First, I am a disappointed in Bruce's unprofessional response as he is a Moderator.  Moderators are privy to a bit more information.  We provide our Moderators an area to discuss things directly with us so that they are fully informed and can provide feedback and spark changes before the public may see things.  I expect him to revise his post and be a bit more professional.

1) This is not a Forums solution but it does have functionality to allow for that method of communication via the Q&A discussion types.

2) What the SmarterTools Community is primality intended to provide is a solution for the 200+ SUGGESTIONS AND BUGS that are sent privately to us each month.  Customers have requested from the moment we provided the public forums that we also provide ability to publicly Discuss and Vote on SUGGESTIONS AND BUGS.  Customer didn't feel like we were prioritizing based on demand and wanted to feel like they were part of the development process.  

3) The most requested feature by SmarterTrack customers was a Community.  Instead of finding a solution for us to use and leaving our SmarterTrack customers without, we took it upon ourselves to tackle the VERY ambitious effort of building an integrated FORUMS, VOTING and overall COMMUNICATIONS platform.  And as we do with all our products, we attempt to use all the functionality in our products so that we can build the VERY best products!

Are there missing features compared to the forums that we intend to incorporate?  Of Course!

Are we looking for feedback and would like these SUGGESTIONS to be put added into this Community as separate threads so customers can Vote on them?  Yes!

Does the Community already provide functionality the Forums doesn't provide?  Yes

Are we determined to make the Community feature incredible?  Heck Yea!

There is a LOT of GOOD about everything we are doing.  We look forward to your feedback and we look forward to building an incredible solution!

Thanks,

Tim Uzzanti