COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FORUM

Category

Community Portal (Node.js + Angular)

Overview

A mid-sized company needed a unified community portal where customers could discuss products, submit support tickets, and share feedback. Existing forums and help desks were fragmented and not user-friendly.

How the Problem Was Solved

Technology Stack:

Node.js (Express) for backend, Angular for frontend, MongoDB for data.

Key Features:

  • Discussion forums with voting and tagging
  • Customer support ticketing system
  • Feedback and feature request boards
  • Gamification elements (badges, points)

Approach:

  • Single Sign-On (SSO): Integrated with the company’s existing user accounts for seamless logins.
  • Modular Microservices: Separate services for forums, support tickets, and analytics to allow independent scaling.
  • Real-time Communication: Used WebSockets for live notifications (e.g., new post, ticket updates).

The Results

Impact on the Business:

  • A 60% reduction in support email volume as users self-resolved issues via community Q&A.
  • Increased product insights from user feedback data, accelerating product improvements.

Cost:

  • ~100K USD
  • Moderate investment in hosting and third-party integration for SSO.

Time:

  • 6-month development cycle; incremental feature releases every 2 weeks.

Lessons Learned

  • What Went Well:
    • Community-driven support significantly decreased support team workload.
    • Node.js microservices simplified adding new features like event calendars and user polls.
  • What We Would Do Differently Next Time
    • Plan more user engagement strategies from launch (e.g., initial content seeding, community moderators).
    • Incorporate advanced analytics dashboards earlier to measure community health metrics.
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