How I developed an integration on my first month for the topmost university in Australia

Welcome to my first blog post! My name is Arshath, a full stack developer. I work for  Spritle Software, an awesome Software Development Company. Spritle has been a solution partner of Freshworks for quite a long time and has developed several marketplace apps and custom apps for Freshworks customers. Freshdesk is the offering from Freshworks suite of business products.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a cloud-based help desk system and customer service solution that simplifies customer service for your team and helps them provide a great customer experience. Freshdesk offers an easy way for agents to hold and manage customer conversations across channels from one page. Workflows can be customised and automated, which helps agents focus on delivering exceptional customer service.

Freshdesk provides the ability to develop and use custom applications in various places of the app. Apps are an easy way of extending your Freshdesk’s functionalities both inside the helpdesk and outside. Apps that install into the Freshdesk portal are called Freshdesk apps.

First App

In my first month of working in Spritle Software, we got a custom app requirement from the topmost university in Australia to respond to students' complaints and queries more efficiently. After the successful feasibility test, my team gave me the opportunity to work in that app. I was a bit nervous when they gave me this opportunity as I joined the team only a week before. It is my first opportunity in the team and in my entire tech career developing something for the real world.

Then I started working on the app. It was a wonderful experience building an app from scratch in your first week. You will be learning so many things when developing an app from scratch. Thanks to my teammates for helping me in situations when I got stuck in the development stage of the app. Without the help of my fellow teammates, I wouldn’t have finished the app in time.

App Development

In the first stage of app development, I worked on creating an installation page to get the user credentials to interact with their database to get students data. After developing the form for getting user credentials, I wrote the validation part for validating the credentials with the server to check users permissions. After successful validation users can be able to install the app on their account.

After the installation page, I started writing the main features of the app. The app will display students booking details based on email id on the ticket. I read their documentation to find corresponding API endpoints to get booking details of the students. After I got the API endpoints, I worked on getting the data from the database.

We already have a list of data the client wants to see in the custom app. So first I write the frontend part of the app showcasing the details of the booking. After that, I worked on fetching the data from the database and displaying it on the app. While fetching the data from the database if any error occurs or no data found, I update the details in the app based on that.

When working with this app I have learned so many new things. I got to understand the platform very well. At the same time, I learned to read and understand third party documentations effectively. It was a wonderful experience building the app from scratch. I am thankful to the teammates who believed in me and helped me during the development phase.

Apps Benefit

After I finished the development of the app. We showed the demo of the app to our client and explained every aspect of it. And how to set up the app on installation. They are happy with our app and the benefits the app provides to them. The client uses CRM software to make accommodation reservations for their International and interstate students. They spend a lot of time flicking between screens when a student raises a ticket - it would be much easier if there is an integration on the Freshdesk.

Previously agents needed to switch between multiple apps to get the students booking details to respond to the ticket. After integrating this app into Freshdesk, the time needed to respond to the tickets reduced drastically as they are having the booking details of the students in Freshdesk ticket page itself. So this eliminates the need to switch between multiple apps to get booking details of the students thus increases the productivity of the agents.

If you liked reading this and have feedback or any thoughts to share, don’t hesitate to post a comment or email me at arshath.h@spritle.com. Have a great day 🙂