Jordan Miller

Thank you. I'm really not saying all this to whine and moan, but to stress the fact that some (I guess a sizeable chunk) of Invision's renewing clients aren't choosing to be self hosted because they're cheap or in order to "cheat you" out of money, because you guys damn well deserve this money - you made one hell of a software. We're doing it because it's the only viable option for our communities and businesses, and I think you'd agree with me on the fact we shouldn't be "punished" for that. 
I think that if there are technical difficulties or added costs or whatever in making this integration (or any other future feature) happen for self-hosted communities, you guys (if we're already on the subject of being open, upfront and vulnerable) should just be clear and say "hey, we want do to X, but for Y type community we have A, B, C difficulties. If you want this feature you're going to have to do 1, 2, 3". Just like was the case with Elasticsearch. It says right there - you're gonna need a dedicated server to run that. Just let us choose. Choosing for us, especially when we don't really have the choice to switch to a cloud program, just feels kinda jerky 😄 

Dayum!!! 

@ahc I appreciate your honesty and passion here. As @Jordan Invisionsaid, we are currently building out an achievements system that finally brings gamification to Invision Community. It won't be a direct replacement for the Rules app, but it'll go some way to bring back some functionality for you.

And it won't be locked to Invision ☁️ Communities.

(Jordan is training me on how to use emoji, sorry everyone)

Hey there. I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated. If it's any consolation, my forum is also self-hosted - which means I won't gain access to Zapier as well. I know this is a point of contention right now so I feel your pain.
I'd like to share that I offered to write this blog post. My Invision Community team isn't using me as a scapegoat or hiding behind me to share this news. 🙏  Trust me when I say we've talked a lot (I mean a LOT) about the pros and cons of Zapier. We want to give you guys the absolute best service. That's where the dissonance presents itself - I know many self-hosted clients feel this decision is not the best for the overall community. 
I'm not trying to distract from the topic at-hand. However, we have some really incredible implementations coming to Invision Community this year. One of the biggest is of course our gamification / points / achievements system. It's coming because we believe it's going to elevate our product, thus elevating everyones' communities. Right now, Zapier isn't one of those applications that can seamlessly be integrated and make all parties satisfied. I know, it sucks. I feel the sting, too. We all do, and there was no easy way to go about this. 
We also want to be more visible and transparent with you, which is why I commend @Matt for being honest and kindly agreeing that this is, in-part, a business decision (and it was difficult for us to make it, believe me). Being visible also means we open ourselves up to making mistakes. And because those mistakes are on the Internet (which is forever), we are held accountable, hence the justified outrage in our community. 
That does not mean we want to retreat.
It means we are practicing being vulnerable, and this is one of the hard parts of expressing that emotion as a company. Bottom line is: we care about all our clients: both cloud/enterprise and self-hosted. 
Please allow yourself some space to pause and hopefully rethink your decision to potentially leave Invision Community. We value you. We value everyone (I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true). Please allow us the opportunity to continue making improvements and we'll figure out a way to make things better. 🙏 
Love y'all. 

Hey there. I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated. If it's any consolation, my forum is also self-hosted - which means I won't gain access to Zapier as well. I know this is a point of contention right now so I feel your pain.
I'd like to share that I offered to write this blog post. My Invision Community team isn't using me as a scapegoat or hiding behind me to share this news. 🙏  Trust me when I say we've talked a lot (I mean a LOT) about the pros and cons of Zapier. We want to give you guys the absolute best service. That's where the dissonance presents itself - I know many self-hosted clients feel this decision is not the best for the overall community. 
I'm not trying to distract from the topic at-hand. However, we have some really incredible implementations coming to Invision Community this year. One of the biggest is of course our gamification / points / achievements system. It's coming because we believe it's going to elevate our product, thus elevating everyones' communities. Right now, Zapier isn't one of those applications that can seamlessly be integrated and make all parties satisfied. I know, it sucks. I feel the sting, too. We all do, and there was no easy way to go about this. 
We also want to be more visible and transparent with you, which is why I commend @Matt for being honest and kindly agreeing that this is, in-part, a business decision (and it was difficult for us to make it, believe me). Being visible also means we open ourselves up to making mistakes. And because those mistakes are on the Internet (which is forever), we are held accountable, hence the justified outrage in our community. 
That does not mean we want to retreat.
It means we are practicing being vulnerable, and this is one of the hard parts of expressing that emotion as a company. Bottom line is: we care about all our clients: both cloud/enterprise and self-hosted. 
Please allow yourself some space to pause and hopefully rethink your decision to potentially leave Invision Community. We value you. We value everyone (I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true). Please allow us the opportunity to continue making improvements and we'll figure out a way to make things better. 🙏 
Love y'all. 

Hey there. I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated. If it's any consolation, my forum is also self-hosted - which means I won't gain access to Zapier as well. I know this is a point of contention right now so I feel your pain.
I'd like to share that I offered to write this blog post. My Invision Community team isn't using me as a scapegoat or hiding behind me to share this news. 🙏  Trust me when I say we've talked a lot (I mean a LOT) about the pros and cons of Zapier. We want to give you guys the absolute best service. That's where the dissonance presents itself - I know many self-hosted clients feel this decision is not the best for the overall community. 
I'm not trying to distract from the topic at-hand. However, we have some really incredible implementations coming to Invision Community this year. One of the biggest is of course our gamification / points / achievements system. It's coming because we believe it's going to elevate our product, thus elevating everyones' communities. Right now, Zapier isn't one of those applications that can seamlessly be integrated and make all parties satisfied. I know, it sucks. I feel the sting, too. We all do, and there was no easy way to go about this. 
We also want to be more visible and transparent with you, which is why I commend @Matt for being honest and kindly agreeing that this is, in-part, a business decision (and it was difficult for us to make it, believe me). Being visible also means we open ourselves up to making mistakes. And because those mistakes are on the Internet (which is forever), we are held accountable, hence the justified outrage in our community. 
That does not mean we want to retreat.
It means we are practicing being vulnerable, and this is one of the hard parts of expressing that emotion as a company. Bottom line is: we care about all our clients: both cloud/enterprise and self-hosted. 
Please allow yourself some space to pause and hopefully rethink your decision to potentially leave Invision Community. We value you. We value everyone (I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true). Please allow us the opportunity to continue making improvements and we'll figure out a way to make things better. 🙏 
Love y'all. 

I had to stay away from this blog for a few days as my original message was not nice at all and did not properly convey my frustration; It was just an angry, yelling rant.  This is still a rant, but a bit more coherent I suppose.
After the botched mobile app that still to this day doesn't work outside of forums, Zapier integration was the last thing keeping us with an active license.  From the first time you guys announced the possibility up until last week, we were all led to believe that it would be something we would all have access to, and you waited until now to tell us otherwise when I'm sure you knew it was headed down this path a long time ago.  Nice little observation of you conveniently using your new community advocate to take the brunt of the backlash. (Clever, whether it was intended or not. Let's be real and not pretend like we didn't know this would be a massive controversy.)
Invision could be so much better, but it is so behind in even simple automation and gamification at its core that it is almost quite literally painful every time I discuss it with other community managers, warning them to stay away.  The shiny extra apps do not make up for the extra workload of keeping your members engaged that other sites handle for you.  Why such a seasoned and developed paid software is being outshined by newborn open-sources in this particular department will continue to baffle me.  I can't even do super basic automation such as happy birthday emails, moving members based on banned status, or rewarding general activity without having to pay for something else that isn't officially supported!
Moving my members over to Invision a few years ago was hell, and I don't want to subject them to that again so soon, but as of making this post, I have zero reason to ever renew again.  We were in the process of getting custom work done that required a budget in the thousands, but we'll need to rethink that investment majorly now.

Do you now have access to both Marketplace forums?

Hmm. I’ll recheck permissions tomorrow. 

Yea!! This is one of the most exciting aspects to this imo. 🙂

I like the changes and specifically the help & support section. Sharing support topics could help others who would normally create a ticket for the same issue.

Loving these Community changes! Awesome job @Matt 👏 

I’ll see what I can do.
Jordan is already collecting feedback in themes. I know he has a Club list on the go. He has a board in our organisational tool which he’s using to track it all.

I would expect further changes as he gets more comfortable with it.

We have changed this recently,
https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/460587-new-marketplace/?do=findComment&comment=2846304
 

Sleeker and more applicable.  Makes it easier to see where to post and what.  Great improvement.

I like it a lot. It is well organized and detailed oriented imo. Well done once again :)

Some positive changes to the community. Well done Matt and team, I like them.

Oh, that's it. My license just expired. Thanks for the reminder.
 I can see it now. 👍

We’ve merged ‘General Chat’ in with the Client Lounge to form ‘The Community Managers’ Lounge’. This is still a perk for active customers and the topics are not viewable unless you have an active license.
You show as member, so you don’t have an active license. 

Ah, I'm sorry I didn't make this clearer. The Community Manager's Lounge replaces the Client Lounge, so you need to be logged in with an active client account to contribute.

We merged in the general chat as we felt that a fairly random 'everyone can chat' forum fit with the rest of the community.

getting the following error when visiting https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/forum/320-the-community-managers-lounge/
 
Appreciate the changes 👍

That sounds encouraging, I will keep my eyes open for any related announcements.
Thank you.