Zammad 4.0

Zammad Team
Thu, 25 Mar 2021 08:05:00 +0100

Finally, the time has come: Zammad 4.0 is here! 🎉 This time it's a major release.

Look forward to a new Mentions feature, integrations with Grafana and Kibana for really powerful reporting, a more mobile-friendly display of the Zammad interface, and integrations for GitLab and GitHub. 🎈🎈🎈

We have received many requests and suggestions on what else Zammad should be able to do and offer. Some of them have been on hold for quite a long time until we could finally take care of the matter. Often, this was only possible thanks to generous sponsors. So we are all the more proud to present the results to you now. Here we go with the details!

1. 👀 Mentions / Watch Feature

Many tools offer the ability to mention other users by typing @@name. With our new mentions feature Zammad can now do that too! So whenever a ticket is relevant to a colleague or their support is needed, you can simply tag them. 📣

The colleague receives a notification and can then follow the ticket as an observer. Of course, they can also "unfollow" the ticket at any time, as soon as it is no longer relevant for them.

You can find more information on this feature in our documentation.

"For us as a large support team, the Mentions feature leads to a great increase in productivity, as agents now stay informed even without being assigned a ticket and can immediately provide their support when a change occurs. Also, tickets that require a longer processing time can be more easily retrieved by colleagues and supplemented with information. ".
- (PCO AG)

Already in 2016, this feature was suggested by Ingo Wichmann from Linuxhotel. So the possibility to mention colleagues in tickets or to watch the tickets of other agents has been high on the wish list of our users for a long time. Thanks to our sponsors we were finally able to implement this feature. A big thank you goes to:

The FFG (Austrian Research Promotion Agency)

The PCO AG

The UFZ (Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research GmbH)

The Linuxhotel GmbH

The Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics

💛

2. 📈 Advanced Reporting: Integration with Grafana / Kibana

Zammad already offers a internal reporting tool. This is included in the open-source version as well as in the "Plus" version of the hosted setup. However, the desire for more extensive reporting options is repeatedly expressed to us. The evaluation and analysis of data also often plays a major role in our user stories. Reason enough for us to take care of this matter:

So from version 4.0, there will be additional reporting integrations on top, besides the well-known "Zammad Reports"! 🎉

2.1 😮 What's New?

Now, there are no limits to the creation of reports! Starting with the new version, it will be possible to access Zammad information via Elasticsearch access from third-party systems. So you can create extensive, individual reports from tools like Grafana or Kibana:

📊 You can build your own dashboards in Grafana and Kibana.
🔎 These contain all Zammad-relevant information.
📅 You will always be up to date!

The Elasticsearch access settings can be found in your Instance → Admin area → Integrations → Elasticsearch (only available for "Plus" users).

2.2 📊 Grafana Integration

Grafana is an open-source solution and at the top of the popularity list of reporting tools. The system pulls data from numerous sources (e.g. InfluxDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Prometheus, and Graphite). These are then analyzed and displayed graphically to illustrate trends and developments. In this way, the user receives meaningful and understandable insights into the company's performance.

With the new Grafana integration for Zammad you can now also analyze data about your helpdesk usage. Check out the corresponding documentation section for more information on how to connect Grafana with Zammad.

2.3 📉 Kibana Integration

Kibana is another tool that specializes in data analysis. The open-source platform is based on Elasticsearch and allows Elastic users to visualize and analyze their data.

Users who use both Zammad and Kibana can now also have their Zammad data mapped via Kibana. All setup information will soon be shared in our documentation - we will post the link here.

3. 🎨 Better Responsive Design for Zammad

A more mobile-friendly display of the Zammad interface is a great advantage for many users. The development was made possible by a CSS hack from our community member kazz3m and thanks to the generous sponsorship of Autohaus Melzer e.K. in Chemnitz. 💛
This is the development of a special .css file that makes Zammad easy and pleasant to use on any device, anywhere you are!

4. ⛓️ GitLab Integration

Do you also work with GitLab? Then you will surely be happy about our new GitLab integration! It allows you to link GitLab issues with Zammad tickets and thus provides more clarity and efficiency. See at a glance the status of the ticket (Open, Closed, Moved), view more information about the issue directly in Zammad (labels, current status, assignment, etc.), and add multiple relationships / links to GitLab issues.
The integration is available for both the hosted version (gitlab.com) and the self-hosted version (git.company.com).

Since many Zammad users also use GitLab, the new integration represents a strong added value. It was made possible by a sponsorship from swissQprint. Many thanks for this! 💛

5. 🔗 GitHub Integration

Based on the GitLab integration, we have also developed a version for GitHub. The GitHub Integration provides the same functionalities and supports both GitHub and GitHub Enterprise.

💡 Do you have a feature idea too? Become a sponsor today!

Zammad provides a reliable support platform that you, your team, and all your customers can rely on with confidence. However, if you would like to see features that Zammad does not yet offer, don't hesitate to get in touch. Zammad is Bavarian for "together", and together we'll figure out how to make your wishes a reality!

Technical Notes & Breaking Changes

🚨 Attention! 🚨
Along with the new features and updates come some Breaking Changes! You can find more information about them here.

That's it! 👍

Over 110 bug fixes and closed issues preceded this release! The input and contributions from our community always help us to push our product further. We are already excited about the next developments. Are you too?

Downloads

All improvements can be found in the changelog.

Download Zammad 4.0

Changelog (2021-03-25)

Source code

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-4.0.0.tar.bz2 (md5:72ee06b0be0819892bbb18e76248ae61)

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-4.0.0.tar.gz (md5:f16a2bace41f3304d6014b9cb3728f2a)

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-4.0.0.zip (md5:06f2e2ba4c6d99d90a4df1aabc0ff90d)

Download Zammad 3.6.1

Changelog (2021-03-25)

Source code

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-3.6.1.tar.bz2 (md5:b4d5b77a81191db3c7909ae45701aa93)

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-3.6.1.tar.gz (md5:50ed4011df722a3ba1877d92cae228a4)

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-3.6.1.zip (md5:469f6cf7cf8f8b3df8054f98ca00a2a0)

Packages

CentOS

Debian

Ubuntu

Docker-Compose

Upgrade

Information on the upgrade of a Zammad installation can be found here: