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Decrease Logins with HelpCenter- Oauth or Anonymous Posting?
Our site uses Help Center: http://help.jamlegend.com . The problem is that users have to log in twice to get access to the wonders of Get Satisfaction. We wanted users to be able to not have to log into our site and our help center (and to make it look seemless), but unfortunately, this prompt to create an account has caused many problems. We cannot get accurate feedback from our users because almost all of them abandon the Help Center when they're prompted to get logged in.
Based on this post (
http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfa... ), it seems that users have to log in and there is a solution through OpenID. I'm more interested in NOT HAVING USERS LOG IN AT ALL. It defeats the purpose of using the Help Center at all.
Can a user just post anonymously on our Help Center (and we'll pass their information- or credential them) or is there an implementation within Oauth to get into our Help Center without any hassle? Are there any examples you can point us to?
I know you guys have been working on this problem, but if this is not going to get fixed, then we'll have to just go back to the (not as great) system of the quick anonymous e-mail tab in our site. It doesn't seem to make sense that users need to absolutely give their e-mails since the point is to facilitate feedback. It seems to work for blogs, for a one-step post, can it work for us?
Based on this post (
http://getsatisfaction.com/getsatisfa... ), it seems that users have to log in and there is a solution through OpenID. I'm more interested in NOT HAVING USERS LOG IN AT ALL. It defeats the purpose of using the Help Center at all.
Can a user just post anonymously on our Help Center (and we'll pass their information- or credential them) or is there an implementation within Oauth to get into our Help Center without any hassle? Are there any examples you can point us to?
I know you guys have been working on this problem, but if this is not going to get fixed, then we'll have to just go back to the (not as great) system of the quick anonymous e-mail tab in our site. It doesn't seem to make sense that users need to absolutely give their e-mails since the point is to facilitate feedback. It seems to work for blogs, for a one-step post, can it work for us?
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These are good points. The first issue is that logins are not handled anywhere as gracefully on Help Center as they are here on the main site. Since Help Center is an open source templating system that works on top of our web service, we welcome any refinements that people want to make in that regard, and hope to be able to spend more time on that in the future.
As for your suggestion--passing through your already authenticated users--we are experimenting with a solution that works to this end. We're not prepared to announce it yet, but you can email me directly if you'd like to try it out as soon as it's available. I'm thor at this domain.
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this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Definitely agree. What is the point of having a feedback system if no one uses it because its too hard?!
Sorry, but I am not satisfied.
I’m not satisfied
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Inappropriate?Here's the thread that occurred on our Help Site, for those who actually logged in, in order to tell us they hated logging in:
http://help.jamlegend.com/topic.php?i... -
Inappropriate?Well, Get Satisfaction seems like overkill if you just need anonymous comment posting. Although maybe it would be possible to hard code the user's authorization token into your pages with that of a general site account (e.g. "jamlegenduser") and all posts would show up as that general user. -
Inappropriate?These are good points. The first issue is that logins are not handled anywhere as gracefully on Help Center as they are here on the main site. Since Help Center is an open source templating system that works on top of our web service, we welcome any refinements that people want to make in that regard, and hope to be able to spend more time on that in the future.
As for your suggestion--passing through your already authenticated users--we are experimenting with a solution that works to this end. We're not prepared to announce it yet, but you can email me directly if you'd like to try it out as soon as it's available. I'm thor at this domain.
I’m thankful
3 people say
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?We have exactly the same issue, and are interested in fast tracking any solution that allows us to access the Get Satisfaction API & use Help Center without having to require registering for yet another account.
Possible solutions include
- allowing us to register you a Get Satisfaction account automatically (by passing through an oAuth credential and getting approval from users). So it's fairy transparent for the user. I'm fine with them having to click Approve, it's filling out their data again.
- allow helpcenter to pass the data over, so we can customize the flow on our end. this is less great, but might be workable, I'd have to test and see the drop off.
- allow "anonymized" posting that still tracks to a oauth token. basically we already know who the user is (we have a cookie, they've logged in) so they post on GS as anonymous until they enter in data, and you use a different internal key so you can still track their posts/etc
.. i dunno.. anything? anything at all.
I’m running out of options
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This answers the question
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We're finishing up a big release, but we'll post more after that. -
Inappropriate?Yeah same here.. (uhooroo.com/helpcenter) I read the Oauth stuff and it seems to assume the user's already have an account setup on GSatisfaction.. I don't see our users creating a 2nd a/c just to be able to get support from us..
Also, does "The first issue is that logins are not handled anywhere as gracefully on Help Center as they are here on the main site. Since Help Center is an open source templating system that works on top of our web service, we welcome any refinements that people want to make in that regard, and hope to be able to spend more time on that in the future." mean that Help Center is not a well supported interface that will evolve with the GS site? I already noticed that the CSS and therefore the look and feel is different. Will I need to maintain the php code for it should GS site suddenly become incompatible with the Help Center version I have installed?
Could you please post a detailed explaination of what you have planned for the short and long term for this feature (Help Center, and automatic logins without requiring new sign ups). I love this idea, but without a good solution for the above issues and a guarantee that Help Center will always be supported regardless of the version I install today.. it seems like a very bad route to take (for us).
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Hi Vinay,
First, we are rolling out a "single sign-on" component for Help Center (and any widget or API integration) soon. This is available as one of our upcoming premium services offerings. I also agree that the sign-in process isn't simple enough for all purposes.
We originally released Help Center as an open source toolkit so that companies could have practically unlimited options for customizing. What we find is that most companies don't actually customize it that much--they really want to maintain a help section in their own domain and tailor the header to better match their brand. I'd be curious to know what you really care about.
We plan to integrate some of the customization features of Help Center into our central service down the road, because this is by far the most popular means of integration. And while we will continue to release updates to Help Center periodically, it won't be updated anywhere near the rate of our main service.
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This answers the question
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Thor, this is helpful.
I think Help Center as a full open source toolkit is not what our companies primarily need. The important thing is just:
A) custom domain, e.g. http://help.jamlegend.com
B) a header or some way to place header links that go back to the site
C) single sign-on, anonymous posting, or some type of db integration
That's it! -
I think uservoice has a good approach to this. They have a "corporate" version which allows you to take over and control the branding/css to a greater extent - and provide for "single sign-on"
Those are the two biggies. We're hoping you guys can roll these out as we love many other things about what you offer, but Andrew I'd suggest looking at uservoice too and see if it fits your needs. -
Inappropriate?we've got a single-sign on version of GSFN that we'll be launching very shortly, initially in conjunction with the feedback widget we just released, but moving towards integrating it with the API shortly thereafter.
more importantly, andrew, we don't want to lose you as a customer, so if you're up with working with us as a beta customer, contact our head of bizdev scott at scotth@getsatisfaction.com, and we can work it out. -
Inappropriate?Thanks for the follow-up Thor.
I think my requirements are identical to Andrew's. Simply:
- our users should not even need to have an account on GSFN
- should not have to "leave" our site.. You could either do it the way Google Site Search Business Edition does it.. service shows up embedded on our site without any advertisements or Google branding or.. provide some CSS control so that we have our own headers and links to our site show up instead of GSFN. Helpcenter is already set to achieve the latter I guess.
Technically, I can see that the single-signon is not trivial to achieve. You need unique "user" handles perhaps based on an email ids, usernames etc. You will need to somehow use the 3rd party user-handle or we can create a shared one (both our Dbs will have it), and we can pull up our user-info based on that id. I haven't looked into oauth stuff much yet. However, if you can solve this single-signon issue (without a new GSFN account), that would work really well for us! -
Inappropriate?Thor/Lane, great to see you thinking with us on this point. I agree with Vinay and Andrew on all three points but would like to say that single sign-on is by far the most important for us.
The other points are nice-to-haves but we don't really mind having users go to GSFN. I think having custom header / css options could be an added value but users will still get that feeling of being on a separate site. As other elements (like this reply textarea) will be very different from any other site. In other words the IXD is a lot more than the header.
So customization is not a high priority - better to be clear that it's a separate site - but make it easy to post for our users is the highest priority.4 Comments Add a comment
This answers the question
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Stefan, have you had a chance to talk with Scott H about our plan for this? We're happy to work with you as an initial customer to make this work before our larger public rollout. He's contactable @ scotth@getsatisfaction.com.
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Lane, I emailed Scott after posting above comment. Haven't heard anything yet though, any idea of an ETA on your single sign-on?
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Stephan, it's stll a couple of weeks away. We're working on it, but it's a tricky one to get right *and* make simple. I promise you will be the first to know both when it has a firm ETA and also when it actually launches.
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Ok, cool. Thanks for the heads up. And scott did get back to me... ;-)
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Inappropriate?Fyi: I just looked at the UserVoice solution:
Cons:
- The need for 1 more a/c is still there. Basically the user needs to sign up one more time even if she is already a registered user of our site and logged in
- UserVoice is heavily about user-votes to rank which issues/features are high priority for users. Getsatisfaction is much less about user votes and more about individual users getting help. UVoice in that way (perhaps incorrectly) assumes that users will want to participate.. they even have limited votes per user, and the user needs to go and fill a demographics form to get more votes!?
- With limited startup cycles, and a need to be innovative/creative.. letting a pool of users decide what features we should focus on seems like a bad idea in the long term.
Pros:
- Almost seemless integration with the site.. Unlike GetSatisfaction's HelpCenter, UV seemed to blend quite well within the rest of the site..
I am tempted to just wait for GSFN's solution if any.. UV just doesn't seem to fit our requirements..
(Let me know if I missed something about UVoice)
Vinay.1 Comment Add a comment
This answers the question
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Actually the enterprise version of Uservoice allows for single signon. Look at their Api.
But yes, it is built more around the premise of feedback on the product, and voting, which is a different focus than GS - although closely related.
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