people

How we help enterprise communities do more with Discourse

Danielle Lloyd

• 4 min read
Meet the Discourse Customer Projects team. Illustrations of the team.

We know that building community isn’t one-size-fits-all. Every organization has its own voice, values, and vision, and your community platform should be able to accommodate yours. Our out-of-the-box software is powerful, and when your community needs something custom, its flexibility means you’re not stuck waiting on a product roadmap. Our Customer Projects Team can step in to build exactly what an organization needs.

The team includes migrations experts who have moved thousands of conversations from legacy tools, designers who craft sleek, branded experiences that blend seamlessly into your digital ecosystem, and developers who build custom functionality to meet complex, organization-specific needs. The Customer Projects team is the bridge between what Discourse can already do and what your community needs it to do.

In this post, I’m sharing key highlights from our recent webinar featuring the team and their approach to complex migrations, favorite projects, and insights into how we help organizations shape Discourse around their goals. 

Let’s meet the team and explore what makes them tick.

Danielle, Customer Success Manager

“[The Customer Projects team] makes Discourse look awesome, work brilliantly, and fit your world perfectly.” 

I kicked off the webinar by setting the stage, the Customer Projects Team is dedicated to supporting enterprise customers with:

  • Advanced customization
  • Complex migrations
  • Technical implementation
  • Long-term support.

If your community needs to look exactly like your brand, integrate with your internal tools, or do something a little “off-menu,” this is the team that makes it happen.

Dave, Director of Product

"Discourse isn't just a product—it's a platform."

Dave offered an important perspective: while many people know Discourse as a community forum, what sets us apart is our ability to become part of a larger ecosystem. Whether it’s embedding Discourse into an existing customer portal or making it indistinguishable from your main site through design and SSO, our platform can be molded around your use case.

“When we work with our enterprise customers we’re also partnering with them to build the community as a product that they have in mind, that they are imagining.” 

Coco, Migrations Team Lead

 “We can help people move from any platform into Discourse and when I say any platform I mean any…Slack, Rocketchat, it could be a csv file, a text file.”  

Migration is often one of the biggest hurdles when switching community platforms. Coco’s team specializes in making that process smooth, accurate, and minimally disruptive. And Coco didn’t even mention some of the most complex that we’ve done for Khoros communities. You can check out our recent webinar on moving from Khoros to Discourse. 

One standout story? A Slack migration where they used AI to generate topic titles from chat threads (which don’t have titles). It was a creative solution to make Slack content feel native in Discourse—and it worked beautifully.

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Pro Tip: The migration process includes guidance on how to prep your users for change. Getting buy-in early goes a long way!

Discover what’s possible with Discourse customization

I walked attendees through several real-world examples of customized Discourse communities:

  • GitLab & Adobe: Familiar forum experience with subtle branding tweaks.
  • Asana Community: A heavily customized, beautifully integrated experience that feels like an extension of their main site.
  • Amazon Developer Forums: Structured by product area with clean navigation and custom design elements.

Want to see what’s possible? Discourse Discover features a wide range of communities all built with Discourse. 

Jamie, Director of Customer Projects

“We’ve grown from one or two people to a global team of engineers, designers, and migrations experts.”

Jamie shared how the Customer Projects team evolved from rotating engineers handling customer requests on an ad-hoc basis to having a fully dedicated department embedded in enterprise-scale projects. Some customers even work with the same engineers for years.

Whether it’s a small UI tweak or a full-scale implementation that spans continents and departments, this team has done it all.

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Fun Fact: The team recently helped simulate 1.3 billion monthly page views for a client’s large-scale launch. Not only did they hit the target but they also identified key performance upgrades that now benefit all Discourse users.

Jeff & Mark, Engineering Managers

“We ask: Is this feature just for one customer—or could it benefit everyone?”

Jeff and Mark talked about how customer ideas often become open-source plugins (and even core features). One example? A plugin for custom topic lists that began as a tailored request but became useful for multiple customers. It’s now shared as an open-source project for others to use.

They also emphasized how official plugins go through rigorous testing to ensure they scale well across large forums. Unofficial plugins are more experimental and may not be supported on hosted plans.

Derek, Designer

“We make sure everything aligns with the customer’s brand.”

Derek helps enterprise customers bring their visual identity to life—whether through custom themes, color palettes, or interactive components. From subtle design harmony to full-blown identity overhauls, he ensures each community feels like home.

Real Talk: What It’s Like Behind the Scenes

The team shared some favorite (and challenging) moments:

  • Load Testing at Scale (Jamie): Hundreds of virtual servers testing billions of requests—not just cool tech, but performance improvements that helped all users.
  • Push Notifications (Jeff): Balancing privacy with usability across different communities.
  • Video Hosting (Jamie & Dave): Improving native video support is on the roadmap—but gallery-style layouts or custom video libraries are already available through projects.
  • Static Pages (Gabriel & Jamie): Customers often ask for static landing pages. While not yet part of core, we’ve built working solutions for enterprise clients—and hope to make it more broadly available in the future.
  • ServiceNow & Zendesk Integrations: We’ve helped turn support tickets into seamless experiences via modals in Discourse—with real-time updates on ticket status right inside topics.

So… What’s Next?

The Customer Projects Team continues to grow. While every client brings something different to the table, one thing stays constant: our commitment to helping communities succeed.

If you’ve ever thought:

  • “I wish my forum could do X…”
  • “Can we integrate with our internal systems?”
  • “What if our community looked like part of our main site?”

This is your sign to reach out. We’d love to chat!

📬 Email us at team@discourse.org or talk to your CSM if you’re already working with us.

Thanks to everyone who joined the webinar. If you missed it or want to rewatch any part of it, it is available here.