Interlink Feedback

[northwestmsp]

So I have two questions:

1) For Interlink Users :: We're thinking about investing into Interlink (cost of Interlink + Upgrading to SQL Commit). Has the investment you've made been worth it, how has the support, stability and feature upgrades been over the time you've owned it?

2) For Interlink Developers :: From the video's we've seen it appears to me that you've basically resolved or fixed many of the feature/usability issues our company has withCommitCRM. With the level of robustness (is that a word?) Interlink appears to be well on it's way to replacing altogether the CommitCRM interface. That being said, what advantages are there to you continuing to use CommitCRM as the backend to your app (i.e. why not just go with a standalone backend SQL DB and drop CommitCRM out of the picture?), and do you see the relationship between CommitCRM and Interlink continuing well into the future?

[dprichard]

Re: Interlink Feedback

From Interlink Developers :: We are extremely happy with CommitCRM. Their support is top notch. Interlink is extremely powerful, but from an overall product standpoint, there is a LOT that CommitCRM does that Interlink does not. Interlink is a shell that works with CommitCRM to bring all the good things about CommitCRM to mobile interfaces. We are constantly adding more functionality to Interlink and CommitCRM is continually improving their offering as well. We couldn't be happier with their product or the relationships we have with CommitCRM's staff.

[swallservices]

Re: Interlink Feedback

Yes.

Admittedly, for a small shop it's a pretty big investment over the price of CommitCRM CRM itself but it's still soooooooo much less than investing in Connectwise or Autotask it was a no-brainer for us. Giving money to DSG for Interlink is a feel-good purchase for me. When their SLA module came out and it was going to cost a little extra I didn't bat an eye... I just couldn't figure out how to give them my credit card information quick enough :)

But in all seriousness, we do 85% of our work in Interlink now. We still use CommitCRM for billing and a few other things but most tickets and time is worked in Interlink. They are constantly improving the product, they are responsive to bug reports, and their support is amazing (Hi David!).

Plus, from simply a professional image perspective giving our clients access to the CommitCRM CRM customer portal was just a joke. Interlink however gives us a client portal that we can be proud of and helps to improve our professional image. I would re-invest in Interlink time and time again given the choice. It was the best investment I made for my business in a long time.

There is one last issue to be aware of on cost though. From a financial perspective, there is one gotcha in the cost of Interlink and that's in order to use the queues feature you need to have additional employee licenses in CommitCRM that are not being used by actual people.** This is a feature you'll want to use so when you look at the investment in Interlink don't just look at the cost of the Interlink, figure that you'll buy at least one extra CommitCRM employee license as well (if you don't have a spare lying around - I know we didn't). As it is, we are looking into possibly setting up more queues so for us that might mean purchasing two more employee licenses for CommitCRM just to enable additional queues.

Also Interlink can integrate with SMS alerts - but only if you have an account with Twilio. So if you want to use this feature figure on paying $1 a month + $0.01 a text message sent or received to the guys at Twilio.

Again, I cannot reiterate enough, even with these additional costs Interlink is still worth the investment. Just keep this in mind when you're doing your budgeting for your Interlink purchase. If these additional costs push Interlink out of your budget - do yourself a favor and find a way to push it back in. You'll be happy you did.

**BTW - Don't get mad at Interlink for this - it's just a a side effect of the genius the Interlink guys used when in implementing "Ticket Queues" into CommitCRM - a feature CommitCRM that doesn't natively support. Unfortunately there is no way around it (that I can see) from Interlink's side. Sorry :(

[mellowms]

Re: Interlink Feedback

Hello,

We are now using Interlink, although holding back slightly on using it entirely because until the new mobile interface is ready, a lot of the features we want to use on portable devices aren't there yet. Our setup is we use the CommitCRM application in house, and then Interlink for both client facing access and engineer remote access. The CommitCRM web interface is not appropriate for presenting to a client as it looks so amaterurish it would be embarassing to show them, and with no Ajax etc, it requires many clicks to reach the end result. Interlink is very aesthetically pleasing and we have been proud to offer that to a couple of our more demanding customers, both to allow them to monitor tickets their staff are opening, and also to allow their staff to open a ticket directly into the system.

I won't lie and say that the install process of Interlink was simple, in fact, we had a large number of problems getting it up and running. However, it is testament to the dedication of the staff at DSG (again, hello David!) and technical ability that we are as pleased with the product now as we are. DSG have methodically worked through the issues as they have been raised and they have ironed them out. I always say that you measure a company not by the number of problems, but by the way in which they deal with them. We now have an excellent product that we would buy again and again. It has already paid for itself for us, and when we get the new mobile product, the cost savings and efficiencies we will achieve will be spectacular. Furthermore, now the product is maturing I would say a lot of the install issues / initial configuration issues will be gone.

Feel free to ask me anything you want to know from a satisfied customer's point of view.

Lee

[northwestmsp]

Re: Interlink Feedback

Thanks for the awesome new information. So to make sure we're fully understanding things:

We've got CommitCRM 5.5 (non-sql) running on Server 2008 R2 (we do not use the CommitCRM web module), so is this a viable path?

- Upgrade to CommitCRM 5.7
- Upgrade to CommitCRM SQL Edition
- Purchase & Install Email Connector Add-On
- Install IIS, MySQL, PHP, OBDC Driver on same server as CommitCRM is running on
- Install/configure Interlink

So from where I'm at, expenses would be the CommitCRM upgrade, SQL module, email connector, Interlink and any additional user accounts needed. Sound right?

[northwestmsp]

Re: Interlink Feedback

One more question: how many SQL concurrent licenses does Interlink use?

[dprichard]

Re: Interlink Feedback

It only uses 1 license.

[dprichard]

Re: Interlink Feedback

And to answer your previous question, yes that sounds about right. CommitCRM can answer your license specific questions, but I think you have it covered.

[dprichard]

Re: Interlink Feedback

We posted some more videos on Vimeo of our new iPhone interface. We are almost ready to release it. Check it out or contact me at david@dsghelp.com if you would like to setup a demo and I can walk you through it.

http://vimeo.com/user10185820/videos