HelpStack: In-App Support on iOS

We don’t seem to generally get around much to putting any more end user support in our apps than an email link, but next time somebody asks for more, this HelpStack thing sure looks like a front of the line choice:

Source is on github, and out of the box it’s ready to hook up with an account on

• Desk.com
• HappyFox — probably works best with this one, being their code and all
• Zendesk

Presumably if you were motivated you could check out those implementations and figure out how to adapt them to the various other support solutions we’ve mentioned a long time ago and before that a really seriously long time ago, or whatever other solution it might be that the cool kids use these days. Us, we tend to work more on the poor kids end of the spectrum, so even the cup of coffee a month price most of these services have a starter service for is pretty much right out. But look, HelpStack is even good for that too:

4. Email gear

If you do not use any of the help desk solutions, you can still use HelpStack to provide efficient customer support by configuring with just your email. You can configure email support in Helpstack by including the below lines of code in your App delegate…

HAGearEmail* emailGear = [[HAGearEmail alloc] initWithSupportEmailAddress : @"support@example.com" articlePath : @"<pList file name>”];
HSHelpStack *helpStack = [HSHelpStack instance];
helpStack.gear = emailGear;

You can provide your FAQs as a local pList file and provide the pList file name in place of pList file name…

Well, that’s a pretty darn low barrier to entry for including at least a minimal FAQ in your app. We’ll definitely give that at least a rustle at the next opportunity!