Create your first ticket

Sendbird Desk SDK for iOS lets you easily initialize, configure, and build the customer-support related functionalities to a client app. When a customer asks for help through live, in-app support built with the Desk SDK, agents receive those messages as tickets and can start a conversation on the Sendbird Dashboard. This page walks you through the quick steps to create your first ticket by installing and initializing the Desk SDK.

Note: As Sendbird Desk works based on Sendbird Chat, the interaction between users is built and provided by Sendbird Chat.

The requirements of the Desk SDK for iOS are as below:

• iOS 12.0 or later
• Xcode 15.0 or later
• Sendbird Chat SDK for iOS 4.19.0 and later

Before installing Sendbird Desk SDK, you will need an account on Sendbird Dashboard. Sign up to create a Sendbird application first.

Note: A Sendbird application gets paired up with one client app. Agents can support customers across all platforms, but customers from different Sendbird applications are excluded because all data is limited to the scope of a single application.

You can install the Desk SDK for iOS using CocoaPods.

1. Add SendBirdDesk into your Podfile in Xcode as below:

platform :ios, '12.0'

target 'YourTarget' do

    use_frameworks!

    pod 'SendBirdDesk' // Add this line.
end

2. Run pod install.
3. Open YOUR_PROJECT.xcworkspace.

1. Initialize the SBDSKMain instance when launching a client app.
2. Copy APP_ID of your Sendbird application from the dashboard. The same APP_ID must be used for both Chat and Desk SDKs.
3. Call the SendbirdChat.initialize(params:) method using the copied APP_ID within applicationDidFinishLaunching().
4. Call the SBDSKMain.initializeDesk() method within applicationDidFinishLaunching().

class AppDelegate: UIApplicationDelegate {
    func applicationDidFinishLaunching(_ application: UIApplication) {
        let initParams = InitParams(applicationId: APP_ID)
        SendbirdChat.initialize(params: initParams)
        SBDSKMain.initializeDesk()
    }
}

Note: If you call SBDSKMain.initializeDesk() again after calling SendbirdChat.initialize(params:) with a different APP_ID, all existing Desk-related data in the client app will be deleted.

Every ticket in Sendbird Desk is mapped to a group channel in Sendbird Chat SDK because messages within a ticket are handled by Sendbird Chat SDK. Therefore, a customer needs an authentication both within the Chat SDK and the Desk SDK to receive and send a message within a ticket. Use the SendbirdChat.connect() and the SBDSKMain.authenticate() methods with a customer's user ID used in Sendbird Chat SDK to authenticate a customer.

// Use a user ID that is unique to your Sendbird application.
SendbirdChat.connect(userId: USER_ID, authToken: ACCESS_TOKEN) { (user, error) in
    guard error == nil else {
        // Handle error.
    }

    // Use the same user ID and access token used in SendbirdChat.connect().
    SBDSKMain.authenticate(withUserId: USER_ID, accessToken: ACCESS_TOKEN) { (error) in
        guard error == nil else {
            // Handle error.
        }

        // SendbirdDesk is now initialized,
        // and the customer is authenticated and connected to Sendbird server.
        ...
    }
}

Implement the SBDSKTicket.createTicket() method to create a new ticket either before or after the customer’s initial message. Once a ticket is successfully created on the Desk server, you can access the ticket and its channel in ticket.channel through the callback from the server. Until a customer sends the first message, agents can’t see the ticket on the dashboard. When a conversation starts, the ticket is assigned to an available agent by the Desk server while messages are sent and received through the Chat SDK.

SBDSKTicket.createTicket(with: TITLE, userName: USER_NAME) { (ticket, error) in
    guard error == nil else {
        // Handle error.
    }

    // The ticket is created.
    // The customer and agent can chat with each other by sending a message through the ticket.channel.sendUserMessage() or sendFileMessage().
    ...
}

Note: Because the SendbirdChat instance in a client app is connected to the Sendbird server, Desk-related events are delivered to the Chat SDK's event delegates. The event delegates receive callbacks from the server through channel(_:didReceive:), channel(_:userDidEnter:), and other event callback methods.