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Kayako V4 beta progress report

Posted by Jamie Edwards on September 1, 2010 – 7:45 PM

Lately, things have been a little quiet on the blog front.

That’s because we are all working feverishly on the Kayako V4 project – continuing to add features and improve existing ones, fixing bugs, running through all of the feedback we have received and having great discussions with customers.

We have been absolutely floored by the positive response and amount of feedback we have received about V4 – it is completely unprecedented. We knew our customers were excited about Kayako V4, but we never expected this number of customers to jump in feet-first.

In just 23 days:

  • More than 3200 posts have been made on the forum and blog.
  • More than 1000 discussions have been started on our forums and helpdesk.
  • More than 100 installations have been switched on.

What’s new?

  • Around 200 bugs fixed.
  • Template group support has been added.
  • Our new LoginShare API has been added and documented (with an LDAP connector in progress).
  • We have extended the beta documentation on the Wiki and have started publishing change logs there too.
  • Our project tracker is now publicly available, so that you can keep in-the-loop on issues and feature improvements you have raised
  • A dedicated V4 Beta support department has been created, and for a faster turnaround time, we’re asking all customers to raise tickets for any issues they run into.

How stable is beta, should I join in?

The numbers do the talking best: Almost 100 organizations are using Kayako V4 beta live, right now, to support their customers. Many more are testing V4 beta behind the scenes.

We encourage you to get into beta, try it and tell us what you think. We are sure you’ll be impressed, and we would love your feedback.

Where do I get beta?

The beta package is still available from my.kayako.com. Use your members’ area email address and password to log in.

Where can I provide feedback?

We have set up a special V4 beta forum for V4 questions and suggestions. If you run into any problems using V4 or think you’ve found a bug, please submit a ticket to V4 beta on my.kayako.com.

What next?

V4 is really taking shape; we are anticipating a stable launch in a matter of weeks. Until then, we’ll be continuing to push out new features (such as the troubleshooter module) every few days and will soon be publishing our user and developer documentation on the Wiki.

Comments on this post: View Comments | Filed under v4

Working with V4′s remote authentication; LoginShare

Posted by Jamie Edwards on August 20, 2010 – 3:32 PM

LoginShare is Kayako’s mechanism for authenticating your helpdesk users using an external database or authentication mechanism.

With LoginShare you can integrate your Kayako product with your existing Intranet, LDAP (Active Directory) or any third party applications. Single sign-on enables centralized management of staff and user accounts from one single source. If you already have backend systems and user databases available, this enables you to let your users dive right in, without registering another account.

We have just finished integrating LoginShare in V4 beta 4.00.0855 for both staff and user authentication.

LoginShare authentication is now done by offloading the authentication process to a remote URL

Up until now, in order to authenticate your users against an existing database you had to write PHP code specific to the Kayako LoginShare system. Unless you were using one of the many pre-made LoginShare modules, this could sometimes be time consuming if you did not have much technical experience.

Remote URL authentication and API

Instead of loading up PHP code from a LoginShare module to perform the authentication, you now just need to provide Kayako with a URL to the location of an authentication script. This authentication script can be written in any language, hosted on any platform and perform whatever authentication logic and controls you require.

The only requirement is that this script conforms to the API we have published. The script needs to accept the login parameters through a POST (just like any regular target for a HTML form) and then return an XML packet, like this example success response:

 
    1
 
        Registered
        John Doe
        CEO
 
            john.doe@kayako.com
            john.doe@gmail.com
 
123-456-789

By offloading the process of authentication to something completely independent of your Kayako helpdesk and the server on which it is hosted offers a great deal of flexibility.

This also means that Kayako hosted customers can make use of LoginShare, too.

You can, for example, make use of any advanced authentication methods or procedures that Kayako does not explicitly facilitate. You can reference and connect to any number of databases in order to populate Kayako user accounts with profile information.

Documentation

We have documented the LoginShare API for both staff and users in the V4 Beta wiki.

Happy authenticating!

Comments on this post: View Comments | Filed under v4

An invitation to join the V4 beta party

Posted by Jamie Edwards on August 8, 2010 – 3:25 AM

The day is here!

You need not wait another day to get your hands on Kayako Version 4 Beta.  We’ve been working around the clock (quite literally) in order to reach this milestone, which we are overjoyed to announce.

The whole team is very grateful for the patience everyone has shown during the development of our new product line-up.

We believe that version 4 is the finest help desk software available today, and it will continue to get better — through community development of custom modules and add-on products, as well as from ongoing development here at Kayako.

So, who’s invited to the party?

All existing owned license or leased license customers with an active support and upgrades subscription are eligible for beta. Unfortunately we do not yet have any sandboxes available for our hosted customers to test V4. When this is ready, we’ll let you know.

How to RSVP

We realize there are questions that must be addressed for customers considering upgrading their support desk to V4 Beta, so we’ve compiled a small list of the questions we would want answered if we were in your shoes:

1.) What are my upgrade options?

We will be introducing a new way of licensing and pricing for new V4 customers. However, this is not the case for existing customers; most of who can upgrade without adopting the new licensing scheme. You can read more about existing customer upgrade options here.  We will be releasing more information about the full pricing plan soon.

2.) Is the upgrade process difficult and/or time consuming?

The upgrade is largely automated.  The bulk of the work comes in the form of importing your existing database into version 4.  Depending on the size of your database (number of tickets, etc.), it could take anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours to complete.  Detailed upgrade instructions can be found here.

If you wish to just create a test installation without using your production help desk, installation instructions are here.

We also recommend that you take a look at the getting started page to become more familiar with system requirements.

3.) Is it safe to upgrade?

If a proper backup is taken before the upgrade process, if anything happens to go awry, you can always revert right back to where you were with version 3.  In this way, yes, the upgrade process is safe.

This Beta release has been thoroughly tested in-house, and is currently in production use on my.kayako.com. We have been running live V4 tests on our own website for two months.

In order to properly migrate all of your data, you’ll have to take your support desk offline during the upgrade (so that no new data is added in the interim).  As a result, we recommend upgrading your desk when your clients are least likely to be visiting — on the weekend, for example.

We will all be on red alert to respond quickly to any major bugs or problems you encounter. We’ll do our absolute best to get problems resolved and turned around quickly (even over the weekend).

4.) Are any features I currently use not present in the Beta release?

We are maintaining a list of features and functionality that are not yet complete (scheduled for addition during the Beta program).  The installation guide and upgrade notes are also worth taking a look at, since they describe important changes that have been made.

5.) Where do I get it?

The Beta package is available now from my.kayako.com.

Use your members’ area e-mail address and password to log in. Once logged in, you will be presented with a special widget that will take you to your Beta software. (Note – if your password gets rejected, use the “Lost password” link to have a new one e-mailed to you.)

5.) Where is the installation manual?

You’ll find the installation guide, import guide and release notes for Beta in the new Kayako Wiki: wiki.kayako.com

6.) Where can I report bugs, get help and provide feedback?

We have set up a special V4 Beta forum for V4 questions and suggestions. If you run into any problems using V4 or think you’ve found a bug, please submit a ticket to V4 Beta on my.kayako.com.

Happy supporting!

Please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have difficulties or questions during the Beta testing program.  We are honored to have you with us!

Comments on this post: View Comments | Filed under Releases, v4

V4 upgrade options for Kayako customers

Posted by Jamie Edwards on August 5, 2010 – 10:08 PM

Please note that this post is only relevant to existing Kayako customers. We will post about pricing and licensing for new customers soon.

When we launch V4, we will also be introducing a new way of licensing and pricing. We will still be offering download licenses (pay once, install it yourself) as well as a subscription based Software-as-a-Service. However, these will be priced per active staff user (per seat).

This will not be the case for most existing customers upgrading to V4, and you do have a choice either way.

We want to thank and reward our customers for choosing Kayako, and make good on our part in this mutual investment. We have our priorities straight, and will not be charging a feature premium to plump our margins.

Any small price increases will be made only to ensure that we can continue to deliver an excellent service to you.

Depending on your account, there may be some small price changes to cover new costs associated with delivering these new products and enhanced services – it will be well worth it. We are offering you an incredible value package and the opportunity to upgrade to the world’s best helpdesk.

Sections

  1. What V4 means for you
  2. Upgrade offer: Owned license customers
  3. Upgrade offer: Leased license customers
  4. Upgrade offer: Hosted customers
  5. Addon products
  6. If you do not want to upgrade
  7. V3 support plan and end of life
  8. Non-profit organizations and open-source projects
  9. Any questions?

What V4 means for you

  • A new, more developer-friendly framework, written from the ground up to power your helpdesk. It is faster, more reliable and far more extendible with rich APIs and open app protocols – paving the way to some fantastic integration and extension opportunities.

  • Three overhauled products, made slicker, faster and with hundreds of new and improved features that make delivering customer support and providing a better experience to your customers easier (see this post for an overview of some of the major additions).
  • New, free mobile applications for iOS, Android and eventually Blackberry devices.
  • A brand new live chat and visitor monitoring desktop application.
  • Kayako OnSite – one-click remote access to your customer’s PCs.
  • An overhauled, redesigned and vastly improved infrastructure to support hosted customers.
  • A better Kayako – we are expanding our development and support teams to support what is now a much larger engineering project, as well as new projects we have in the pipeline.

Read More »

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Details about our new On-demand (SaaS) features

Posted by Jamie Edwards on August 5, 2010 – 2:34 AM

In our last blog post we briefly described our new infrastructure to support our hosted (Software-as-a-Service) customers which brings a boat of improvements. We’ll outline the changes in more detail here.

For the best part of ten years we have provided fully managed helpdesk solutions to organizations of all sizes – some serving only tens of users, others serving thousands a week. Looking after an organization’s helpdesk  is no small responsibility, and we do not take it lightly. We’re always looking to improve.

Our goals are simple:

  • To improve the experience for your own customers using your helpdesk
  • To improve and build upon our existing technical infrastructure, and offer customers access to the latest proven industry developments
  • To improve the business case for adopting Kayako’s hosted solutions (better redundancy, increased data security, improved plan Bs and more control)

Because we have a lot of customers interested in hearing about the guts of our infrastructure, we’ll delve into what is new below. If this stuff bores you, just take away one thing: your hosted helpdesk solution is getting a lot better.

We hope you are as excited as we are about the coming changes!

Helpdesk in the Cloud

Our new infrastructure is the result of years of testing, research and the design of a system tailored to support helpdesks; specific to the needs of an organization delivering customer support.

Helpdesks, files and databases will be hosted in our cloud. Our new infrastructure offers a number of fantastic benefits:

  • Rapid scaling - as your organization and helpdesk grows, we can deliver more capacity more quickly
  • More power – lots more computing power will be available, keeping your helpdesk incredibly snappy, whatever its size
  • Globally distributed network and hardware redundancy – for increased reliability
  • More file space – gigabytes of storage available for files, e-mail and ticket attachments
  • More frequent backups - we can backup your data more frequently, covering the worse case scenarios
  • Live data replication – should a technical issue arise, our systems will automatically recover and switch services over to another facility, without loss of data, in less than a minute (more on this below)

Read More »

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