· The new open source helpdesk and support system Zammad takes stock four weeks after the initial release and brings its first update with version 1.1. It provides planned as well as new features requested by users.
The new open-source helpdesk and support system Zammad takes stock four weeks after the initial release and brings its first update with version 1.1. It provides planned as well as new features requested by users.
“The start of Zammad was very successful and we struck the right chord, as downloads, test accounts, and feature requests exceeded our expectations”, said Martin Edenhofer, CEO of Zammad GmbH. “We received entirely positive results regarding technology and user interface and we will provide monthly updates to our users.”
Our users primarily include administrators who want to evaluate an alternative to Zendesk, but also first prospective customers who are using the trouble ticket system OTRS which was invented by Mr. Edenhofer. As a response to great demand, Zammad now provides installer packages for Debian/Ubuntu in addition to the CentOS packages. The other new features are:
Authentication security has been further improved. In addition to username and password, users can now authenticate with Access Token or OAuth2. Each application provides its own login credentials with limited access permission and a defined expiration date. Developers can find further instructions on implementation.
The internal REST API v1.0 has been officially released for external use with the current update. Zammad provides its first own add-on with the clients PHP and Ruby.
For incoming calls, Zammad displays the relevant customer contact (if available in Zammad) directly in the user interface and stores it in the team telephone log. The necessary search is executed in the background and covers all contents of the Zammad database including contact history and e-mails. Furthermore, the outgoing telephone number (caller ID) can be configured based on the number dialed. This is useful, for example, to suppress the telephone number on outgoing calls or to define a telephone number for outgoing international calls.
With the new Zammad Integration for Slack, you can now follow real-time changes to selected tickets in a Slack channel. The integration bundles ticket information centrally and provides more transparency.
Easy contact maintenance and more transparency: Customer contacts and their organizational affiliation can be automatically maintained in Zammad. Customers can see their own tickets as well as tickets of their organization. The support agent can see the organizational affiliation and all tickets of the relevant organization.
This last feature was a contribution from the "Golden Ticket” contest held together with Zammad launch and we were able to implement it within four weeks.
Half of the user downloads are that of the source code. The remaining downloads are distributed evenly between Docker image and RPM files.
“The downloads are in high four-digit numbers and show that interest in Zammad lies mainly in the German-speaking area. Nevertheless, we registered downloads in three-digit numbers from the UK and USA which underlines the international potential of Zammad” said Martin Edenhofer.
Zammad works with every modern web browser and provides all functions of a state-of-the-art ticket system. But thanks to the newly developed user interface it can be easily handled by users without high training costs. The WebApp bundles queries from various communication channels into one place so that agents or service teams can accept service requests via e-mail, telephone, chat, Facebook or Twitter and answer them or assign them to their colleagues. A modern dashboard displays information about the current situation, about tickets and their state as well as the latest actions. Customers can also see the status of their tickets at any time. One of the first customer references for Zammad GmbH is the famous Linuxhotel.
The open-source software started in October 2016 is based on state-of-the-art web technologies such as WebApp/HTML5, WebSockets, and REST in the frontend and uses Ruby on Rails in the backend. Thanks to its extensive REST-API, Zammad can be smoothly implemented in the existing system environments. Moreover, solutions such as Asterisk, FreeSWITCH, sipgate.io, GitHub, GitLab, Nagios, Icinga, and Slack can be integrated into Zammad.
The source code belongs to the Zammad Foundation and is open source under the GNU AGPLv3 license. It is available on GitHub and can be used and developed free-of-charge by anybody. Check out further information on the Zammad Foundation.
Zammad 1.1 is available open-source and free of charge (source code, RPM-package or ready to use Docker image) and can be downloaded and installed on your own server. The hosted cloud solution provided by Zammad GmbH, which is led by Martin Edenhofer, is licensed based on the number of users and costs 5 Euro (Starter), 15 Euro (Professional), or 35 Euro (Plus) per month depending on the required functionality. For more information, please visit our Pricing Page.
Zammad is a helpdesk and support system and is available as an open-source download free-of-charge. The user interface was developed together with the award-winning UI experts from Zeughaus and breaks away thoroughly with the old traditions. The ticket system is geared towards the usual handling with web browsers and smartphones and can be handled easily even by technical non-experts. The backbone of the project is Martin Edenhofer and his experienced team of developers which, among other projects, launched the successful ticket system OTRS in 2001.