Show HN: Use Trello as a Helpdesk(boardthreads.com)
boardthreads.com
Show HN: Use Trello as a Helpdesk
https://boardthreads.com/
22 comments
The pricing is cheap because it offers very little features. In fact it is just a wrapper around Mailgun and Trello.
Canned responses are not possible to implement because all the action happens inside Trello, and I can't modify the Trello UI to add new things. I've thought about using some dark magic tricks for this task, but users would not understand.
I have considered offering addons that would provide reporting and canned responses also, but those should come after I have a bigger customer base.
Anyway, thank you very much for your feedback.
Canned responses are not possible to implement because all the action happens inside Trello, and I can't modify the Trello UI to add new things. I've thought about using some dark magic tricks for this task, but users would not understand.
I have considered offering addons that would provide reporting and canned responses also, but those should come after I have a bigger customer base.
Anyway, thank you very much for your feedback.
Cool idea, but not sure if the Trello boards ux is suitable as a help desk.
At 15$ per month i use Reamaze (https://www.reamaze.com) for my consultancy and it serves as a full featured help desk with slack and github integration as well and i hear they do have a trello in the works, last I asked. Not sure if there are ones out there with a trello integration though.
Good stuff!
At 15$ per month i use Reamaze (https://www.reamaze.com) for my consultancy and it serves as a full featured help desk with slack and github integration as well and i hear they do have a trello in the works, last I asked. Not sure if there are ones out there with a trello integration though.
Good stuff!
I agree. Am looking for a help desk, will check out Reamaze. Trello as a help desk seems quite limited for now, but maybe it'll get better.
Been working on an alternative in the help desk space for smaller teams.
https://hipdesk.co
Provides threaded email ticketing. Knowledge base will be there soon.
https://hipdesk.co
Provides threaded email ticketing. Knowledge base will be there soon.
This looks cool!
Can you address how the board scales when your list of archived/answered problems reaches 100 items? 1000? 10,000?
It seems like you need something beyond the UI shown in the gif to cope with help-desk-sized email volume.
Can you address how the board scales when your list of archived/answered problems reaches 100 items? 1000? 10,000?
It seems like you need something beyond the UI shown in the gif to cope with help-desk-sized email volume.
We've been using it on https://formspree.io/ and Trello handles it well up to 100 or more cards on the screen. If you archive the cards, however, either at the time you reply or periodically ("Archive all cards in this list"), it will be much easier and Trello can handle practically unlimited archived cards.
Cool idea but why would I pay for this when I could pay for a proper helpdesk service instead?
I'm waiting until someone does this with AWS Lambda and SES as Serverless app (which would make it easy to deploy without knowing AWS internals).
You wouldn't get threaded conversations, attachments and other small but important features that are solved on BoardThreads.
Why not? The In-Reply-To header in emails makes following threads pretty easy and you can fire a web hook to API gateway to kick off a Lambda function when you reply to a Trello story.
You might need a database to map the In-Reply-To header to a Trello story if the customer replies to their own message but DynamoDB on AWS would let you do this for pretty munch free.
AWS Lambda is actually absurdly powerful when combined with other AWS products. Think IFTTT only with custom code. I am 100% sure there is nothing this product does that can't be done with Lambda, SES, and AWS API Gateway from a technical standpoint.
Granted by the time you are done it would cost enough to pay for over a year of this service. Which is why I didn't say I would write it myself. Even if it takes a weekend the break even is too long. Bit if someone wants to open source it ;)
You might need a database to map the In-Reply-To header to a Trello story if the customer replies to their own message but DynamoDB on AWS would let you do this for pretty munch free.
AWS Lambda is actually absurdly powerful when combined with other AWS products. Think IFTTT only with custom code. I am 100% sure there is nothing this product does that can't be done with Lambda, SES, and AWS API Gateway from a technical standpoint.
Granted by the time you are done it would cost enough to pay for over a year of this service. Which is why I didn't say I would write it myself. Even if it takes a weekend the break even is too long. Bit if someone wants to open source it ;)
"I am 100% sure there is nothing this product does that can't be done with Lambda, SES, and AWS API Gateway from a technical standpoint."
That's a strange thing to say. How many products are there that cannot be done with Lambda, SES and AWS API Gateway?
That's a strange thing to say. How many products are there that cannot be done with Lambda, SES and AWS API Gateway?
Good question. Quite a few... those are very niche products. In fact if I think long on it I am not including the front-end in that 100%. If you want a front-end you'd need a tiny bit of S3 or a server.
Lambda is good for stateless APIs and event processing but is not good for anything that requires persistence.
SES is an email product so it's usage is niche but it is surprisingly powerful. Example: firing a lambda function when an email bounces or is received.
I didn't list a database in there. I'm assuming Trello can be used like a database (and looking at their API it seems it can in this case).
So to answer your question:
- Any app that requires state
- Any app that requires persistent connections
- Any app where a unit of work can take more than 6 seconds
- Any front-ends [1]
- Apps where local cache is needed to provide any sort of reasonable performance
- Apps that need a database
Cannot be made with just those three tools.
[1] It is possible to make a front-end with API gateway and Lambda. API gateway can return different mime types, including HTML. But it would be a huge hack and also not likely cost effective. A static site generated and hosted on S3 with Cloud Front in-front of it is very cost effective but requires the client use javascript. If noscript is a requirement you're stuck with a server.
Lambda is good for stateless APIs and event processing but is not good for anything that requires persistence.
SES is an email product so it's usage is niche but it is surprisingly powerful. Example: firing a lambda function when an email bounces or is received.
I didn't list a database in there. I'm assuming Trello can be used like a database (and looking at their API it seems it can in this case).
So to answer your question:
- Any app that requires state
- Any app that requires persistent connections
- Any app where a unit of work can take more than 6 seconds
- Any front-ends [1]
- Apps where local cache is needed to provide any sort of reasonable performance
- Apps that need a database
Cannot be made with just those three tools.
[1] It is possible to make a front-end with API gateway and Lambda. API gateway can return different mime types, including HTML. But it would be a huge hack and also not likely cost effective. A static site generated and hosted on S3 with Cloud Front in-front of it is very cost effective but requires the client use javascript. If noscript is a requirement you're stuck with a server.
This is cool! I've actually been using Trello as the backend for an text message service I made called http://advice.pocketwingman.us/
Worked as a great lo-fi solution for me, since you can just have all the support team download the Trello app and they'll get a push notification whenever something comes in.
Worked as a great lo-fi solution for me, since you can just have all the support team download the Trello app and they'll get a push notification whenever something comes in.
The background image on that page is 7.6MB, you might want to optimise that a little - it took a long time to load even on a decent connection :)
Another option is to integrate your repository with your support desk to provide decreased overall management involvement coupled with increased transparency to the business people.
That's what these guys do: http://www.bluepensoftware.com/
That's what these guys do: http://www.bluepensoftware.com/
$18/mo seems pretty steep for such a service, but this is a pretty cool idea.
Are custom email on the roadmap? Would be really useful then.
I think the usual method is to forward just help@ or support@ emails to the 3rd party support email address. See http://docs.helpscout.net/article/54-google-apps etc
Custom addresses? They're supported. After signing up for a @boardthreads.com address you can set up custom incoming and outgoing addresses.
Re: the price point, it's certainly cheaper than a full-fledged offering like Freshdesk, but honestly if there's one thing most businesses are probably comfortable paying for, it's tools to keep their customers happy. So I'm not sure competing on being much lower-priced is a win here.
About 80% of our email that comes in is answered with a canned response. I would make that your number one feature to add (unless it's already in, in which case I would highlight it on the homepage).
The other thing I would consider a must-have is the ability to move a card from the "Completed" list back to the "Active" list if the customer re-responds. I think a very typical workflow for this type of system is to answer the email and then consider the case "closed" unless you hear back again from the customer, in which case you want it to be moved back onto your active list.
Finally, it's not super-important to us, but I know that reporting is big in this space as well -- knowing who is responding to what and how quickly the average email is getting answered, for example. That might be the type of thing you could sell as an add-on, where you keep track of that on your end and then allow them to access a report on your site.
Overall though it's a very neat idea. I might swing back by in a few months and see where it's at and consider it for my next project.