Your entire circle of frustration is trying to make a plugin be something it is not. CB Activity is not and never will be a help desk. It's an activity stream. Help desk usage will never be considered into its design goals. For your usage you're better off using something like EasyDiscuss, which is literally a help desk solution.
At any rate if you still want to force it you can try to do so using a custom activity stream. With CB Activity 4.0.0 you can create an unlimited amount of streams. This is done using the Asset parameter to specify the location activity belongs. You'll need to create a Joomla menu item, module, or even activity field then set the Asset parameter to something like "helpdesk". Now any activity posted on that stream will be unique to that stream (except recent activity as it shows all activity). See the below for the Asset parameter on a Joomla menu item to Community Builder > Plugins > CB Activity menu type.
You can override every parameter of a stream from that tab as well. This means you can turn commenting off/on, comment replies off/on, and much much more.
As for uploading directly to a stream I've addressed this multiple times. It's planned already. I had 2 major rewrites to do in order to lay the foundation for that to be possible. Both of which are finally complete and can review implementing direct upload soon.
Sharing API has not been implemented yet so no it's not possible to have a button on a Joomla article to share it on the activity stream. Sharing API is planned in a later release. Like API and Follow API has just been implemented however so it's possible to Like an article now for example. The foundation for Notification API has started for onsite notifications. Conversations API is also planned to basically allow comment streams between two people to act as chat or private messages. A lot is planned for CB Activity. It will continue to move forward with newer and better functionality. Everything is done in steps and not all at once. There's always room for improvement.
CB Gallery does not have hashtags so no you won't be able to use hashtags in gallery descriptions to show a gallery of images with that hashtag or anything of the sort, but might be a good idea to review in a much later release and have added a feature ticket for it.
forge.joomlapolis.com/issues/6698
In regards being forced to use something else. We do not want to force you to use CB or any of our products. You should always use what best fits your project. We have always stood by that belief. Trying to force something to do something it's not designed to do will just frustration everyone involved.
krileon
