Private v. Public
Is there any thought on the public- versus private-facing aspects of Tender? Naturally, having a publicly accessible interface would be great for a number of projects, but I can say the same for keeping things locked down a bit, too, depending on the situation. I'm mostly thinking of private Lighthouse projects here; having a similarly private Tender project would seem to make sense.
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1 Posted by Kyle Neath (Git... on 19 Nov, 2008 08:08 PM
Yep, we're definitely working on making a way to have a wholly private Tender (for example: a support area for your application while it's still in private beta). We're slowly working toward that (with private categories and topics), but when we're done there should be a way to make a whole private Tender install, password protected and all.
2 Posted by Zach Holman on 26 Nov, 2008 07:02 PM
That sounds great; if you permit me to be nosey, is this on a timeline of months from now, or more immediate than that? Or is this not a high priority right now? No worries; just would appreciate a really rough idea of the time involved.
Support Staff 3 Posted by Courtenay on 27 Nov, 2008 12:17 AM
4 Posted by Steve on 15 Dec, 2008 05:32 PM
I'd be very interested in this as well. Already commented on another related thread but figured it was worth voicing my support here as well! :)
5 Posted by System on 17 Dec, 2008 02:13 AM
This discussion was assigned to court3nay, on ticket 53.
6 Posted by Felix Geisendör... on 15 Feb, 2009 02:17 PM
+1 here as well. Private tender projects would cause us to use lighthouse + tender for everything!
7 Posted by Matt Rogish on 02 Mar, 2009 08:39 PM
+1 for us. We don't want ANY public discussion whatsoever, this should be 100% private (the cust will interact over email, customer service will do all the logging in). This doesn't appear to be live, correct?
8 Posted by rick on 03 Mar, 2009 01:29 AM
It's not. We actually dropped password protected sites from the feature list as you can tell :) Engine Yard asked for that while testing Tender out, but it's a moot point now that they've released a couple Tender sites for their projects. Currently, we're focusing on tightening things up, and the overall stability of the application, especially emails. There are people using Tender in email-only setup already. However, this sounds like a different thing from a 'private Tender'.
We're considering a cheaper private Tender plan to bootstrap a product in private beta. Hitting the site at all would require an invitation, similar to the current support invitations. Email integration may not even work, or may require an email address of an existing user.
However, using Tender in email-only mode might count as custom branding (tweaking the reply-to address and removing the link to the Tender discussion). It definitely wouldn't count in this cheaper private Tender plan. I don't really know right now. We can be flexible, but I also want to keep the plans simple.
At any rate, let me know if you want to be included in on the beta for the private Tender support. We likely won't start working on it until later this month or April though... but I'd love to get feedback before we take the feature public.
9 Posted by felixge on 03 Mar, 2009 08:38 AM
Exactly what I need right now. I don't care about it being cheaper or anything. I'd just love to use Tender to manage the private beta feedback of our application and to allow the testers to see each others postings but keep the site closed to the public.
10 Posted by Anthony on 03 Mar, 2009 03:18 PM
There is a need for a private version for businesses that don't want their competitors to see their dirty laundry. It would always be private and clients would have access by invitation only. This perspective is foreign to companies steeped in open source but is probably the perspective of the vast majority of businesses. We want to use Tender for one of our clients web applications but the openness of Tender is a show stopper for them.
Instead of being cheaper, you may want to consider making it more expensive since it provides them with a greater degree of privacy.
11 Posted by Matt Rogish on 03 Mar, 2009 03:27 PM
The kinds of things we get are "Can I change my order to be next day shipping?" and "Has my order shipped yet?" and all sorts of other private things. No one else in the universe cares about these queries.
Further, we don't want to invite anyone to the system -- they would submit their requests via a web form that would email one of the queues that we set up in the system. Then it would be assigned to the appropriate customer service or technical staff who would then reply to the case, which would email the cust. The cust would then reply back to the email and they'd never know we had a case management system in the background (unless they looked closely at the email or the little blurb that tender puts at the bottom).
The only accounts that would be created are ones for our staff. I'd love to use a hosted service for this. We don't need another app to support internally! :) The $50/mo price point would be perfect for a company of our size and # of reps.
Thanks,
-- Matt
12 Posted by Anthony on 03 Mar, 2009 03:32 PM
BTW...We would love to be included in the beta for private tender.
13 Posted by Steve on 03 Mar, 2009 03:36 PM
We're in the same boat. We're building out a lot of tools for clients that have very private data that can and should not be shared with anyone else. I'd love to be able to use tender for these initiatives. We also have a number of client facing systems that we'd like to use tender for, but they are only accessible to clients and thus private.
I'd like to be included in any sort of beta as well.
Cheers, Steve
14 Posted by rick on 03 Mar, 2009 05:18 PM
Matt: you can already submit private discussions... and any email is immediately private by default. You're not forced to create every user account by invitation, you can use our current auto-login system. In the case that this doesn't work for your situation, there will be an API for this stuff too.
Let me know what Tender site you want to be included on the private beta. We just turn on an 'experimental' flag for certain accounts to let them try various features.
15 Posted by Matt Rogish on 03 Mar, 2009 06:46 PM
Rick,
That sounds like that might work. We are definitely interested in the beta features (queues, etc.) so please enable it for our account. The name is the same as the domain on my email address.
Thanks,
-- Matt
16 Posted by Will on 03 Mar, 2009 07:55 PM
Matt -- you should be good to go.
17 Posted by Anthony on 04 Mar, 2009 01:31 PM
Please enable our account for these beta features. The account is the one associated with my email address.
Thanks,
Anthony
18 Posted by Matt Rogish on 04 Mar, 2009 03:50 PM
Rick/Will,
I cannot log into my account any more -- and the system says it can't find my email address? Did something happen in the switch to the beta version?
Thanks,
-- Matt
19 Posted by Matt Rogish on 04 Mar, 2009 04:46 PM
Nevermind, I forgot what account I signed up with :)
20 Posted by Zach Holman on 07 Apr, 2009 07:55 PM
What's the progress looking like for private accounts nowadays? If you're still doing some sort of private invite for private accounts, I'd be interested in checking it out and sending some feedback your way.
Support Staff 21 Posted by Courtenay on 07 Apr, 2009 09:12 PM
Yes, this is in a branch waiting for the design team to fix up the UI.
22 Posted by Bob on 22 Apr, 2009 06:06 PM
Hello Rick or Will,
Can you also enable my site for the experimental private features?
Thanks,
Bob
23 Posted by Kyle Neath (Git... on 23 Apr, 2009 06:27 PM
Hey Bob,
We'll keep you in mind once we start testing out the private functionality. As of now, there aren't any experimental private features yet.
24 Posted by Bob on 23 Apr, 2009 06:55 PM
What's up with posts #16, 17, and 18 in this thread then? It's entirely possible I've misunderstood what they're referring to. Regardless, is there any sort of timeline attached to this private functionality?
25 Posted by Kyle Neath (Git... on 23 Apr, 2009 07:32 PM
We're working on it in development, but it's definitely not anywhere near putting it on production. Our usual feature deployment usually goes something like this:
Right now, we're focusing on some outstanding bugs, and autoreply / canned responses. Once those are done, private tenders will most likely be next on our list.
26 Posted by Johan Sombekke on 28 Apr, 2009 10:07 AM
+1 for a private Tender. We will now use a setup for users to email to Tender with private discussions. We also use Lighthouse for our projectteam (projectmanagement and teamleaders). Thus, the Tender Support Staff discusses topics with users and if neccessary they open a ticket in Lighthouse. The projectteam handles this ticket and finally the user is given a respons through Tender.
What we would really like to do?
So as far as I'm concerned we have a few private modes and one public mode. This can be done by defining groups:
As a consequence we now can have multiple private settings (a combination of the groups above OR the current private discussion: one person with Support Staff).
For us an enterprise edition (as discussed with Courtenay) may also do...
27 Posted by rick on 22 Jun, 2009 07:25 PM
Heads up: we're QAing private site-support right now. We'll be deploying it for experimental sites probably later this week. Everyone in this thread will be added.
28 Posted by Jim Fleming on 24 Jul, 2009 02:44 AM
I second the group idea. I would love to have a group visibility option that I can set on multiple problem reports that allow all the people who have submitted the report to see each other's reports. An alternative that might work better is to be able to assign a password on a private problem report so that anyone who has the password can see those reports. I don't really want to setup a separate private account for all my customer groups since that would prevent me from managing everything from 1 place.
Are there any thought along these lines? - thanks.
29 Posted by rick on 24 Jul, 2009 03:44 AM
We have two separate approaches that we're working on:
1) We're adding the ability to modify the notified users of a
discussion. Currently, it just iterates through the comments and
collects email addresses. This was simple in the beginning, but means
people can't opt out, or opt in without posting a message. Once the
new code is in, you'll be able to create a private discussion and add
anyone you want to receive notifications and access the discussion.
This is very close to being done, I'm just making sure it replaces the
original simple system with the same behavior.
2) We'll be allowing the ability to put your users into
groups/companies. This way if any other ENTP employee posts a private
discussion on your site, I'll be able to log in and view it too as a
member of the ENTP group.
30 Posted by Jim Fleming on 24 Jul, 2009 10:02 AM
Excellent, I think this is exactly what we need - thanks Rick! Now for the extra credit question... if the issue is ticketed, can we offer visibility into the Lighthouse issue?