ZAT now in "Maintenance Mode"? | Community
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ZAT now in "Maintenance Mode"?

  • May 27, 2022
  • 6 replies
  • 0 views
CJ99

Today, I saw that the article on how to build your first app has completely changed and no longer uses ZAT. "ZCLI replaces the Zendesk App Tools (ZAT), which are in maintenance mode." 

Can I get some more information on what is meant by "Maintenance mode" in this context? Will Zendesk still continue to support apps built on this? If so, for how long?  I just spent two weeks learning all about ZAT, only to now find it's not the preferred method and development has been ceased, the day I publish my first app with it. How can I stay ahead of retiring products like this?

 

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      6 replies

      Zach22
      • Zach22
      • May 29, 2022

      Hi CJ,

      We have recently updated the developer documentation to align with the documentation on the GitHub repository for ZAT where we updated its status to be 'in maintenance' a little while ago. For context, this means that we will not be developing new features for ZAT as we focus our efforts on bringing ZCLI to General Availability. 

      In terms of support, apps built using ZAT are compatible with ZCLI as both are tools to aid with the development of apps for the Zendesk Apps Framework.

      Rest assured, we have no  plans to stop supporting apps built using ZAT. The tool itself will also continue to be supported until such time that it is announced as deprecated. When this does occur, we will be posting in our community to let our customers know.

      Hope this helps! 

      CJ99
      • CJ99
      • Author
      • May 31, 2022

      It appears that ZCLI has several dependencies that are now deprecated, and does not have any of the theme preview features that ZAT had. I'm a bit baffled why the supported tool is using deprecated packages and lacks the majority of the features and functionality of ZAT? 

      N
      • Nathan12
      • June 14, 2022

      No reply for CJ @zach22? They have a very valid point and it's incredibly worrying that an important feature like this would be taken away without proper consideration and a viable replacement. 

      Zach22
      • Zach22
      • June 16, 2022
      N
      • Nathan12
      • June 16, 2022

      Zach, it's as good as deprecated if it's uninstallable due to lack of updates. 

      As this seems to be the only feasible method of developing Guide themes (happy to be proven wrong with links to other docs or methods), can we get a timeline for when this will be addressed? 

      It's a major feature of the Zendesk ecosystem that has been taken away without replacement. 

      Chris124
      • Chris124
      • June 16, 2022

      Hi Nathan,

      Nothing has been "taken away". ZAT is still fully supported as a Zendesk product until it is deprecated which will only happen once we have feature parity with ZCLI. This may be semantics, but "Maintenance Mode" is just making official the status that ZAT has been in for around three years.

      ZAT still works the same as it did before, and has many more dependency issues and support problems than ZCLI, which is our primary motivation to replace it as well as switch to a much more friendly ecosystem (NodeJS vs Ruby) for most of our developers.

      ZAT themeing is still the preferred method of developing Guide Themes and is not going away unless there is a better or at least equivalent way. We are not deprecating a method of developing on our platform without replacement.

      Hope this helps your understanding.

      Chris

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