Hello all. I was looking for advice on starting a technical support site. I have looked at plenty of forum-based ones and found them lacking in appropriate structure and functionality. Can anyone recommend a highly functional technical support solution? Is Discourse well suited to this application or may there some shortcomings which may make such a solution unsuitable? I was hoping to track bugs, take issue reports from the public, document technical issues and their solutions with versioning and platform awareness so it logs mobile posts separate to desktop posts, etc, etc. It needs to be highly organised and easy to access and use. I considered writing my own, but thought I would check out current offerings. I have used Discourse on another support site but found it made information and solutions hard to find - Maybe it was misconfigured? Are there any tips/add-ons/etc to setting this up to be a leading tech support forum? I am not bothered about the social features, I am more focussed on troubleshooting and documenting solutions and faults. Also, is there a way to make public notes on what tags mean what in Discourse? Many thanks.

[תמונה] another_username: Is Discourse well suited to this application I mean look at us here on meta :laughing: Discourse is a very good platform for a support forum as all content is easily searchable and split into categories & tags. [תמונה] another_username: made information and solutions hard to find Can I ask why? Perhaps the other forum didn’t have some of the plugins listed below which would help your support community: [תמונה] Discourse Solved Plugin discourse2 Summary Discourse Solved lets topic authors and staff members mark a reply as the topic’s solution. open_book Install Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately. While Discourse Solved can be used in a variety of use cases, this documentation is focused on the primary use case of a support or Q&A category. discourse2 Note: Discourse Solved is not available on the Free plan. Setting up a support cat… [תמונה] Discourse Docs Plugin warning This plugin is being retired in favour of the experimental Doc Categories plugin. We will still support Docs until the new plugin is no longer considered experimental. discourse2 Summary Discourse Docs provides the ability to find and filter knowledge base topics hammer_and_wrench Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-docs open_book Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse Features The Discourse Docs plugin is a powerful tool that… [תמונה] Discourse Assign Plugin discourse2 Summary Discourse Assign provides the ability to assign topics and individual posts (both private and public) to a user or group. open_book Install Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately. person_raising_hand Required user level: Administrator (for configuration), members of allowed groups (for using assignments) discourse2 Hosted by us? This plugin is available on our Business and Enterprise p…

In addition to #plugin mentioned by @ondrej This plugin was designed with support in mind. [תמונה] Private Topics Plugin Plugin information_source Summary Private Topics Enables private topics in a regular category hammer_and_wrench Repository Link GitHub - communiteq/discourse-private-topics · GitHub open_book Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse Features This plugin allows you to add an extra security setting to categories so that users can only access their own topics. You can also designate one or more groups that can see all topics in the category. This is typically used for… Additional plugins of interest [תמונה] Discourse Custom Topic Lists Plugin discourse2 Summary Allows you to create custom topic lists that can be accessed via a URL hammer_and_wrench Repository Link GitHub - discourse/discourse-custom-topic-lists: custom topic lists · GitHub open_book Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse Features This plugin adds a new dropdown; when clicked, it leads you to a custom topic list based on a filter defined in the configuration. The new dropdown: [Screenshot 2024-06-07 at 16.31.45] The sidebar l… [תמונה] Custom Wizard Plugin mage Plugin pavilion Summary Forms for Discourse. This plugin lets you make rich and powerful forms for your Discourse forum. Better user onboarding, structured posting, data enrichment, automated actions and much more for your community. hammer_and_wrench Repository Link https://github.com/paviliondev/discourse-custom-wizard open_book Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse people_hugging Community Community based support and discussions about this plugin are hosted on th… [תמונה] Discourse BCC Plugin discourse2 Summary Discourse BCC allows staff users to send individual personal messages to several users at once. hammer_and_wrench Repository Link https://github.com/discourse/discourse-bcc open_book Install Guide How to install plugins in Discourse Features When enabled, you’ll see a checkbox after having added two or more recipients to a PM: [image] If you check that box, instead of one PM that everyone shares access to, Discourse will create 1 PM per user provide… [תמונה] Discourse Templates Plugin discourse2 Summary Discourse Templates allows the creation of content templates for repeated use. The templates are stored as topics in a special category, where they can be edited and discussed as needed. open_book Install Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately. information_source This plugin is pretty much a new version of Discourse Canned Replies but it is more flexible and stores the templates in a differ… These are pre packaged in Discourse [תמונה] Introducing Form Templates megaphoneAnnouncements star This feature is no longer experimental! Go here to learn more about the feature and how to use it in your community: Creating form templates Hello, Discourse Meta Community! We are excited to introduce a new experimental feature, form templates. With it, you can enforce a structured form with data validation as part of the topic creation flow. [multiple_form_templates] Enabling the feature The feature is hidden behind a site-wide experimental flag. To enable it, just turn on the exp… [תמונה] Discourse Automation Plugin discourse2 Summary Discourse Automation lets you automate actions through scripts and triggers. Customisation is made through an automatically generated UI. open_book Install Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately. [Capture d’écran 2021-07-02 à 15.13.57] Features Easy automation of complex workflows Triggers automations at specific dates, periodically, or on specific events Provides automatically generated … [תמונה] Discourse Chat Plugin discourse2 Summary Discourse Chat adds chat functionality to your Discourse instance. open_book Install Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately. Features As mentioned in our initial announcement and most recent update and threading announcement , this plugin adds chat functionality to your Discourse so it can natively support both, long-form and short-form communication needs of your online community. Configu… [תמונה] Discourse Data Explorer Plugin discourse2 Summary Discourse Data Explorer allows you to make SQL queries against your live database, allowing for up-to-the-minute stats reporting. open_book Install Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately. information_source If you’re looking for examples or support for any custom queries, you can find lots of topics in our #data-reporting category under the #sql-query tag. If there’s not one to suit your par…

Thank you for your reply. It is most informative. [תמונה] ondrej: Can I ask why? Perhaps the other forum didn’t have some of the plugins listed below which would help your support community: a) The threads were long, meandering discussions and most posts held no useful information. I admit that I do find walking through someone else’s support call a bit tedious and painful. I believe there is a more suitable way to request, gather, organise and display this information; b) Lots of ‘stub’ posts with no replies or resolutions which are kept visible, for some reason - The threads are also closed so they’re literally useless and just taking up space with no automatic removal or archival of dead or stub posts. and these are the ones that seem to show up in my searches most often. Maybe other people are just using different words?; c) It may be the social aspect of the forum, but questions were not aggregated and only very basically organised into exclusionary categories, leading to separate but similar questions and missed solutions on different parts of the site; d) There are so many redundant posts. As mentioned above, people use different terms for identical things, which makes searching for a previously asked question almost impossible unless you can think like someone else. This doesn’t seem to be taken into account by many admins (or devs?); e) I thought that a more normalised dataset may help provide more consistent, current and appropriate information; f) Automatic tagging so issues can be automatically assigned and allocated without tedious manual intervention, post husbandry and reorganisation; Categories and tags are swings and roundabouts at this point, just different ways of doing, essentially, the same thing - it’s just semantic differences. Both are intended to segregate and separate information out for easier organisation and interrogation. I don’t think it matters which you use, TBH, as long as the Interface supports it’s use case. g) There’s lots of unused screen space which could be used to display information. Currently, the page seems quite sparse and thin on functionality and easy access to common/recent/main features. On my screen, around 40-50% of the page is blank; h) The date-based scrollbar to the right (in my experience) misses out the most recently dated replies/posts and doesn’t scroll fully; I am sure these are all customisable and supported with the proper plug-ins as I have been advised, I just don’t see a lot of this type of thing about :confused: I will have a look at those plug-ins and see if they are being used, thank you again. [תמונה] Dan DeMontmorency: This plugin was designed with support in mind. I will have a look at those plug-ins, too. Thank you.

You’re very welcome. With additionally there are full #theme that include some prepackaged #theme-component . Theme components can be added to any themes be it the default theme or a custom one. Iirc Western Digital I think it was sponsored the Docs plugin There is a very wide number of companies that use Discourse as a support forum system. A lot will come down to how you setup and configure things. You set things to auto close topics. Ie in Meta a solved topic is iirc set to auto close after x time after a solution is chosen by Op or Staff. Checkout Documentation section here as they are experimenting with a more robust system in that area for better ease of use If you would like someone to directly help designing and setting up your support forum #marketplace is a great place to make the request. Imagine many if these folks will have samples of what they have done for others

Thank you. [תמונה] Dan DeMontmorency: With additionally there are full #theme that include some prepackaged #theme-component . Sorry, I don’t think I understand what you mean :confused: [תמונה] Dan DeMontmorency: Checkout Documentation section here as they are experimenting with a more robust system in that area for better ease of use I didn’t get the link :confused: [תמונה] Dan DeMontmorency: If you would like someone to directly help designing and setting up your support forum #marketplace is a great place to make the request. Imagine many if these folks will have samples of what they have done for others I should be OK if there is the relevant information out there in an organised form lol Autism sucks when you’re trying to find information on-line, it’s never organised well enough :wink:

FWIW, in addition to our existing customers that use Discourse for technical support services, and our own public Meta Discourse forum here, we also run a full technical support forum in private categories dedicated to our enterprise customers. We assigned topics and posts to each other, use whisper conversations to discuss and resolve issues, and we have a team of dedicated tech support staff that work with those customers. Our internal company day to day operations also exists on Discourse. :discourse: :slight_smile:

[תמונה] another_username: [תמונה] Heliosurge: With additionally there are full #theme that include some prepackaged #theme-component . Sorry, I don’t think I understand what you mean :confused: Themes generally do full visual customizations. Click on #theme to view their topics. There is for example one that makes it look more like FB and Reddit. #theme-component are things that are installed to augment a variety of visual and interface elements. Both the above make changes on the client or browser side. #plugin on the other hand made server side changes and can directly change things that the above cannot. [תמונה] another_username: [תמונה] Heliosurge: Checkout Documentation section here as they are experimenting with a more robust system in that area for better ease of use I didn’t get the link :confused: To view this goto the sidebar and click on Documentation [Screenshot_20240728-164416] The documentation category is using a new interface the team is testing out and makes finding a lot of info there much easier than previously. #plugin options will depend on whether you choose a hosted plan from a discourse provider or if you choose Self Hosted to have a full choice of plugins. #theme & #theme-component are able to be installed on any discourse forum. Hosted plans have the benefit of their teams be it Meta, Communique(so?), Pavilion, etc will have hosting plans with a set of plugins available to use. Benefit? Included direct support and they maintain the back end. Self-Hosted one needs to maintain their own server and if you run into a problem you can’t solve may need to use #marketplace to pay someone to fix a problem. Benefit? Much more flexibility As @Lilly said the team has some excellent options with hosting.

Checkout this #theme Goto the page and under resource click on demo. This will give an idea of how much you can customize the look. And well if you like Star wars pretty cool. [תמונה] Star Wars theme Theme Star Wars theme What better way to celebrate Star Wars day then with a Star Wars theme. This theme gives a parallax star background and a traditional star wars theatrical crawl on the site FAQ page. [image] [image] The Git repo includes the sound files to accompany the intro (browser dependent). Please feel free to modify, pull requests welcome smiley Resources eyeglasses Demo: Preview this theme hammer_and_wrench Git repo: https://github.com/naidihr/discourse-star-wars-theme …

Wow, thank you, a lot. That’s a lot of info to read through. I feel such a relief when I find what I’m looking for on the Internet, nowadays lol <3

I believe @simon helped set up a lot of support sites while he worked on the Discourse team. I remember that he has been advocating to make it easier for new admins to set up support sites on Discourse in future, with the idea of built-in templates or configurations and so on. He might have some tips on configuring a support site on Discourse and what settings are best, or be able to link to some additional documentation here on Meta.

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nathank (Nathan Kershaw) 2 באוגוסט,‏ 2024,‏ 8:12pm 13

It is what drives autistic people to fix it! Discourse certainly has plenty of autistic people involved - and is definitely the better for it.

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