Administration

Change management

Keep in mind, all change management should be stemming from an issue, first and foremost.

Creating a new app

NOTE You should have really done this in the corresponding sandbox before actually installing it into production!

Creating a brand new app for a Zendesk instance has 4 steps to get it from the starting state of “nothing” to the end state of “live and managed by the sync repos”:

• Create the project
• Install it in Zendesk
• Update the source code
• Setup the CI/CD

Create the project

Creating a new app is a bit of a special process, as we don’t have “all the required information” to get everything in place at the start (namely the application’s ID).

As such, you will start be making the project itself. For information on doing this, see Project Setup to get you started.

For the code itself, you need two main components:

• The sync code
• The app code

For the sync code, it is highly recommended to copy it from an existing app. As an example, if making a new Zendesk Global application, it is recommended that you navigate to another Zendesk Global application’s project, such as GitLab Super App, and copy the following to your new project:

• The .gitlab folder
• The bin folder
• The data folder
• The lib folder
• The .gitignore file
• The .gitlab-ci.yml file
• The .rubocop.yml file
• The .ruby-version file
• The Gemfile file
• The Gemfile.lock file

This will get you the nearly all the way done with the “sync code” part of your new Zendesk application project. There will be some components to change in the copied code, but this will occur after the new app has been installed into the corresponding Zendesk instance.

With the project created and the initial code added, you are good to move onto the next step.

Install it in Zendesk

Next, we need to install your new app into the Zendesk instance. For this, you first need to package your application. This is done by combining all the “app code” into a zipfile. To accomplish this, you need to access the app project’s source code via CLI and zip the content up. This might look something like:

cd ~/dev/support-readiness/zendesk-global/apps/star
zip -r data/application.zip assets manifest.json translations

This will produce the zipfile application.zip in the data folder of your local repository (which git will ignore thanks to the .gitignore file you copied earlier).

With this in hand, you need to install the app into Zendesk. To do this, open up the admin page of your corresponding Zendesk instance (Global or US Government), click Apps and integrations on the left-hand side, and then click Zendesk Support apps. On this page, you will want to click Upload private app in the top-right corner of the page. On the page that is brought up, you need to give you app a name. This name should be something that makes it clear what the app is for (and should match your project’s name). You will then click Choose File to navigate your filesystem and select the zipfile you made previously. After doing so, click the blue Upload button.

A pop-up modal should appear concerning creating a new app in Zendesk that details some warnings and messages. Read through it and click the blue Upload button once you are ready to proceed.

After your app is uploaded, you will be brought to the settings page for your newly installed app. This is where you can adjust the title (name) of the app, set the values for any parameters, enable (and set) role restrictions, and enable (and set) groups restrictions. After filling all of that out, click the blue Install button.

With all of that done, your app is installed, but we are not quite done yet!

Update the source code

Now that the app is installed, we need to update our source code a bit so we can ensure the app utilizes our sync code properly. For this, we will need 3 items:

• The path of the source code’s project
• The source code’s project’s ID
• The Zendesk app’s ID

The path of the source code’s project is simply the values of the project’s URL after ‘gitlab.com/’ So for a project like STAR, the path would be gitlab-support-readiness/zendesk-global/apps/star.

With that in hand, you need the source code’s project’s ID. This can be found by navigating to the source code’s project, clicking the three vertical dots at the top-right of the page, and clicking Copy project ID.

For the final piece of information, we need to get the Zendesk app’s ID value. To do this, we utilize the Zendesk API endpoint List Owned Apps, since you are the owner of the app (having been the one that installed it). You’ll need to review the output to locate your app, but if using something like jq, you could do something like this:

curl -ss -X GET -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -u $ZD_USERNAME/token:$ZD_TOKEN \
  https://gitlab.zendesk.com/api/v2/apps/owned \
  | jq '.apps[] | select(.name=="APP_NAME") | .id'

Replacing APP_NAME with the name you gave the app during installation.

With those three pieces of information handy, you need to modify the source code a bit.

Create a merge request containing the following changes:

• On the lib/app/client.rb file, modify the app_id function to ensure the code uses your Zendesk app’s ID instead of the one you copied earlier
• On the lib/app/gitlab.rb file, modify the path function to use the path of the source code’s project instead of the one you copied earlier
• On the lib/app/gitlab.rb file, you need to modify the following functions to use the source code’s project’s ID instead of the one you copied earlier
  • create_or_update_tag
  • create_tag
  • update_tag

Setup the CI/CD

Once that merge request has been successfully merged into the default branch, you will then configure any needed CI/CD variables in the project’s settings. To do that, hover over Settings on the project and click CI/CD. You will then navigate to the Variables section and click Expand. For each variable you need (determined by your code and setup), you need to click the Add variable button to bring up a sub-menu. When doing these, ensure you uncheck the Protect variable box, uncheck the Mask variable box, and check the Expand variable reference box. Once you have entered your Key and Value, click the blue Add variable button.

The final step will be creating the pipeline schedule this will use.

To setup a pipeline schedule, hover over Build and click Pipeline schedules. Click the blue Create a new pipeline schedule button (for the first schedule) or the blue New schedule button (for subsequent ones). For the description, enter a description that states what it is doing (syncing to Zendesk, posting in Slack, etc.). For the Interval Pattern, enter a cron-style string that reflects when it will run (crontab.guru can help with that). For the Cron timezone, use UTC (for Zendesk Global) or Pacific Time (US & Canada) (for Zendesk US Government). For Select target branch or tag, use master (this is our default). If you have any variables dependent on this specific pipeline schedule, you can enter them here. Make sure the Activate checkbox is checked, and then click the blue Create pipeline schedule button.

With all that done, your new app is installed and part of our sync repos!

NOTE You probably need to update some form of our handbook for this new project, so make sure that gets done!

Updating an existing app

Updating your app is considerably easier than creating a new one. Simply change change the code in the source project and it will occur via the sync repo.

The most important thing to remember to is to always update the app’s version in the manifest.json file. To do this, locate the attribute version in the file and add 1 to the value after the decimal. As an example, if the version was 1.9, you would change it to 1.10.

How to deactivate a Zendesk App

NOTE To prevent the Zendesk admin app’s page from becoming chaotic, we do not “disable” apps in 99% of situations. If you believe you are in a situation where you need to deactivate an app without uninstalling it, please speak to the greater Support Readiness team.

If you are in the very rare situation that warrants deactivating an app, you will want to open up the admin page of your corresponding Zendesk instance (Global or US Government), click Apps and integrations on the left-hand side, and then click Zendesk Support apps. On this page, locate the app in question, hover over it, click the down arrow that appears, and click the slider under Enabled. Do note this does not stop the app from syncing or being present on the Zendesk instance.

No changes to the source code are required for this.

How to uninstall a Zendesk App

To uninstall an app from a Zendesk instance, you will need to do two tasks:

• Archive the source code project of the app
• Uninstall the app in Zendesk

You will always want to start by archiving the source code project of the app, as this will prevent potential sync runs from being attempted. To archive the project, navigate to the project itself, click on Settings on the left-hand side, and then click on General. In the Project description box, make sure to put something like DEPRECATED - ISSUE_LINK (replacing ISSUE_LINK with the link to the issue that brought this change about) and click the blue Save changes button. After doing so locate the Advanced section and click Expand. You will then locate the Archive project section and click the blue button (and follow the instructions on the pop-up modal).

After you have archived the source code’s project, you will then uninstall it from the Zendesk instance. To do so, you will want to open up the admin page of your corresponding Zendesk instance (Global or US Government), click Apps and integrations on the left-hand side, and then click Zendesk Support apps. On this page, locate the app in question, hover over it, click the down arrow that appears, and click Uninstall. This will bring up a pop-up modal asking you to confirm the action. Click the blue Uninstall button to finalize the action.

How to reinstall a previously uninstalled app

While rare, there might come a time where a previously uninstalled app needs to installed once more. In this situation, you need to follow everything within Creating a new app, except for the “Create the project” step. Instead of creating the project, you simply need to unarchive the previously archived project. To do this, navigate to the project itself, click on Settings on the left-hand side, and then click on General. Clear out Project description box, and click the blue Save changes button. After doing so locate the Advanced section and click Expand. You will then locate the Unarchive project section and click the blue button (and follow the instructions on the pop-up modal).

After doing that, following the remaining steps detailed in Creating a new app.

Understanding Zendesk Apps

Before you can start creating and editing apps in Zendesk, it is important to understand the ins and outs of both Zendesk Apps and Zendesk Apps framework.

There is a lot to this, so the Zendesk documentation is the best resource you have to learn the various ins and outs. This training documentation will cover what is viewed at “the most important” parts, but it is highly recommended you read and reference the Zendesk developer documentation as often as possible.

ZAT

ZAT, or Zendesk App Tools, is a ruby gem that makes working with Zendesk Apps locally considerably easier. It is highly recommended you install it on your computer:

gem install rake
gem install zendesk_apps_tools

To update it:

gem update rake
gem update zendesk_apps_tools

Sometimes on Mac terminal, you will get write permission error. You may use:

sudo gem update rake
sudo gem update zendesk_apps_tools

Note: ZAT is having issues with Ruby version 3.0.0 and plus. You’ll likely need to use old stable versions like 2.6.3p62

manifest.json

This file is used to configure you application. As such, it is very important and vital it is accurate.

The common configuration settings are:

Location

This setting determines where the app will appear and run. This is a very important setting. The first setting determines the product type location, and within that setting you can specify many other configurations, including the physical location the app will appear in. For the product type location, we always use support.

The physical locations are as follows:

Within the physical location settings, you can include more configuration settings, with the most common being:

As an example, to have an app load “https://google.com” automatically in the ticket sidebar with a starting height of 200px, your configuration block would look like this:

"location": {
  "support": {
    "ticket_sidebar": {
      "autoLoad": true,
      "url": "https://google.com/",
      "size": {
        "height": "200px"
      }
    }
  }
}

As another example, to have your app load in both the user and organization pages, rendering the locale assets/iframe.html file, you would do this:

"location": {
  "support": {
    "user_sidebar": "assets/iframe.html",
    "organization_sidebar": "assets/iframe.html",
  }
}

Parameters

This is where you would define variables you want the app to use during installation.

Domain whitelists

If your app is using secure parameters and you plan to make requests outside of Zendesk, you must whitelist the domains in question. Each parameter is a hash that contains the following:

• name: the name of the parameter
• type: the type of parameter
• secure: ensures users cannot see the variable value when making HTTP requests (you should always use this)
• require: specifies if the parameter is required for installation

As an example, to use two required parameters (param1 and param2), both of which are text parameters in a secure way, you would do the following:

"parameters": [
  {
    "name": "param1",
    "type": "text",
    "secure": true,
    "required": true
  },
  {
    "name": "param2",
    "type": "text",
    "secure": true,
    "required": true
  }
]

During the installation of the app, Zendesk will ask you to give the values for these parameters. To utilize this in the code of your app, you will use this:

{{setting.NAME_OF_PARAMETER}}

Where NAME_OF_PARAMETER is the name you gave the parameter in the manifest.json file.

init

To create a client instance of the ZAF (Zendesk App Framework) client, you need to ensure the following is present in the javascript of your app:

var client = ZAFClient.init();

App resizing

To resize the app during runtime, you would use the invoke class, specifying you wish to invoke the resize function. This is done like so:

// First line shown to clarify you use the ZAF client object to do this
var zafclient = ZAFClient.init();
zafclient.invoke('resize', { width: '100%', height: '100px' });

Required javascript library

To utilize the ZAT, you must include the following javascript in your app’s HTML file(s):

<script src="https://static.zdassets.com/zendesk_app_framework_sdk/2.0/zaf_sdk.min.js"></script>

Getting metadata

To get metadata and use it in your app, you need to use the ZAF client’s get function. This takes an array of values to get from the ticket metadata, which you use in a function.

As an example, to get the ticket requester’s name and the ticket’s organization, and then log them to the console, you would do the following:

// First line shown to clarify you use the ZAF client object to do this
var zafclient = ZAFClient.init();
zafclient.get(['ticket.requester.name', 'ticket.organization']).then(function(data) {
  console.log("Ticket requester name: " + data['ticket.requester.name']);
  console.log("Ticket organization: " + data['ticket.organization']);
});

As another example, to get the ticket’s due date and the due date notes (a custom ticket field) and then log them to the console, you would do the following:

// First line shown to clarify you use the ZAF client object to do this
var zafclient = ZAFClient.init();
zafclient.get(['ticket.customField:due_date', 'ticket.customField:custom_field_360017383799']).then(function(data) {
  console.log("Due date": + data['ticket.customField:due_date']);
  console.log("Due date notes:" + data['ticket.customField:custom_field_360017383799']);
});

Making requests

Your app might need to make requests, whether they be “internal” (i.e. within Zendesk itself) or external. To do this, we use the request function of the client object.

The format of this is very close to that of making AJAX requests in jQuery. The format you will normally use is:

// First line shown to clarify you use the ZAF client object to do this
var zafclient = ZAFClient.init();
zafclient.request({
  method: 'REQUEST_TYPE',
  url: 'URL_TO_USE',
  contentType: 'CONTENT_MEDIA_TO_SEND',
  data: DATA_OBJECT,
  secure: BOOLEAN,
  headers: HEADERS_OBJECT
}).then(function(data) {
  // do stuff
});

The exact parameters in the request will vary from request to request.

As an example, if you wanted to update the due date of a ticket, you might do:

// First line shown to clarify you use the ZAF client object to do this
var zafclient = ZAFClient.init();
zafclient.request({
  method: 'PUT',
  url: '/api/v2/tickets/123456.json',
  contentType: 'application/json',
  data: JSON.stringify({
    due_at: new Date('2021-01-01').toISOString()
  }),
  secure: BOOLEAN,
  headers: HEADERS_OBJECT
}).then(function(data) {
  console.log('Due date updated to 2021-01-01');
});

As another example, if you wanted to make a GET request to gitlab.com to find information about user ID 987654, using a secure parameter from app installation, you might do:

// First line shown to clarify you use the ZAF client object to do this
var zafclient = ZAFClient.init();
zafclient.request({
  method: "GET",
  url: 'https://gitlab.com/api/v4/users/987654?private_token={{setting.GitLab_token}}',
  secure: true
}).then(function(data) {
  console.log('User email: ' + data.email);
});

Testing an app

There are two ways to test a Zendesk app before you put it into production:

Locally

Note: This cannot be done if your app is using secure parameters. Instead, you would need to install the app into the Sandbox and test from there.

To test your app locally, cd into the app directory on your local computer and then run the zat server command. This will start up a ZAT server on your computer. Once it has booted up, go to a Zendesk URL and put ?zat=true at the end. This will now load the apps from your local computer, allowing you to test out the app locally.

Via the Sandbox

If your app is using secure parameters, you will need to test via the Sandbox instead.

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