We are starting to get some interesting questions from the community about Discourse for Teams and how it compares to Discourse, now that we have launched the product, so I will gather the best questions and answers on the Teams support site here for the benefit of everyone.
Keep in mind that many of the differences don’t apply to self-hosted Discourse, so savvy self-hosters with some programming chops will be able to get pretty close to what we are offering here on their own. But of course without the same level of support and ease of setup and use!
I moved this FAQ to the Discourse for Teams support site where it can be kept up to date. Let me know if any questions remain about the relationship of Discourse for Teams with Discourse!
@tobiaseigen, I wanted to clarify: is there email in capability, such as in Discourse?
I really like everything I’ve read on the site, but this idea of a “group inbox” is a huge pull to Discourse by many of my clients. But “group inbox” has so many, hmmm, “expectations” for potential integrations, I would expect Teams to function fine sans group inbox functionality.
Just like Discourse, Discourse for Teams supports reply by email. So it is possible for site users to quickly respond to topics and group inboxes without having to log in first.
Discourse for Teams is entirely private though, so you have to be a user on the site to be able to send email to the site. You could add your clients as guests and create a guest category for each guest, and then set them up to be watching the category so they are emailed every time you post to it. They can then reply to your posts from their email. That way you can keep in touch with them without them having to log in all the time.
Feel free to spin up a free trial to give it a try, and drop us a line directly to support@teams.discourse.com if you’d like to talk more with us about your specific use case.
Edit: added a line to the support article to articulate this:
Reply by email is supported, but for existing site users only
After researching options I believe what I’m looking for is commonly referred to as “shared inbox”; I wrote “email in capability” and “group inbox”, which may be vague.
Is there a helpful list anywhere of all the open source plugins Discourse Teams is using?
Also really helpful would be a full list of features detailing which are powered by existing open source plugins and which are powered by closed source customisations.
Hi Josef! Thanks for your interest! Discourse for Teams is a hosted product, so we don’t talk so much about plugins and instead focus on features. But I get that folks familiar with Discourse-the-software are curious about the differences and may have specific plugins they are interested in. This is why we wrote the article in the OP explaining the relationship. For the closed source customizations and features, see the article which is comprehensive.
I’d suggest you spin up a free trial to experience the differences yourself. If you have further questions or suggestions that come up during the trial, feel free to PM me or email support@teams.discourse.com.
@tobiaseigen are user’s inboxes visible to admins like the standard version of discourse? We were using discourse in the same fashion inside our 20 person team almost two years ago, and it seems like you heard from us to spool up a standalone teams install. But did you lock off inboxes from admins, cause being able to open your coworker’s emails was a killer for us, even though I’d hidden all the functionality in CSS, anyone who knew could snoop.
Without that in core or teams, this heavily compromises user’s willingness to use it in a professional sense.
If PM privacy is a concern ffor you, you can always enable encrypted messaging. It’s included in Teams and can also be installed as a plugin if you are self-hosting.
