V4: It???s alliiiiiveeee!
N/A (August 02, 2010) – After several eons of research and development, collecting feedback from customers and consuming half the coffee beans in Colombia, we have reached a culminating milestone in Kayako’s history.
We’re giddy with excitement
Version 4, built from the ground up, leveraging all of the knowledge and experience we’ve garnered over the ten years we’ve been in business is now live on our own support site.
As you may have already seen, we have been using the live chat portion of the product in the wild for over a month now to ensure performance and stability on a very busy help desk.
We’ve made the decision to use V4 live ourselves before releasing as beta for several reasons:
We are selfish and want to be the first people to use it.
We want to show the level of confidence we have in what we are releasing as beta by being the first to implement it in the real world.
We are intent on providing the highest quality product possible when we put the ‘beta’ stamp on it, to encourage you to set up and start testing.
Please take a moment to meander on over to our support desk and take a look at the current state of the product, tinker around and get ready for V4 beta, because it’s coming this week.
Third-party developers already have copies of V4 in their possession and the feedback is very positive. We can’t disclose who is doing what, but development has already begun on several modules and addons.
V4, as you may already be aware, will be equipped with a fully documented REST API that will allow for infinite extensibility and customization opportunities. More to come on this later.
Some of our add-on products are beta-ready and some are not. The operators’ desktop application will be released this week with the core products. The remaining add-on products are under development on an ongoing basis and we will keep you informed here when we have more announcements.
Born again
We’d like to take this opportunity to announce that we will be rebranding the entire product lineup. We didn’t just do this on a whim; we know we have the strongest brand names in helpdesk software.
We have renamed the products because we feel that this is not just a product iteration, but a product evolution — the introduction of a brand new platform, written from scratch, on which we’ve built your favorite helpdesk suites.
SupportSuite is now Kayako Fusion.
LiveResponse is now Kayako Engage.
eSupport is now Kayako Resolve.
The staff operators’ PC application is now called Kayako Desktop.
The built-in remote assistance feature is called Kayako OnSite.
InstaAlert is now Kayako Notify.
KayakoMobile is now Kayako Mobile (with a space!).
We feel that these new names are succinct, more memorable and are only fitting considering the magnitude of product advancement. It’s not just our product line that is evolving, but also our team, organization and the services we offer to you. We’re really excited about our new products (and their names) and we hope you are too.
New SaaS infrastructure
Our SaaS (hosted) product capabilities have also been vastly improved for V4.
Having provided SaaS helpdesks to thousands of organizations for nearly ten years, we have built a superbly reliable support platform. We are now making it brilliant.
We’re taking advantage of cloud computing to provide immediate scalability to growing support desks, introducing more regular backups with better redundancy, a new distributed DNS service for faster name resolution, a Content Distribution Network for speedy delivery of core media files, superior server hardware and virtual machines to ensure the highest security, performance and availability for your help desk.
We’ve also developed a robust product build and distribution platform that we’ll be rolling out soon, as well as a new customer site and ordering system.
We will post separately and in detail about these new enhancements soon.
Mobile app update
Development is under way and progressing well on Kayako Mobile for both the Apple iOS and RIM BlackBerry platforms. We plan to provide screenshots and previews as we progress through the development cycle.
The Mobile applications for these platforms may not be available for the initial RTM release of V4 depending on how the beta phase goes, but we are doing all that is possible to release basic clients in a timely manner.
Mac OSX
Don’t worry, Macophiles, we haven’t forgotten you this time around. We do have plans to develop both a Kayako Desktop for Mac as well as a Kayako OnSite one-click installer.
Almost home
We’d like to thank all of our customers for being so patient with us during this shift to V4. It’s been a long road, but we’re almost home. Please, if you have any questions, feel free to comment and one of us will get back to you.
V4 update recap
SWIFT4 framework: A brief overview of what’s new
V4 Update #1: Roadmap and interface peek
V4 Update #2: Live chat automations, operator skills, logic and groups
V4 Update #3: A first look at the operators’ desktop application
V4 Update #4: A look at the new live chat interface and engagement options
V4 Update #5: Staff, user, permissions management, interface screencast, roadmap revisions
V4 Update #6: Live screenshot sharing and file transfers in live chat
V4 Update #7: Template management, versioning and visual comparison tool
V4 Update #8: Introducing Kayako OnSite – remote desktop application that integrates into the support desk
V4 Update #9: Organizations (companies) and user management
KayakoMobile for V4: Coming soon to pretty much every phone near you
V4 Update #10: SLAs, ticket escalation rules and work schedules
V4 Update #11: Ratings, feedback, surveys and quality control
V4 Update #12: Ticket macros
V4 Update #13: Bayesian – making the helpdesk more intelligent (and spam filtering!)
Summary
A public beta is coming towards the end of this week. It will be available to everyone with an active support and upgrades subscription.
Kayako partner developers already have copies of V4 and are already building on top of the new platform.
We’re renaming our products.
We’re introducing a new SaaS infrastructure.
Our own support desk, now to be found at https://my.kayako.com, is running V4.
Although the import of ten years worth of data (millions of records) went smoothly, we are running a pre-beta build and there will be teething problems. We welcome your feedback and design critique – please join us on the forums or leave a comment here.
Source: Kayako