0.10

We are excited to release Helpy 0.10.0 today, bringing with it a large number of improvements, bug and security fixes. The 0.10 release includes dozens of commits made by new contributors @Shakti1989, @Sunday, @Yetty, @ubergesundheit, @tapalilov and @jprberlin. Many, many thanks to all contributors who are helping us make this the best open source helpdesk around, and I am sorry if I missed you.

Here is a rundown of what is new:

• Themes! This is probably the biggest announcement and lets you make dramatic or subtle changes to the look and feel of the self serve knowledgebase and help center, without disturbing the core functionality. Helpy ships with 3 themes, and we’ll be releasing more options in the future. From here on, it is recommended that if you need to make changes to your UI, that you create a custom theme rather editing the core Helpy files.
• Client side form validations: We have updated almost all forms to use client side validations, improving the user experience tremendously. Thanks @Shakti1989
• A new onboarding flow. This won’t affect you if you have already started using Helpy, but if you are starting with a fresh install, you will now be greeted with a helpful onboarding flow to help you secure your master login and setup your helpdesk.
• Improved Roles. Previously Helpy used two main roles- user and admin. This is great for a simple helpdesk, but we wanted to support more. Helpy 0.10 includes support for two new roles: agents and editors. Agents can do everything except change settings, and editors can rock the knowledgebase but don't have access to tickets!
• Recaptcha for unregistered users. Helpy now makes use of recaptcha for users who wish to create public posts or private tickets without registering. This feature can be configured through the backend settings panel and is optional. Big thanks to @Shakti1989 for this one too!
• Slack Integration. We love Slack, and assume you probably do too! Now Helpy can post into Slack when new issues arrive. To enable this you will have to add the helpy_slack gem, which is available on Github.
• Big refactoring. We have been busy working on refactoring code and making it easier to develop add ons for Helpy. Although we are not quite ready to announce an official guide for this, it’s coming soon!
• Live Search. This represents a big enhancement in the way the search function on Helpy works, and now the search begins suggesting results as soon as you start typing. You can still hit enter and go to the regular search results page. Thanks to @Shakti1989 for your work on this!

And some smaller (but no less important) stuff too:

• Better test coverage, provided by @Sunday
• Helpy now support PDF attachments, provided by @Yetty
• Devise now uses translations for emails, thanks @CGA1123
• Github and Twitter OAuth now work correctly
• Other UI improvements

And last but not least, there are new translations

• Brazilian Portuguese, contributed by @felipewmartins
• Turkish, contributed by @eminarslan

If you contributed and I forgot to mention it, send me a message and I will mention it next time!

How to upgrade

Upgrading to 0.10.0 could be tricky if you have done any customization on the front-end view code. I suggest you copy your customizations into a temp directory and then build a new theme with them. Then revert your views directory back to master. I will have a tutorial on building themes soon, but to get started you could just copy one of the existing new themes and start changing it.

You will want to make sure you bundle install and rake db:migrate after you pull/merge in the new updates.

What are we working on?

• JSON API. This is well underway and should be released soon. This will give you a way to interact with your Helpy programmatically and build integrations.
• POP3/IMAP support. We thought this would make it into this release, but a couple bugs and delays in getting it tested has delayed us slightly. This means you will be able to connect your Helpy to any email box.
• Team/Organization Support Queues, which will let you direct messages to specific agents.
• Reports/Dashboard- To give some stats and overview within Helpy.