Comparing Discourse for Teams with Discourse

[tobiaseigen]

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!

How does Discourse for Teams relate to Discourse?

[Alon1 (Alon)]

Where were you a month ago when I set up a private Discourse installation for my team??
Anyway, great stuff guys, keep it up!

EDIT:
Just throwing that in here- many teams would only be able to use this if it has HIPAA Compliance just to keep in mind…

[HAWK]

@Alon1

EDIT:
Just throwing that in here- many teams would only be able to use this if it has HIPAA Compliance just to keep in mind…

The same goes for Discourse in general. Teams is no more or less compliant.

[hellekin]

Thank you for making this comparison.

I think it’s worth mentioning the GDPR limitation for European users not willing nor able to use AWS[^1].

Discourse for Teams is here!

Is there an Onpremise or european GDPR* ok solution *Regarding the standard clauses, we do not have the opportunity to assess in detail legislation in every third country, but in the case of the United States, we are leaning towards the reasons for the judgment in Schrems II. The reasons for the ruling mean that the possibility of using an American personal data assistant, regardless of the contractual stage, is currently virtually non-existent. So AWS, GCP, Azure etc is not GDPR complient

@jomaxro

We do use AWS S3 for uploads, so if you are not able to use anything AWS Teams is likely not going to work for you.

[^1]: it would be useful as well to document S3 setup and usage outside of AWS – been on my todo list for ages…

[Falco (Rafael dos Santos Silva)]

@hellekin

it would be useful as well to document S3 setup and usage outside of AWS – been on my todo list for ages…

Like Using Object Storage for Uploads (S3 & Clones) ?

[tobiaseigen]

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!

How does Discourse for Teams relate to Discourse?

[maiki]

@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.

Thanks.

[tobiaseigen]

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

[maiki]

Thanks @tobiaseigen, that answers my quetion.

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.

In Discourse terms I’m mostly referring to the configuration options for groups at Start a New Topic via Email ✉.

I’m clarifying the vagueness of my query. Thanks again.

[jdaviescoates (Josef Davies-Coates)]

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.

Thanks!

[tobiaseigen]

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 have updated the support article explaining the relationship between Discourse for Teams and Discourse the software to add the full list of the official plugins and theme components supported by Discourse for Teams. Thanks for the suggestion!

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.

[Cozdabuch (cosmo)]

@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.

[tobiaseigen]

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.

Discourse Encrypt (for Private Messages)

Discourse Encrypt Discourse Encrypt is a plugin that enables private, encrypted messaging between end-users. All sensitive information is stored securely on the server and is encrypted and decrypted only on the client-side. Three easy steps to use this plugin: enable encryption (generate new private key) and activate it (on current device) [enable] send an encrypted message (to a user who also enabled encryption) [mov] read decrypted messages [mov] Note: user was prompted f…