Zammad 6.0

Zammad Team
Tue, 06 Jun 2023 15:00:00 +0200

The wait is over - we are thrilled to introduce Zammad 6.0 with its great array of new features and enhancements. 🥳

Your ideas and feedback have been an immense inspiration to us. Thanks to you and our generous sponsors, we were able to implement many features. 🙏

Zammad 6.0 comes with several eagerly awaited features, including Mobile View, duplicate detection, and the most requested function by the community: MS Teams notifications. We are excited to share all the exciting details about these and other features with you. ⬇️

1.📱Mobile View

In an increasingly mobile world, access to information and services through smartphones and tablets is becoming more and more vital. However, our Responsive Design for Zammad fell short in meeting these requirements. 💡We found the solution in a native web application with mobile support, eliminating the need for installing an additional app. Instead, Zammad has implemented mobile device detection, automatically redirecting users to the mobile view. The Mobile View provides essential resources and features that agents use on their desktops, while optimizing them for a mobile format, ensuring a more user-friendly experience.

For the sake of simplicity, we have deliberately omitted certain features in the Mobile View. While some features are already supported, we are continuously working on implementing others. You can find a comprehensive list of supported features in the user documentation. ⬅️

2.🔍 Duplicate Detection

We understand the time-consuming nature of manually searching for and merging duplicate tickets in the system. 😮‍💨 From now on, our Duplicate Detection feature will handle this tedious task for you! With Zammad 6.0, you can now specify the attributes to be compared, enabling automatic verification during ticket creation.🤖 During this process, the specified attributes of the newly created ticket are compared with existing tickets in the system. ⚠️ If similar tickets are identified, the user creating the ticket will be presented with the potential duplicate tickets. By utilizing the Duplicate Detection feature, you can save valuable time and ensure that redundant tickets are not created.

To activate the Duplicate Detection feature and manage its attributes, you can access the settings through the admin interface. Simply navigate to "Settings > Tickets" to access the relevant options. For more detailed instructions and information, please refer to the admin documentation. ⬅️

3.🪝WebHooks enhancement - now also with integration for Microsoft Teams

WebHooks have been available in Zammad since version 3.6 as a simple solution for real-time communication between different applications or services. 🔄 With the introduction of Zammad 6.0, this feature becomes even more powerful. 💪 As an admin, you can now select from a range of predefined WebHooks. These predefined WebHooks come with a user-friendly interface and require no special configuration or programming knowledge. They can also serve as a foundation for creating new WebHooks. While the payload for these predefined WebHooks is static, you can still customize certain values through the provided user interface. For those looking to take customization to the next level, Zammad 6.0 offers the option to add a freely configurable WebHook. With this enhancement, you have the flexibility to define your own payload and assign specific ticket values to it.

We've listened attentively to our Microsoft Teams users, and we're excited to announce that Zammad now offers a new predefined WebHook specifically designed for Microsoft Teams notifications. 🙌 In addition to our existing integrations with Slack, Mattermost, RocketChat, and other platforms, this new predefined WebHook for Microsoft Teams allows for seamless communication and real-time notifications within your Microsoft Teams environment.

➡️ Read more in the admin documentation and check out MS Teams WebHook example here.

Many thanks to our sponsor energy & meteo systems GmbH for the generous support of this feature! 🙏🏻

4.🔔 Default Agent Notifications

In the hosted environment or for the average administrator, changing the default notifications for users used to be a cumbersome task. The only way to do so was through the "Switch to User" feature, and it had to be done individually for each user. 😵‍💫 However, with Zammad 6.0, this time-consuming process is now a thing of the past! Admins can now enjoy the following benefits:

Manage default agent notification settings from the admin interface.

Change / update notification settings of all agents via the admin interface.

➡️ Read more on Default Agent Notifications in the admin documentation.

5.✏️ Core Workflow enhancement: title and text support

Prior to Zammad 6.0, it was not possible to utilize the ticket title and article text in core workflows, limiting their potential for customization. However, with the latest version, this limitation has been overcome. In Zammad 6.0, administrators can now define and configure the following actions for the ticket title and article text within core workflows:

read-only / changeable (set readonly / unset readonly)

set a value to the field (fill in)

set an empty value to the field (fill in empty)

For more detailed instructions and information, please refer to the admin documentation. ⬅️

6.⚡ Responsive Design improvements: Table column resizing & navigation bar collapse

With the advent of newer tablet devices boasting higher resolutions, our Responsive Design faced the challenge of adapting effectively. However, we have an exciting solution for this: Zammad 6️⃣.0️⃣! In this latest version, we have made significant improvements to address these changes. We enhanced the navigation bar to collapse and expand more seamlessly, allowing for better utilization of screen space on tablets. The user interface automatically adjusts to the tablet's resolution, ensuring an optimal viewing experience ↔️↕️ Moreover, Zammad 6.0 goes beyond resolution adjustments. Previously, adjusting the size of table columns was limited to devices with mouse input. However, with Zammad 6.0, we have extended this capability to touch devices as well. Now, you can easily customize the size of table columns on touch devices, bringing Zammad's functionality right to your fingertips. 🫵 With Zammad at your disposal, you can confidently navigate and interact with the system, regardless of the device you choose to use.

🚨 Important note on the update

Manual Update Action Required by the Administrator
When updating to Zammad 6.0 from a previous version, the system administrator needs to add some content to the configuration of the reverse proxy.

Example for Apache:
ProxyPass /cable ws://127.0.0.1:3000/cable

Example for nginx:
location /cable {
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
proxy_set_header CLIENT_IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_read_timeout 86400;
proxy_pass http://zammad-railsserver;
}

This is required to enable the new Rails Action Cable based realtime communication. You can find more details about this change at this github commit.

Breaking Changes

Mandatory Redis Dependency
Starting with Zammad version 6.0, Redis is required to run Zammad. For package-based installations, the new dependency is automatically installed in the system during the update.
Note: Hosted customers do not need to take any further action regarding this change!

Health Check API Changes
Starting with Zammad 6.0, the "health check" monitoring API at /api/v1/monitoring/health_check will no longer echo the used authentication token in the response payload.

Excel Export Format Change
Starting with Zammad version 6.0, all Excel exports will be exported exclusively in xlsx format. The original xls format will no longer be supported.

Storage location of unprocessable/oversized emails
Zammad stores emails that were unprocessable or rejected due to size constraints in the file system. The location of such emails changed from tmp/unprocessable_mail and tmp/oversized_mail to var/spool/unprocessable_mail and var/spool/oversized_mail within the /opt/zammad directory. Existing emails are automatically moved to the new location.

Naming change in Token model and EmailAddress model
The token model is used to store access tokens and had field names which may have caused confusion for developers using them. Therefore, the field previously called name: now has the correct identifier token: (as it stores the actual token value), and the field previously called label: is now called name: for better consistency with other models. The EmailAddress model is used to information about email addresses Zammad receives mail for. For consistency reasons, its realname: field is now called name:.
This means that the attribute via the REST API also changes: from token or realname to "name".

Docker image zammad-docker was archived
The repository zammad-dockerwas intended for testing / development purposes only. This repository was archived and will receive no further updates.
Please use zammad-docker-compose instead.

🚨 Important Announcements

MySQL Deprecation
Zammad is designed to provide our users with a secure and stable platform that delivers a convincing performance. For this, the choice of supported database systems is crucial. After much deliberation and based on our many years of experience, we have decided that Zammad will only support PostgreSQL as a database in the future. However, this change will be relevant from Zammad Version 7.0.

Until then, no new installations should be set up with MySQL/MariaDB. Existing systems will continue to be supported but must be migrated to PostgreSQL until the release of Zammad 7. For this purpose, we have provided a detailed migration guide that can be used to migrate existing systems to PostgreSQL free of charge.

This decision was not easy for us. Nevertheless, it is necessary to further develop Zammad with reasonable effort and to keep it reliable also in the future.

Unicorn Webserver Deprecation
Zammad currently supports the Ruby web server unicorn. Since this seems to be unused and not actively maintained, we plan to remove this support with Zammad 6.1.

Slack Integration Deprecation
Zammad 7 will no longer support this dedicated Slack integration. It is recommended to switch to pre-defined webhooks instead. Existing Slack integrations should be migrated manually before this feature is dropped.

Internet Explorer 11 Support
Starting with Zammad version 7.0, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported.

Are you waiting for a certain feature? 🤨

If you're missing something, we're sorry to hear that. Our list of feature requests is very long and ever-growing. In order to speed up the process and put your favorite feature on the fast track, by becoming a Feature Sponsor. Just reach out to us and let's make it happen!

Technical Notes

Please note that you will need to fulfill the following browser prerequisites in order to use this version:

Chrome: 83

Firefox: 78

Explorer: 11

Safari: 11

Opera: 69

Edge: 83

Download Zammad 6.0

You will find all improvements in the Changelog.

Source code

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-6.0.0.tar.bz2 (ec70dfdaf7858e26837d04ac8250e997)

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-6.0.0.tar.gz (09bf791738920c211d23bdd2a42fba6f)

ftp.zammad.com/zammad-6.0.0.zip (ea65b787224286dbc860f8ce71aaba57)

Packages

CentOS

Debian

Ubuntu

Docker-Compose

Upgrade
You can find information on an update of your Zammad installation here: