Concern re deprecation of Support requests

[Canal World]

Hi,

We just wanted to voice or concern and dismay re the impending deprecation of the Support requests feature.

Appreciate it's somewhat basic and that there's more advanced alternatives on the market but for many small communities like ours, all we need is a basic solution and that's exactly what Invision provides. This is the primary reason we upgraded to the commerce package and we will be removing this from our subscription once the feature is removed.

Like many, we are entirely non-profit, maintained by a small team of volunteers. The prospect of having to install & maintain another third party COTS application just to meet our basic ticket requirements is not welcome, same for paying for a third party hosted application that will likely require some integration. - No thanks. 

At the very least, Invision could create a method whereby a simple contact form submits a topic in a designated forum whereby site staff can reply. The user could then respond to their support topic via email. This would at least provide some basic functionality. I think it's fair to say that a "Contact Form" of sorts is a basic requirement of any website and it's a shame that the related support requests feature is being deprecated.

We will probably resort to using a basic contact form + mailbox for support requests, but in the past I have found this to be a much less effective of keeping support requests organised and the lack of integration with Invisions interface will be a major drawback.

Thanks

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Canal World

[Jim M]

44 minutes ago, Canal World said:

At the very least, Invision could create a method whereby a simple contact form submits a topic in a designated forum whereby site staff can reply. The user could then respond to their support topic via email. This would at least provide some basic functionality. I think it's fair to say that a "Contact Form" of sorts is a basic requirement of any website and it's a shame that the related support requests feature is being deprecated.

This can be already setup. You can link the contact us form to a forum creation URL of your choosing. You would simply need to allow guests to post there and enable that only topic creators (and staff) can see their topics. Then you have this available to you and essentially, a ticket system in a forum.

[Dean_]

This is what I used to do before moving and using commerce. Having it all on the front end makes it a little easier, and it can also help staff members who don't have access to ACP.

[igniteyourfeelings]

20 minutes ago, Dean_ said:

This is what I used to do before moving and using commerce. Having it all on the front end makes it a little easier, and it can also help staff members who don't have access to ACP.

As an alternative, you can use Pages to create a new support system based on same idea with tickets as on Commerce.

[Callum MacGregor]

On 12/10/2023 at 2:16 PM, igniteyourfeelings said:

As an alternative, you can use Pages to create a new support system based on same idea with tickets as on Commerce.

Yeah, until they scrap pages too 😄

[Marc Stridgen]

As mentioned by some other here, you could indeed create basic support via the use of pages if needed. I have even seen some people who have just used forums for this purpose, by creating a forum where members can see only their own topics.

We certainly appreciate that some users will miss the features than this offered, of course. And we will try and point people in the right direction where we can. If you have anything further to add regarding the deprecation of this (or indeed any other item), please feel free to discuss in the topic provided here. You will see this has however been discussed quite at length.

 

[Matt]

2 hours ago, Callum MacGregor said:

Yeah, until they scrap pages too 😄

Just for clarification, Pages is getting a substantial update for v5 and is a core part of our community platform strategy.

[Callum MacGregor]

2 hours ago, Matt said:

Just for clarification, Pages is getting a substantial update for v5 and is a core part of our community platform strategy.

Thank you for the clarification.

[igniteyourfeelings]

On 12/18/2023 at 2:13 PM, Callum MacGregor said:

Yeah, until they scrap pages too 😄

I'll just quote the official statement they did a few months ago : 

• ”We will help anyone that uses the support desk feature to find an alternative and plan a migration.
• We will create and strengthen native APIs to enable apps like Zendesk and Helpscout to access your community data for use in custom fields, etc.
• We will work with you to help migrate your data. Please contact us if you'd like to learn more about migrating support data to another service.”

They already thought about replacement for ticket system and as i saw on a few different community they already start using 3rd party website for the support section.

And, if you don't want to use Pages, you can get in contact with one of the providers to create an app for your desire.