Add-Ons: Forums and Help Desk

We have been Telerik customers (Rad Controls) for a bit but just recently started looking at Sitefinity a bit more seriously. We currently have our production websites running on top of DotNetNuke and never really considered Sitefinity an option due to the lack of community support and custom modules in their marketplace. However with the release of Sitefinity 4 we are really impressed by the framework and want to give it a closer look to see how does it compare to DNN.

We love Rad Controls and also use Open Access extensively in our projects so it would be nice if we could standardize all our development under the Telerik umbrella. A big show stopper at this point is the lack of Sitefinity Forums module (yes I know CTForums is out there but it seems a very young module, compared to ActiveForums in DNN which hass been around for quite a long time) and a Help Desk Module.

I do not know if Telerik website runs on Sitefinity. If it does, then why hasn't Telerik released their own Forums and Help Desk (Support Center - Ticketing system) as an add-on for X amount of dollars? I love the Telerik Forums and Support Center functionality plus look and feel. Are there any plans from Telerik to include these modules which I would imagine tons of customers would use? Or is Telerik website internals out of the question for customers?

Same here. We have standard license and  If we have a choice to buy forums as add-on module that will be nice.

For us it definitely will be a big show stopper (the lack of Sitefinity Forums module ) to promote our license to professional or enterprise. It really doesn't make sense.

I guess they [Telerik] are not listening us. I've sent so many emails to Telerik asking for a HelpDesk or Knowledgebase module. Reply? "Marketplace" :(

It certainly is disappointing that Telerik has not considered adding these 2 modules to their enterprise product or add-ons to the standard version. The e-commerce module add-on is ok but to me these other 2 modules are more critical. We do have use for e-commerce but our business is so unique that we endup building our own store anyways, so we have no use for the Telerik store.

Hi Rafael and all of you guys,

I know that the lack of Forums module and standard modules such as FAQ, Knowledge base is a big shortcoming for you, and I can assure you that we are putting a lot of efforts in this direction. With the upcoming Sitefinity 4.4 release next month we are going to mark a milestone release, one in which you will be able to create your own content types through a Module Builder. If you don't have a hierarchical content such as our Blog posts, the Module Builder will be able to satisfy your custom content requests.

The Forums module for Sitefinity is high on our plans for 2012. The earliest possible timeframe in which we could deliver bits of this module is April 2012. Please stay tuned for our official Sitefinity 5.0 roadmap that should be available within a couple of weeks, and will shed some light on our next moves.

Thanks for the update Hristo. And excellent news that Telerik is planning to release a Forums module in 2012! Cheers to that. You did not mentioned anything about HelpDesk/Ticketing System though. Is this something Telerik will look into the future? Also I was wondering if Telerik website is done in top of Sitefinity. Can you answer this?

Thanks!

Hello again Rafael,

Telerik.com is running on Sitefinity, however our Ticketing System is not offered as an add-on module due to its heavy customizations. We don't have plans to distribute a help desk module in the next couple of weeks, and this purely depends on the amount of customer requests and need for it.

Thank you for contacting us, and being part of the Telerik community. Please let me know if you need any further assistance.

All the best,
Hristo Borisov
the Telerik team

Ahh, too bad a Ticketing System is not something on the roadmap yet. Hopefully it will be in the future. I can see your point that if there is not enough demand from customers then no need to go that route. Maybe a third party will develop an add-on, else we'll have to look for another program and see how to integrate it to Sitefinity (for example the Salesforce help desk is something we have been looking at).

On another note we finally decided to give Sitefinity a proper test run. We purchased Sitefinity Standard yesterday and plan to develop our intranet in top of it. If we are happy with it we will certainly consider it to replace our internet site currently based on DNN.

Thanks for the info Hristo!

Rafael