The beta won't roll out today, no. We don't have an exact release date at this point either. We had planned a February release and the help desk (non-public) alpha does work fine for our own purposes at this point - we've been using it to process support emails over the past two months - but the general sense is that certain key features are still missing from a customer point of view. We're still testing a bunch of features as well and creating sample tickets for when the beta does roll out.
We'll check in with development next week to see if they have more information. Sorry to disappoint you! We're anxious to get the beta out as well. The alpha has made our lives much easier, so we think you'll love the beta, once it's ready for customer use.
