragging about how it's made of magical elves and can tie your shoes for you. We aren't able to, though. All I can tell you is this:

1) I get the impression that people think it's further off than it really is
2) My opinion is that it's very worth the wait

If you're switching to someone who's less feature-complete than we are, then won't they be working on catching up while we're breaking new ground? I mean sure you know what they're doing, but on the other hand, are you excited about what they're doing? Is it covering new ground that you need that we don't already?

The silence is frustrating us just like you, but it's for a good reason. When we pull back the tablecloth and show everyone the tiger in the cage, you'll understand why we were so zipped-lips about this.

We can't give you an X; we don't even give X Months about the things we're public about. What we can do is point out how much massively faster our 3.* releases have gotten lately; that's because the heavy lifting on 4.* is mostly done.

We're in the home stretch, and we think you'll like what's coming.

[John Haugeland]

Oh, actually, there is one other thing I can say. The difference between v4 and v3 is bigger than the difference between v3 and v2, in terms of usability. It's an enormous quality difference. Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of v3. But v4 is a whole new quality tier in our interface. Varun, who did our last interface too, has made some real leaps and bounds in the way he looks at UI.

Seriously, it's a Win 3.1 -> Win 95 scale of change, in terms of user interface quality.

[CCSNET]

Many Thanks for you responses, as i've said it isn't so much that i don't know "its coming", i would just like a we will tell you its coming in "x months" or it will be released in x months even if i don't know what it contains.

also the items i'm deperate for now, things like Customers (rather than indvidual users), asset tracking etc... are the items that are already in the competitors system, and there plans are to make them better etc... by intergrating with x etc...etc...

items that kayako currently have that the competitor doesn't eg, calender syncing etc... we don't actually use (or use very limited)

I have a on going support aggreement so, hopefully this might have some bareing when "all is revealed" and we can get our hands on upgrade paths etc... but at the moment, the product doesn't do what i need, and i don't see when it will.

many thanks

[ZystemsK]

I can't imagine moving away from Kayako. The simple fact that we have the source code gives us ultimate flexibility to customizing it to our needs. No one product fit our needs, even Kayako doesn't. But, since we have the source code, I can modify it with new features and changes as time goes on.

We need the ability to VNC into computers, does any product out there have the ability to tie a computer to a ticket and launch VNC when a link is clicked? None that I'm aware of, but that's extremely easy to code in Kayako. Their framework is amazingly simple (to understand) and is a pleasure to code on. Also, upgrading from version to version isn't a big pain. I keep a list of files I changed and then diff them on new releases and then copy my changes over, very simple.

I'm both looking forward to V4 and also fearing it, because I fear that making my changes in V4 will be more than a simple cut/paste. I could rave some more about Kayako, but I think my point has been made I hope you are choosing another product because it meets your needs, not because they have a plan on meeting your needs.

[ZystemsK]

Originally Posted by CCSNET

also the items i'm deperate for now, things like Customers (rather than indvidual users), asset tracking etc... are the items that are already in the competitors system, and there plans are to make them better etc... by intergrating with x etc...etc...

We use customers/clients rather than users. What I did was create each client as a group. I then modified the New Ticket creation with a drop-down box that has all the groups (clients). This essentially lets me make a ticket for them. I can post the code that I used to modify it but I need to find all of the files that I've modified and see if I did any database modifications (I don't think I did).

We do need asset tracking and I plan on adding that through a 'client info' popup. See HelpBalloon.js 2.0 Examples for an example. Basically, we'll make the company name in the ticket view clickable and it'll have a balloon popup that contains all the relevant information and assets that we need. I already modified the 'edit user groups' page with a link that brings up the front end for entering the data. I just need to write the MySQL to dump it into a database and also have it parse it into the popup and it's done.

[Jamie Edwards]

Originally Posted by ZystemsK

None that I'm aware of, but that's extremely easy to code in Kayako. Their framework is amazingly simple (to understand) and is a pleasure to code on. Also, upgrading from version to version isn't a big pain.

I'm really glad to hear that SupportSuite is working out for you, and the successes you have had customizing it. We work hard at keeping the codebase that way - clean, simple and accessible. Having rated the current framework so highly, I am sure you will be floored with what are doing with V4. That doesn't mean to say your experience with V3 will be a waste; you will not find yourself lost or having to relearn a great deal.

I'm both looking forward to V4 and also fearing it, because I fear that making my changes in V4 will be more than a simple cut/paste.

If your modifications relate to the core ticketing and live chat functionality, I would bet it will definitely be more than a cut and paste job.

I could rave some more about Kayako

Oh, feel free

Originally Posted by ZystemsK

We do need asset tracking and I plan on adding that through a 'client info' popup. See HelpBalloon.js 2.0 Examples for an example.

Asset tracking is something I am currently discussing with Varun. We do not have a concrete decision about it yet, but will do so in the coming few months. If you have specific requests and suggests, I would really appreciate it if you could take a few moments to contact me with them, or post them to the Feature Requests forum.

Regards,

[CCSNET]

Originally Posted by ZystemsK

I can't imagine moving away from Kayako. The simple fact that we have the source code gives us ultimate flexibility to customizing it to our needs. No one product fit our needs, even Kayako doesn't. But, since we have the source code, I can modify it with new features and changes as time goes on.

We need the ability to VNC into computers, does any product out there have the ability to tie a computer to a ticket and launch VNC when a link is clicked? None that I'm aware of, but that's extremely easy to code in Kayako. Their framework is amazingly simple (to understand) and is a pleasure to code on. Also, upgrading from version to version isn't a big pain. I keep a list of files I changed and then diff them on new releases and then copy my changes over, very simple.

I'm both looking forward to V4 and also fearing it, because I fear that making my changes in V4 will be more than a simple cut/paste. I could rave some more about Kayako, but I think my point has been made I hope you are choosing another product because it meets your needs, not because they have a plan on meeting your needs.

I'm glad it works for you, i neither have the time nor the inclination to write bolt ons to a bought system, wethere or not it is regarded as "simple", i realised when i bought the system what the limitations were, but to be honest now, i just want it to work, record the items i want it to record, and be able to help my clients.

for example in the current system, there is no way (by default) that i can find to group clients. so with a company we support with over 60 people, it is next to impossible to allow one person in there company to see the progress of all tickets as far as i can see, maybe if we created seperate groups, and then a seperate staff user that can only see the group etc... this would work, but in the new system you simple create a "client" associated domains to it "@client.com", "@client.co.uk" etc... and any calls that come in are process automatically to that client, there MD has a logon to see exactly what is outstanding and how much its cost him etc... and at the end of a month produces a nice report showing exactly what has happened. yes i probably could write a module to do this, but i really dont have the time to spend coding for weeks to do this.

[ZystemsK]

Kayako does have groups and users. We plan on doing the same thing, which is why I created all of the company names as groups, so we can add employees as users later on. You can specify the account type when you create a user, whether or not they can see all the tickets. This is all done by the default system, no coding required. Currently, we don't have them logging into our system yet, so I don't know how well it works, but I imagine it's fine.

In the end, it's your decision and you do need to go with what will work. Kayako isn't the end-all solution but it does have one advantage that 99% of other solutions don't offer, the source code (which, as you stated, is useless to you at this point). If that other company offers a demo, take it for a test drive to see if it truly meets your needs. That's how we ended up with Kayako.

[John Haugeland]

ZystemsK: v4 is as source-customizable as v3 is. Arguably a little moreso; there are improvements in the internal structure.

[craigbrass]

ZystemsK: v4 is as source-customizable as v3 is. Arguably a little moreso; there are improvements in the internal structure.

Has more code been moved out of the encoded area as you were pushing for, John?