Play around with FreshDesk UI and understand how it works. Decide if this is a good solution.

[choldgraf]

We have a 3-week FreshDesk trial set up at 2i2c.freshdesk.com

Each of the @2i2c-org/tech-team members should have access to this. See #167 (comment) for some background.

Here are some things to try:

1. Go to https://2i2c.freshdesk.com and log in with the address that was in the notification email to you)
2. Try opening a ticket by emailing the support email (support@2i2c.org should work)
3. Try reading tickets and responding to them, including adding comments

[yuvipanda]

So far, I like that:

1. There's one incoming email address
2. 'Private note' that is visible just to support staff
3. An integrated 'TODO' that helps track resolution for a single ticket

[yuvipanda]

There's also a web interface for customers to file tickets: https://2i2c.freshdesk.com/support/home. I think this can be customized as well to add additional fields, such as name of hub and other details.

[choldgraf]

This is a quick update with some early experience using FreshDesk and summarizing some conversations that we had today.

Pricing

They generally charge about $19 / month / user for their cheapest plan ($15/month if we use an annual plan). This should be enough for what we want, though there are some fancier features like multi-timezone SLAs if we pay for higher plans (more like $50/month/user). I suspect we'll want to start with the cheaper option if we go with them, and then scale up to higher plans if we find value in the service.

Features

It has some nice features around having a "single access point" for people to ask questions, but where multiple 2i2c team members could view, discuss, and answer those questions. I think this is the main use we'll get out of it.

GitHub Integration

The GitHub integration is not fantastic - this is the plugin they use. It has basic support for things like commenting across issues, and has paid features like "synchronizing" tickets and github issue comments.

[choldgraf]

Update on pricing

I heard back about the lower tier pricing option. For this we'd get a 15% discount as a non-profit. It would total $80 per month at (~$15 per agent per month). This would get us all of the most important features we would use, I believe.

[choldgraf]

Assigning a few members of the @2i2c-org/tech-team that might be doing semi-regular support for various hub communities, so they have a chance to look at this UI :-)

[sgibson91]

I might recommend this to Paige for any support needed during the COESSING workshop next week.

[choldgraf]

That'd be great - anything that we can do to prototype process, get a better feeling for it, etc. I think we can also be pretty up front with folks about this being a test, and ask them for feedback and thoughts!

[choldgraf]

I'm going to close this as we've had some time to use this, and we have #167 to discuss whether to keep using it long-term