Helpy: A Modern Helpdesk Alternative

Helpy is on Product Hunt on 10/25/2016. Please visit http://producthunt.com and vote for us!

Helpy is a modern, "mobile first" helpdesk solution written in Ruby on Rails 4.2 and released under the MIT license. The goal of Helpy is to provide an open source alternative to commercial helpdesk solutions like Zendesk or desk.com

Features

Helpy is an integrated support solution- combining and leveraging synergies between support ticketing, Knowledgebase and a public community. Each feature is optional however, and can be easily disabled.

• Private Support Discussions (aka tickets): Integrated with inbound email via Sendgrid, Mandrill, Mailgun, etc.
• Community Support Forums: Customers and Agents can both answer questions in a publicly accessible forum.
• Voting: Discussion topics and replies support voting.
• Knowledgebase: Full text searchable and SEO optimized to help users answer questions before they contact you.
• Pre-wired for Google Analytics: Using a combination of JS and Measurement Protocol tags, Helpy is prewired to track everything from article satisfaction to what your agents are doing.
• Mobile-first: Support requests come at all times, and Helpy works on all devices out of the box so you can delight customers with prompt answers, from anywhere and at anytime!
• Embed Widget: Helpy Includes a lightweight javascript widget that allows your users to contact you from just about anywhere.
• Multi-lingual: Helpy is fully multi-lingual and can provide support in multiple languages at the same time. Currently the app includes translations for 19 languages and is easy to translate.
• Themeable: Customize the look and functionality of your Helpy without disturbing the underlying system that makes it all work. Helpy comes with two additional themes, and we hope to add more and get more from the community as time goes on.

Test it Out

We offer a hosted version of Helpy for businesses that don't want to worry about self installing and maintaining their Helpy. You can get an instant free trial of the hosted version to see if Helpy is right for you: Test it Out for Free

Live Demo

There is also a live demo with fake data available at http://demo.helpy.io Admin User: [email protected] and password: 12345678

Installation

Helpy was designed to run on on modern cloud providers like Digital Ocean or Heroku, although it should work just about anywhere. For a quick trial you can get set up on Heroku by clicking this button:

Requirements are:

• Ruby 2.2+
• Rails 4.2.x
• Postgres
• A server like Unicorn, Puma or Passenger

Helpy leverages two external services to help out:

• an email provider like Sendgrid
• Google Analytics for stats (optional)

There is a full guide to installing Helpy at http://support.helpy.io/en/knowledgebase/11-installing-helpy

Getting Started:

Install Helpy on your Local System

Although not required, installing locally is highly recommended and will make it easier for you to customize things like settings, colors and logos to match your site identity. To begin, clone Helpy from the official repo to your local system:

git clone https://github.com/helpyio/helpy.git

Configure Basic Settings

There is a settings option in the admin panel to set up things like i18n, system names, colors, the embeddable widget, etc. There is a full guide to getting set up at: Configuring Your Helpy Settings

Support Multiple Languages (optional)

Helpy includes support for Multilingual help sites, and multi-language knowledgebase articles. This page explains how to enable Helpy's international capabilities and provides an overview of what functionality this adds to Helpy: How To Set Up A Multilingual Helpy Support Knowledgebase

Set up your Helpy to send and receive email (optional)

Helpy has the ability to receive email at your support email addresses and import the messages as tickets in the web interface. Whenever you or the user replies to the email thread, Helpy captures the discussion and sends out messages accordingly. Follow the tutorial on Setting Up Your Helpy Installation To Send And Receive Email to set this up.

Configure oAuth (optional)

Helpy supports Omniauth login capabilities. This means you can allow your support users to sign in with a single click via any Omniauth provider- ie. Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, or many others. Read Setting Up Oauth For Your Helpy to see how.

Contributing

Welcome, and thanks for contributing to Helpy. Together we are building the best customer support platform in the world. Here are some of the ways you can contribute:

• Report or fix Bugs
• Refactoring
• Improve test coverage- As with any large and growing codebase, test coverage is not always as good as it could be. Help improving test coverage is always welcome and will help you learn how Helpy works. We use Minitest exclusively.
• Translate the project- The community has already translated Helpy into 18 languages, but there are many more waiting. We need help getting Helpy translated into as many locales as possible! please see the guide to translation
• Build new features. There is a backlog of new features that we’d like to see built. Check out our roadmap for more insight on this, and if you would like to take one on, please get in touch with us to make sure someone is not already working on it.

General Guidelines:

• Join us on Slack. Let me know you wish to contribute.
• Make your PRs granular. They should only include one piece of functionality per PR.
• Check the roadmap: Trello If you want to build a feature, contact us to make sure no one else is already working on it
• You must provide passing test coverage. We use minitest, see http://www.rubypigeon.com/posts/minitest-cheat-sheet/?utm_source=rubyweekly&utm_medium=email
• You also must expose functionality to the API. We use Grape. API methods should be tested as well.
• If your feature/bug fix/enhancement adds or changes text in the project, please create i18n strings in en.yml and any other locales you can.
• We are hugely concerned with user experience, and a nice UI. Oftentimes that means we may take what you have contributed and “dress it up” or as you to do the same.

License

Copyright 2016, Helpy.io, LLC, Scott Miller and Contributors. Helpy is released under the MIT open source license. Please contribute back any enhancements you make. Also, I would appreciate if you kept the "powered by Helpy" blurb in the footer. This helps me keep track of how many are using Helpy.