Zammad is great! I love the interface and the architecture.
But unfortunately the lack of mobile makes it useless in many cases. I know this has been discussed on GitHub already, but the corresponding issues are locked.
Why?
Only with mobile apps, we can use the full support of notifications or stuff like virtual assistants (Siri, Google Assistant, …)
The look and feel is better than with a responsive website.
Integration with system functions like phone calls etc. is far better.
You can also use fingerprint sensors, video chat etc. eventually.
How?
So, I would love to contribute to a mobile app. But I can‘t start it completely alone, because of different reasons:
The architecture should be discussed broadly
Lack of time
I want to ensure, that the number of people who can maintain the app is relatively big from the beginning
The UI should be discussed with or cuntributed by Zeughaus.
Ideas
My first idea would be to use a framework like React native or Vue native. However, lincense stuff etc. must be discussed. Maybe a proper language is better?
Create a wrapper for the API
Keep integration and UI as independent as possible (idea: build the tools, that for example Zeughaus can create the looks)
Fingerprint authentication
Integration of phone calls, video calls, notifications, lock screen widgets.
If we find a team of 5 or more people, I think we could get this done. This would boost Zammad in my eyes massively. Zammad would get just perfect for so many cases.
How to go on?
Is this a good platform for the discussion of this topic?
i think this is a feature for very small companies/teams. I can’t see that bigger teams will using a mobile app because its a secruity nightmare for example
Futhermore i’m in the team “apps are dead long live the mobile site”. In my opionion the trend goes away from apps because you can access most or all needed stuff via eg. chrome.
Why is security in a mobile app worse than in a web app?
I get your „apps are dead“ point, but all the great stuff like push notifications, Siri/Google assistant, widgets and fingerprint sensors (security !) would get lost…
And I don‘t understand, why it works only for small teams — if you just see your assigned tickets, it‘s absolutely no problem to have a clear interface.
This is especially perfect for teams that are not specialized in support. Consider the case where a company, which develops hardware of any kind, needs to answer mechanical questions. The construction team could answer these questions easily besides their normal tasks.
Personally I wouldn’t mind either a native app or webapp with mobile support.
Our team is quite split in that discussion to be honest.
Native apps offer more options, more important is the following:
caching function for offline usuage (your internet connection dies)
synch feature (as your connection is back up, push the changes to the tickets) [This is not meant as a “only work offline” feature, but rather for places like data centers where it can happen, that you don’t have full internet access all the time
Actually this native app would be interesting for hosting companies in my opinion, as your service technican can simply carry a mobile phone or tablett around instead of a whole laptop. Changes would be in real time as long as he has a connection. We could not aquire a customer as he had this need (and we cannot fullfill this in a acceptable time span)
Personally I see a potential security issue in assistant integration like Siri and Google Assistant - the information you can dictate to the system will leave your country and thus you could put information into a “stranger” cloud where you don’t want those information -ever-.
I like the idea of integration with phone calls on your phone - this also leads to potential privacy problems, as you have to share those information with zammad (no matter if it’s a private call or not).
I can discuss this topic on the next meeting if you want to.
You‘re absolutely right with the privacy concers regarding virtual assistants (I‘m not a fan of them anyways), the point I wanted to make with them: There are things, that just aren‘t possible with a responsive web app. And to leave all options open, I would definitely prefer a native app.
The same accounts to the phone calls: There are many things to discuss, but just a responsive web app would exclude this instantly.
In terms of use cases: I don‘t see ticket systems as just a support/help desk technology but rather as a intgration solution for every B2B and B2C communication — no matter if it‘s support, inquiries, invoicing or other stuff.
Most companies (especially small and medium-sized enterprises) rely mainly on email communication. Other channels don‘t exist or are not tracked. This leads to lots of disorder (someone forgot to mention a phone call, to put somebody in CC…).
A ticket system solves exactly this. Communication is topic (ticket) based and not person or inbox based. You can retrace all the communication and open this overview also to your customer or supplier.
And in these cases, the agents aren‘t just the support department of the company, it‘s the whole company.
But this concept just doesn‘t work if you don‘t have mobile support. People need the commodity to answer ingoing communication when they‘re away from their desk. And with mobile support you can also cover what I expect to grow massively in the next years: Messenger based B2B communication. People will have the desire to use the technologies they enjoy in their private lives also in ther job.
We’re about to migrate from Freshdesk to Zammad (currently near the end of the evaluation process) and a mobile app is a MUST for us.
So if we go the Zammad route, we are willing to create a mobile client for Zammad. I have already a very concrete roadmap for that and a basic implementation could be done quickly thanks to the good Zammad API. It would be a cross-platform web app with native look&feel, including push notifications (important for us). We currently sell apps that meet these criterias, so I’m pretty confident it’s feasible.
It will probably be released as Open Source, if there is interest.
We are also evaluation Helpdesk solutions. We are currently testing service cloud, freshdesk and starting today with zammad.
Zammad looks cool, big pro is the integration of sipgate. big con is the missing app.
so jampy if you create a mobile client this will be great and if we go the zammad way, we will be interessted in it too. Cause without a app with push notification we can’t got the zammad way. We need this for our standby time outside of the business hours.
We now also use Zammad. But unfortunately the connection of mobile devices is missing. Would be very grateful if it came as soon as possible.
Is there already first information if what is in planning?
I’m currently very busy because it’s the most intense period right now (lots of presentations). I think I can start working on it in March and a first working prototype should be doable in 3-4 days I’m confident as it’s mostly coding and the concept is ready in my mind…
Mobile app is perceived as a requirement by our customers.
But indeed, a mobile web site would be enough, the caching of data that a native app may offer isn’t required.
Our customers agents are mainly using desktop PCs, but there are 3 cases in which they need to access Zammad using their phone :
when they are out in the field
when they are in charge of emergency tickets outside of office hours
when they are managers and need to take a quick look to an issue between two doors
I do hope that’s a feature that’ll be available soon, that’s the only one blocking the adoption of Zammad for us.
As already written dozens of time: We have it on our list.
We can’t give you a date at the moment, as we’re currently focussed on other things.
We know how much it’s needed, but good things sometimes need their time.
We’re a rather small team which makes it difficult to make everyone happy and believe us, we’re really trying to!
One question: for us, there is no need to have a native app, as we don’t want to have to ask our users to install a third-party app. What we’d need is integration of the chat feature into our own app. So that users don’t need to leave our ecosystem to access chat support, or if no agent is available, the form. Is there a plan on building such an API? Or is that something that’s already supported and that I overlooked?
Any update on the native app? We might have some spare time in the next week and can start developing the app. It will be very basic as we don’t have many resources, but could be just for browsing issues and so on. My idea is to develop it in Vue.js, as it’s a technology I’d like to work on
I am totally with Adrian on this. A good ticketing system can replace a lot of useless email and make things a lot more transparent and trackable. Really good for SMEs!
I imagine something like two usecases:
Create, Accept, assign, forward and/or work on incoming tickets (1 Role type)
Individual “task list” for each employee or external team member with assigned and open tickets. (all roles).
Point 2 is great because it could be rolled out to so many employees in so many different use cases.
We would be greatly interested to help with the development, I have a Product Manager who could help out.
@MrGeneration has there been any further discussion or progress? Who is running point on this, maybe you can put me in touch?
Welcome to the community.
I’ll write this again, I just can’t write it often enough:
We have this on our roadmap, but we can’t tell you when it’s done at the moment.
This being said, we’re currently not working on this.
Sorry about that.
If you want to support us with this step, please feel welcome to contact us at sales [at] zammad [dot] com. Please be aware that we estimate this as very time consuming which makes it very difficult to us at the moment.
