Verint Community Frequently Asked Questions

Verint is The Customer Engagement Company, and our focus is helping organizations worldwide to meet their strategic goals. We achieve this by simplifying, modernizing and automating customer engagement throughout enterprise organizations.
And Verint plays no small part in the matter either, as global leaders with over two decades of experience in our field. Today, Verint works with over 10,000 organizations across 180 countries (including over 80% of the Fortune 100), making us one of the leading authorities in customer engagement solutions.

In August 2015, Verint acquired Telligent to complement its contact center software portfolio with a leading, best of breed social community platform. The result is a more socially-engaging and collaborative experience.

Verint Community is an online community platform designed to help elevate customer, partner, and employee engagement, improve customer service, and enhance digital marketing and social commerce. Shipped with all the familiar crowd pleasing social applications like Blogs, Forums for Q&A and Discussions, Wikis, Articles, Activity Streams and Multi-media Resource Galleries and more, Verint Community reinforces engagement and community participation with social services like ratings, likes, voting, gamification, reputation scoring and point systems. 100% of the platform functionality is available via a rich, well documented APIs, so customers can create experiences as unique as their brand either as a standalone community experience or as a blended digital experiences across other web properties and enterprise systems. Built-in developer tools like Theme Studio, Widget Studio, and Automation Studio allow customers and partners to create add-ons and extensions and share them for free or fee in our Verint Marketplace.

A community platform is a software product that provides an integrated suite of modern user experience applications (forums, wikis, blogs, articles, ideation, media, profiles, calendaring and activity streams) and social services (likes, ratings, reviews, and comments) with a full user experience and RESTful platform APIs.

Our most common use cases are customer support communities and digital marketing communities, but we also work with a lot of private member communities and internal employee networks.

Verint Community is recognized by Forrester and Gartner as a leader and visionary, respectively, in their coverage of the social software market.

Companies and organizations around the world use Verint Community to create meaningful communities for their customers. Check out the Resource Center for case studies, e-books and other great resources about Verint Community and how our customers use it.

For pricing and licensing information, please see our licensing and pricing page.

• SaaS Environment hosted in a Amazon Web Services (AWS) world-class data centers around the world that provides a 100% network uptime SLA.  AWS holds industry-standard SSAE16 SOC 2 Type II attestation and ISO IEC 27001 certification.

• SaaS Services delivered via enterprise-grade infrastructure built for high availability including load-balanced arrays of web servers, clustered database servers,  and highly redundant storage systems.

• SaaS Operations are ITSM/ITIL-based and provide 24x7x365 monitoring and support of all infrastructure and services.

• SaaS Security employs an in-depth framework of threat counter-measures including firewalls, intrusion detection systems, continuous vulnerability scanning, and host-based protection.  All systems feed into a Security Operations Center that provides 24x7x365 monitoring and incident response.

Oh, our software is approved for (and is used in) the US Department of Defense’s Secure Private Internet (SIPRnet), used by Department of Defense forces such as US Navy, US Marine Corp, US Air Force and NATO. So you could say we take security pretty seriously!

Well, that is quite simple. Drop us a note at telligent-sales@verint.com and we’ll follow-up.

Verint Community can be run on-premises or in the cloud and Verint Community gives you 100% control of what your community looks like.

Verint Community is a developer/designer-friendly product with a well-documented set of RESTful APIs and numerous open source integration kits. Verint Community is implemented and used by numerous agencies that deliver incredible communities for their customers.

Yes, basically it is awesome sauce for building customer communities. Be sure and check out our Resource Center for case studies, e-books and other great resources about Verint Community.

Verint Community 12.0, download here, was released in February 2021. For more information about that release, check out our Community Blog

Running Verint Community can be as simple as running a single server to multiple clustered servers with dedicated task / job servers. It is designed as a service-oriented architecture that can easily scale up and is built on Microsoft .NET technology, Microsoft IIS web server, Microsoft SQL database server, and Apache Solr search technology.

Please review system requirements for specific details.

Verint Community uses Microsoft SQL Server for its database technology.

Please review system requirements for more details on versions and configuration recommendations.

Verint Community uses the Lucene/Solr open source enterprise search platform as the default internal search provider. Solr is further optimized by Verint Community to weight search results based on content interactions (analytics) and quality scoring (content and people).

Please see system requirements for specific details.

We release a major version of Verint Community approximately twice per year (one major and one minor version, e.g. 12.0 and 12.1). Service packs are made available every 10-12 weeks. For support customers, we also offer a hotfix escalation process.

We’re flexible – Verint Community can be deployed with one of the following options with the ability to change at a later point in time.

For example, a lot of our customers start with our Cloud or SaaS option and later move to on-premises. Why? As their community becomes a more critical part of their business they want to integrate with other systems that may be hosted in another data center or with a provider like Azure or Amazon Web Service.

1. You Host (On-Premises) – you run the software ‘on-premises’ in your own data center, Azure or Amazon Web Services.
2. We Host (Cloud or SaaS) – we run the software in our Cloud or SaaS environments. Cloud option has the same great service levels and support, monitoring and upkeep as our SaaS offering The difference between Cloud and SaaS options is if you decide during the term to self-host in a data center or service provider of your choice, you can. You just give us 30 days notice and you only pay for the hosting services you’ve used. Note: We’re told by many happy customers that we’re the only forums and community software provider at our level that offers this kind of flexibility.

Basically, we want to make it easy to run our software for whatever way works best for you.

A typical commercial community will have two web servers and a single database server. On average, you can expect each web server to handle 120,000 – 150,000 page views per month.

Our larger customers have 10+ servers, but these are for communities that serve over 1b requests per month (page views, RSS, and API calls).

PS: we would be more than happy to sell you 10 servers, but you probably don’t need that many.

Yes, Verint Community was designed first and foremost as a platform. This includes:

• Native API
• Direct Platform API (RESTful web service)
• Remote iFrame widgets
• Embedded native functionality
• RSS feeds

We also provide a number of open source SDKs (published on GitHub) and tools for creating new UX using Verint Community’s Widget Studio development tools that retain API compatibility with the platform APIs.

Yes, Verint Community integrates with a variety of CRM systems, the most popular of which is Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. Verint provides an open source Salesforce SDK on GitHub that enables customers to integrate activities, cases, identity and more between Salesforce and the community. Custom integrations have been done for SAP as well as Microsoft Dynamics though the Verint Community platform API.

Yes, Verint Community provides deep integration with CMS systems this is a fundamental part of our go-to-market strategy. The best examples of this is Verint’s long-standing commitment to Sitecore. Verint Community provides a full suite of integration samples and a Sitecore specific SDK on GitHub. The base Verint Community .NET SDK can be used to integrate with any ASP.NET content management system includes Umbraco, Sitefinity, Kentico and others.

Yes, Verint Community integrates with the analytics providers including Google Analytics, Tableau, Omniture, Webtrends, Sitecore and Smarter Stats. Verint Community has added specific integration points for web analytics products to make it very easy to enable web analytics tracking.

There are several integrations available with more on the way. We publish all of the integrations on GitHub with full source:

• Verint Community SDK for Sitecore – use Verint Community functionality in Sitecore.
• Verint Community Samples for Sitecore – samples for using Verint Community in Sitecore.
• Verint Community WebParts for SharePoint – use Verint Community functionality in SharePoint.
• SharePoint Connector for Verint Community – use SharePoint functionality in Verint Community.
• SalesForce Connector for Verint Community – use SalesForce functionality in Verint Community.
• Lync Connector for Verint Community – use Lync functionality in Verint Community.
• Mobile SDK for Verint Community (Cordova-based project) – built iOS and Android apps for Verint Community.
• Verint Community .NET SDK – use Verint Community within any .NET application.

Verint Community uses double-byte storage and supports right-to-left layouts – that is a technical way of saying that we support content and layouts in any language. Now, technically we haven’t tried Klingon, but our developers assure us that it would work too. We also have partners, like Lionbridge, that have built some great tools to auto-translate content so people in Germany could see content that was posted in English auto-translated to German (and vice-versa).

In addition to allowing any content to be stored, we also support language translations of the application itself. These include things like the menus and other display elements. We support the following (in addition to English):

• Simplified Chinese
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Spanish
• Dutch
• Brazilian Portuguese

Our language translations are simply XML files that you can modify and we have customers that have translated our community software into several languages on their own.

Yes, community managers and administrators determine what data is captured in addition to common user information (i.e., username, email address).

Additional data fields may be set up as required. Verint Community also allows for authentication and registration through Open Standards (OAuth), enabling users to sign in and create user accounts using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other OAuth providers.

Additional profile data can be synced automatically from other sources such as Active Directory, SalesForce or proprietary data stores.

Yes, each member in Verint Community has a unique profile page that displays relevant information the user provides at registration or after joining the community. Users may provide as much or as little information about themselves as they like (including profile fields required at the time of registration).

Note: the user profile page can be disabled for scenarios where the community is integrated with an existing website. For example, customers that integrate us with popular CMS’s like Sitecore typically prefer that the CMS host the user profile.

The community manager may create any profile fields and decide which of those fields are required/optional, which are displayed, and which are editable/read-only. Profile data can be synced automatically from other sources such as Active Directory, SalesForce or proprietary data stores.

Yes, Verint Community is optimized for search engines. Content title, body text, tag and other elements used for SEO are published within the page in an SEO friendly manner. Furthermore, the URL can be optimized by the end publisher to control what keywords are shown. All content is accessible via standard links and an auto-generated XML sitemap helps popular search engines quickly find content. Lastly, other techniques are used to ensure the search engines only find relevant content with some content being automatically blocked from search engines.

Verint Community uses the Lucene/Solr open source enterprise search platform as the default internal search provider. Solr is further optimized by Verint Community to weight search results based on content interactions (analytics) and quality scoring (content and people). Search results are also integrated with the security infrastructure to trim search results based on the searching user’s permissions – in other words, you can’t find what you aren’t allowed access to.

Yes, Verint Community supports Open Search and can be integrated with other search platforms already in use.

Yes, the widget-and-layout framework in Verint Community allows for extensive customizability, including the ability to create bespoke content pages at the site and/or group level. However, we recommend integrating with a CMS for delivering deeper personalization of targeted content.

Yes, Verint Community includes a content recommendation engine, an “Ask a question” feature that promotes potential answers while a question is being asked, and a weekly or daily email newsletter that contains content personalized to the end user based on analytics and the recommendation engine.

Ok, we put that in to see if you’re actually reading these frequently asked questions. But the answer is yes, our communities connect people around the world.

Yes, Verint Community’s forums application includes question & answer threads with a verification workflow. This works as follows:

• People post questions in the forums and invited other users to suggest answers.
• Either the question asker or community manager may mark any reply as a verified answer.
• Verified answers may also later be rejected and replaced with a new answer if information subsequently changes, invalidating the original answer.
• Individual answers may also be rated by site users.
• Answers can be promoted into wikis or articles as well. The new Articles feature in v12 have feedback loops and approval workflows, too!

Yes, Verint Community’s forum application supports open discussion threads. Community managers determine which types of discussions are allowed in an individual forum, enabling users to select either Q&A or discussion, if both are enabled.

Yes, Verint Community uses a rating service to allow people to like and/or rate content, as well as a commenting service to enable more detailed feedback. These services are not necessarily tied to user generated content types (e.g., blog posts, forum threads, etc.) only and may be extended to be used on external content, such as a product page hosted on a separate content management system.

Blogs may be self-provisioned and community managers can put in rules. For instance; only accounts with an email address belonging to the company may create blogs. Blogs can also be easily created by community managers through a new blog wizard.

Yes, blogs may be added anywhere within the community and through the APIs blogs can be embedded within other websites. However, unlike the popular WordPress blogging platform, Verint Community is best used as a pure blogging platform vs. a hybrid blog/CMS platform. Instead we recommend integrating with a web content management system such as Sitecore.

Yes, Verint Community provides several capabilities to include content from social networks:

• Widgets and plugins to pull content from broader social networks like Facebook and Twitter. These components can be configured to target specific search terms.
• Blog mirroring configures a Verint Community blog to mirror content from a public RSS feed.
• Relevant updates from Twitter can be included in the site’s activity stream.

Yes, through Verint Community’s APIs, content can be published and pushed from Telligent Community to any website. This includes:

• Remote iFrame widgets
• Embedded native functionality
• Direct Platform API (RESTful web service)
• RSS feeds

For Web Content Management Systems Verint Community provide open source SDKs designed to integrate directly into those WCM platforms (see Verint Community SDK for Sitecore).

Yes, the included HTML5 video transcoding service enables videos of any format to be uploaded to Verint Community. These videos transcoded to HTML5 are playable in the browser without requiring client-side plugins (including mobile devices). Video, audio and other rich media can be added to any user-generated content through the standard rich text editor.

Yes, Verint Community includes a document preview capability which allows for common document formats such as Microsoft Office PowerPoint, Excel, Word and other document types such as PDF to be displayed in the browser and on mobile devices without requiring the corresponding applications to be installed.

Yes, Verint Community provides a number of tools to help manage user activity within the community:

• Automated rules engine – automate actions within the community.
• Keyword filtering – remove/replace keywords that occur in content.
• Whitelist HTML filtering – whitelist of allowed HTML that can be included in user-generated content.

Yes, Verint Community provides a number of tools to help manage user activity within the community:

• Automated rules engine – automate actions within the community.
• Keyword filtering – remove/replace keywords that occur in content.
• Whitelist HTML filtering – whitelist of allowed HTML that can be included in user-generated content.
• Auto-Spam Management – enables community managers to establish rules to measure user-generated content against configured scoring thresholds prior to publication.
• Forum and comment moderation – ability to move content into a moderation queue prior to publication.
• Abuse management – tools that allow end users to vote content as abusive to help community managers moderate content.

Verint Community provides extensive security controls. Telligent Community makes use of authentication (validating identity) and authorization (grant that identity rights or denying them rights). Authentication is can be self-registration, invitation-based, or private.

Authentication can be configured to use a variety of different sources, such as open standards OAuth providers (LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter), SAML, LDAP, Active Directory, and any custom single sign-on provider.

Authorization is done through roles which are logical groupings of community members. Example roles: Everyone, Anonymous, Community Manager, etc. You can create your own roles to model your business needs. Applications within Verint Community expose permissions controlling what actions are allowed. For example, read a blog, post to a blog, delete a blog, edit a blog, create a blog. Permissions are granted to roles and users are assigned to roles.

Yes, Verint Community provides several mechanisms for ensuring authenticity. This starts with the authentication system, which can use trusted identity sources such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. All content passes through a set of rules before being published and customers have the opportunity to add additional safety measures and checks to ensure content meets certain standards prior to publication.

Yes, all users in Verint Community are assigned to one or more roles (logical groupings of community members). Roles can then be assigned permissions that dictate what a user in the role may do within the site. These permissions are configurable at the site, group and application (blog, forum, wiki, etc.) level to enable very fine grain control over who views published content.

Yes, this is a fundamental strength of Verint Community. Through the configurable permissions and access levels, content that a user does not have permission to see is never seen within the site. Content is automatically trimmed from search, activity streams, forums, RSS, APIs and more.

Yes, Verint Community is designed to easily integrate with 3rd party Web Content Management platforms. Integration can be as simple as shared sign-on (SSO), aggregating Verint Community RSS feeds, embedding Verint Community iFrame widgets or can be more natively integrated directly through Verint Community’s platform API (RESTful web services) and native SDKs designed specifically for Web Content Management Systems (such as Sitecore).

Yes, Verint Community includes a full gamification, rules engine and points systems. The rules engine allows non-technical community managers to create rules which can be used for gamification of the community: allowing users to earn recognition through badges, unlock new capabilities, and participate in leaderboards.

Yes, Verint Community provides a number of analytics capabilities focused around user behavior, user reputation and content quality scoring. This quality scoring features tracks interactions of the user and the content they publish and applies internal scores/weights to both. Those score impact where content shows up, whose content gets promoted.

Yes, using the quality scoring of both content and users, the recommendation engine can filter content that is most appropriate to either the user or the content being viewed.

Yes, Verint Community measures content contributions and interactions through a set of analytic capabilities delivered as site widgets (reusable UX element). These widgets may be configured to create a Telligent Analytics dashboard at the site level and/or within individual groups.

Yes, Verint Community includes a Community Health Summary that measures the “heartbeat” of the community (or group). Verint has been investing in making the analytics data available to specialized 3rd party analytics tools as community data is often combined with other digital marketing activities.

Yes, Verint Community is fully responsive and adaptive and will work “as-is” on any modern mobile device.

Verint Community includes the following applications. These applications can be organized into groups or can be used separately:

• Forums
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Articles
• Ideation
• Media / File Galleries
• Calendaring
• Polls
• Pages
• Private Messages
• Chat

Below is a partial list of the services that Verint Community includes. These services are available as RESTful APIs and can be easily added to other content. For example, if you are a customer of Sitecore you can use these services to add a more interactive experience around your Sitecore content:

• Comments
• Ratings
• Reviews
• Likes
• Tags
• Reputation
• Points
• Badging

Verint Community organizes applications into groups. Groups are effectively micro-communities that can have their own permissions and members. Groups provide a logical mapping for business use cases. For example, you could create a public group for product support and a private partner enablement group. Verint Community provides a set of applications that are used to manage the community:

• Profiles
• Search
• Control Panel
• Rules Engine
• Abuse Management