Bundled app

Create your own bundled app a.k.a client side applications

So you decided to host your entire codebase on Zendesk's servers and go through each update verification, fine by me 👀. Here is how this boilerplate can accommodate your needs.

Create a webapp project

1. Creating a React + Vite project

cd packages/ && yarn create vite

1. Let's give our project a name - this name does not affect much, but keep it simple and do not include special characters in there, as this name will be referenced in manifest.json file later automatically. I will call it super-cool-app

2. Choose whatever Vite setup options you would like to use, those do not affect the boilerplate at all. I chose: - React as framework - Use TypeScript

3. Install the packages required by Vite app to run

cd super-cool-app && yarn

Remember, these options selected in step 3 do not affect any boilerplate setup. Each project is a separate project and can have any technology it requires.

Alias scripts to manage React + Vite project

You don't want to every time go inside /packages/super-cool-app to start the dev server. It is more convenient to do so from the root of your entire boilerplate, like 2 demo applications are showcasing. Let's do the same!

In the root folder of the boilerplate (attention, not our new Vite + React project, but 2 levels up), open package.json file and add following to the scripts property:

"super-cool-app:start": "node scripts/run.mjs super-cool-app"

Here, the parameters of scripts/run.mjs receives a name of the package to be launched, which is a name of our newly created React + Vite package.

While we are at it, let's also add a build script.

Modify the build script to add the following:

"build": "node scripts/build.mjs prod super-cool-app"

Here, scripts/build.mjs receives an environment to build the app for (production a.k.a prod) and a name of the package. If you have multiple apps / packages, just list them here without commas.

Let's verify that everything works as expected! In the root directory, where we modified the package.json file, let's start up our React + VIte package:

yarn super-cool-app:start

If everything was done correctly, you can see the following log:

Successful launch of Vite + React application

Create a zaf.config.json file

Now, let's make this project recognisable by boilerplate, so that we can see it in our Zendesk instance.

In the root of your newly created project (I will refer to it as super-cool-app in my case), create zaf.config.json file.

cd packages/super-cool-app && touch zaf.config.json

Open it (or your entire boilerplate project) in your code editor (I use vim btw) and add the following content:

{
  "location": "nav_bar",
  "server_side": false, // Careful, this parameter is different to what you see in Server side app page
  "dev_url": "http://localhost",
  "production_url": "index.html",
  "dev_port": 5173,
  "size": {
    "height": 400
  }
}

You can learn more about what this file is in the section zaf.config.json of Configuration page.

Unlike server side app, our production_url property here should always point to a .html file. This will be handled by boilerplate's build scripts to turn this into a URL that Zendesk expects:

assets/${project package name}/index.html

Last command to run, is to create a zcli server that will establish connection between our application and Zendesk:

yarn zcli:start

That's all it takes get a basic version of our bundled app running in your Zendesk instance. Now, you can verify that everything works by visting your Zendesk ticketing instance, and do not forget to append ?zcli_apps=true to the end of the url.

Example: https://d3v5878-he.zendesk.com/agent/dashboard?zcli_apps=true

On the left side you will notice a small icon that is our application entry point:

Once opened, you should be greeted with default React + Vite page.

Successful application running inside the Navbar in Zendesk

Add zafClient

We have our basic application, you are free to do whatever you want, but you will probably want to interact with Zendesk ZAF SDK (Zendesk Applications Framework).

To do so, this boilerplate has a small special Vite plugin, that will insert <script> tag with Zendesk's SDK into your index.html file at dev and build times.

Navigate to the vite.config.ts file (or vite.config.js if you chose pure JS madness) and add the plugin to it:

import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react";

import injectZafHtmlPluginModule from "@app/zendesk/vite-plugin-inject-zaf-html";
const { injectZafHtmlPlugin } = injectZafHtmlPluginModule

// https://vitejs.dev/config/
export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [react(), injectZafHtmlPlugin()],
});

Now, you can start using zafClient SDK in your application. Here is one example to get started:

Go to src/App.tsx file and add the following lines to your App component:

  const [zafClient, setZafClient] = useState(null);

    useEffect(() => {
    if (window.ZAFClient) {
      setZafClient(window.ZAFClient.init());
    }
  }, [window.ZAFClient]);

  useEffect(() => {
    if (zafClient) {
      zafClient.on("app.registered", function (data) {
        console.log("app.registered", data);
      });
    }
  }, [zafClient]);

Treat this as illustration of how SDK works, not React best practices, which is outside of the scope of this article. You probably want to put more care into instantiating the SDK and reusing it in the application.

zafClient types for additional typesafety

To get types autocomplte for zafClient (which will allow you to fetch data in a type-safe manner), adjust your tsconfig.json file with following properties:

  "include": [
    "next-env.d.ts",
    "**/*.ts",
    "**/*.tsx",
    ".next/types/**/*.ts",
    "../../node_modules/zendesk-types/**/*.d.ts" // Add type reference to existing zendesk package
  ]

And change moduleResolution to node:

"moduleResolution": "node"

Types for zafClient are under a long construction, so some types maybe incorrect / not exhaustive.

Build and publishing your app

Now, when you are happy with application changes, you can simply run

yarn build

And you can observe that your application is being built into root directory /dist folder.

.
├── assets
│   ├── logo-small.png
│   ├── logo.png
│   ├── logo.svg
│   └── super-cool-app
│       ├── assets
│       │   ├── index-DiwrgTda.css
│       │   ├── index-DmyYh-Yb.js
│       │   └── react-CHdo91hT.svg
│       ├── index.html
│       └── vite.svg
├── manifest.json
└── translations
    └── en.json

Where super-cool-app name is being picked up by build script automatically, assets importing is also adjusted by boilerplate (to set base url) and you can see the resulting manifest.json file:

"location": {
  "support": {
    "nav_bar": {
      "url": "assets/super-cool-app/index.html",
      "size": {
        "height": 400
      }
    }
  }
}

You are now ready to package the application with a helper utility:

yarn zcli:package

And entirely ready application will appear in /dist/tmp folder.

Get in touch

If you have any questions or troubles, feel free to jump into Discord server where I am always reachable and other like-minded developers can help you out.