Introduction to Apps

Developing your own app isn't as challenging as it might seem. First, we'd like to take you through some common terminology you'll see throughout this guide, as well as explaining how Apps work in Zendesk.

What is an App?

Apps allow you to add a small amount to the functionality of Zendesk. Here's a few examples:

• I want to grab information about this user from my back end system - allowing me to see what this customer has ordered from my store, right inside a ticket
• I want to be able to update details about this customer from within a ticket, using AJAX to communicate those changes with my back end system
• I want to be able to track time with Freshbooks or Harvest

You can think of Apps as another way for Zendesk to integrate with other web apps, and vice versa.

Common Terminology

Term	Meaning
Framework	The JavaScript API used to build apps, and thus communicate with the Zendesk UI
Manifest	A file contained in your app, telling us details about the app such as the author, locale, etc
Location	The physical location of the App in Zendesk (explained below)

Understanding Locations

We call out locations separately because they're an important part of app development and because their names can be confusing.

Apps generally declare where they appear in the Zendesk interface. In many cases, apps appear in the Apps panel on the right side of the ticket page in the agent interface. The framework calls this location the ticket_sidebar (or the new_ticket_sidebar in the case of the new ticket page). Don't confuse the ticket_sidebar with the vertical icon bar on the left side of the interface. In the framework, the bar on the left is called the nav_bar.

You can place an app in the following locations in the agent interface:

• ticket_sidebar or new_ticket_sidebar, the panel on the right side of the ticket page
• user_sidebar, the panel on the right side of the user page
• nav_bar, as an icon on the vertical icon bar on the left side
• top_bar, as an icon on the right side of the horizontal bar on the upper side

You can also place an app in more than one location.

Some framework APIs are available only to apps in certain locations. For instance, only apps appearing on the ticket page can get and set ticket properties, or listen for changes to the ticket.

You declare the location or locations in the manifest file. We'll talk more about locations when we go over that file.

Framework Versions

An App can target one of three possible versions of the Apps Framework: current, future or deprecated.

Any version below deprecated is considered obsolete. Apps targeting an obsolete version will not be listed or run within Zendesk. Apps targeting a deprecated version will still run but cannot be created or updated. Please refer to the version labels throughout the documentation to find out if a feature has been deprecated or if it's only part of a future release. Every feature that does not include a label should be considered current.

We recommend App Developers to always target the current version of the Framework, however, if you would like to try out new features you're more than welcome to target the future version, just beware that features marked as deprecated will be removed from future versions.

You define which version to target on your app's manifest file.

Versions	Status
0.4	Deprecated
0.5	Current
1.0	Future

Next Step: See an example app →