Implement chat support in your Next.js applications 

In the newest update we bring you an easy to use chat/ticket reporting component for your NextJs applications - it's meant to serve as an easy to use customer communication tool thro which you can provide better support, chat with your clients or just make it easy to report problems.

How it works?

The chat component is an installable npm package that is already prepared to use - you can also customise it thro passing props thro the component. To make it even easier to use you can implement custom workflows thro the usage of already pre-made server actions.

The package has been made thro two separate entities

• Client component (includes general client side logic and styles required for the proper usage of the component)
• Server actions (include all logic that is required to communicate with our services safely)

The client component has been built with tailwind and Shadcn ensuring that everything is accessible by default - keep in mind that we will include more options in the future as the plug slowly evolves.

Installation

To start using it in your apps you can first install the npm package as shown

npm install starko-plug

the next step would be integrating the components within your Layout.tsx (make sure that the component is included within the server side/ server rendered page/layout ect). 

import { 
  StarkoTicketButton, 
  createTicketFunction, 
  getWorkspaceInfo, 
  createClientFunction, 
  getChatMessages 
} from 'starko-plug';
import 'starko-plug/dist/index.css';

export default function RootLayout({
  children
}: Readonly<{
  children: React.ReactNode;
}>) {
  return (
    
      
        {children}
        
        {project}
        {children}
        
      
    
  );
}

After this you can go and create your .env file, to find your API keys please visit the settings page of your workspace.

Finish

And that would be it, feel free to chat with your clients without any barriers, you will be notified as soon as someone send a message to your website, it's simple, easy and free 

For the past couple of months, we have worked diligently to stabilize our systems, and we are excited to announce our public beta!

In a nutshell, this means Starko is now ready for teams of all sizes, offering the core functionalities we promised: project and team management, customer support, AI contextual search, analytics, and a file vault. These features will be further enhanced in future releases as we can now progress more rapidly.

We are grateful to all those who have tried Starko and provided feedback. Your input has been invaluable in helping us improve swiftly.

So what does the new version bring?

Customer Support

The new features make customer support easy and fast. In addition to providing the ability to fully track the lifecycle of a customer support ticket, it allows you to monitor progress on each one, now with almost instant UI updates—thanks to significant front-end architectural changes. You can assign these tickets to your team members, and soon, you'll be able to use our APIs for simple and automatic bug reporting or to integrate a customer support form/button on your own websites.

Projects, Tasks, and Documents

Track projects thoroughly, create smaller teams, and assign tasks. Customize boards (similar to Trello) and use intuitive drag-and-drop functionality. Another key feature is the ability to publish and share documents created while managing tasks. These documents can be shared with clients, team members outside of the workspace, or even used to set up smaller websites—the possibilities are endless.

File Vault

Utilize folders to organize important files. The new interface makes it easy to share, rename, and delete files, keeping your data well-organized.

Team Management

The new team management tab lets you separate your team into multiple sub-groups like Admins and Workers, each with its own permissions.

Multiple Workspaces

Manage or be a part of multiple workspaces, which is particularly useful if your team includes various groups, such as finance, development, and design.

AI-Based Contextual Search

Finding something you can't remember is now easier. Describe what you recall, and our AI will do the heavy lifting. To ensure top-notch security, we don't save your data or share it with third parties; we use open-source, self-hosted alternatives.

What's Next

We aim to have Starko v1 ready in November, including a fully functional mobile app!

Until then, here are our focus areas:

• Copy and Paste Components: For automating customer support.
• Integrations and Plugins: Especially with tools like Slack, GitHub, and email systems to automate ticket creation.
• AI Contextual Completions: Not to market ourselves as an AI company but to help you speed up routine tasks.
• Client-Only Dashboard: We aim to enhance the client-only profiles and dashboards to make them more customizable and aligned with your brand.
• Mobile App: Bringing all features to mobile, especially notifications.
• Realtime Collaboration: Utilizing Supabase’s Realtime APIs for enhanced team collaboration, as Starko is designed to be a team-based app.

This is all for now. We will soon release a full roadmap outlining our development plans. Thank you for reading, and if you'd like to discuss Starko or how we can help solve your problems, feel free to contact us

We’re thrilled to share some exciting updates we’ve been working on over the past week!

Payment and Subscription Management

First, let's dive into how we’re improving our payment and subscription processes. As you know, a startup can't run without funds, so we’ve focused on finding the best solution for collecting payments and managing subscriptions. We’re pleased to announce that we’ve integrated Paddle, an online payment provider that works seamlessly in Montenegro.

Initially, implementing Paddle seemed daunting, but after reviewing the documentation, it turned out to be straightforward. I managed to complete the integration in less than 8 hours, and all test cases passed with flying colors. It's worth noting that our backend already had the necessary infrastructure to handle subscription changes, so this implementation was primarily a migration from our previous payment processor provided by NLB Podgorica.

New Subscription Features

Starting today (May 21, 2024), our users can officially take full control of their subscription settings. You can now:

• Switch payment methods
• Update, upgrade, or downgrade your package
• Pause or resume your subscription
• Fully cancel your subscription

These updates are designed to give you more flexibility and control over your subscriptions. We hope these changes enhance your experience and make managing your account easier.

And most importantly, all of this is fully tracked by both Paddle and our backend. This means we will never miss a customer request or an inquiry in case of any mistake we might make.

New User Experience

For first-time users or those creating new workspaces, we’ve added a simple pricing modal that pops up as soon as you register or create an account. While there are still improvements to be made, such as enhancing ease of use, accessibility, and handling a few more unforeseen situations, this is a significant step forward in streamlining our onboarding process.

These updates are designed to give you more flexibility and control over your subscriptions and make managing your account easier. We hope these changes enhance your experience.

Stay tuned for more updates, and thank you for your continued support

File Management Enhancements

Now, moving on to the latest feature update: you can finally sort and organize all of the files uploaded to your workspace into different folders!

This will help you stay organized when handling various use cases. This update represents an important milestone for us, as it is the first step towards a feature we call the "Knowledge Database." In the future, this feature will hopefully serve as a vault of knowledge for everything happening within our application.

To complement these updates, we have enabled file renaming. This was one of the features that was missing in the past for almost no reason at all (sometimes we forget to implement things in our rush to move as fast as possible).

Feel free to send us your feedback; we would greatly appreciate it. We are closer than ever to releasing our v0.2, which will be much more stable.

Looking Ahead

In the next update, you can expect us to share a comprehensive roadmap and a business analysis, which will hopefully make us more transparent. Additionally, we will be updating all of our legal documents, which are currently in development.

Other Update Notes:

• Improved email notifications
• Improved in-app notifications
• Improved workspace settings
• Fixed bugs when manipulating workspace team members
• Added comment notifications
• Added reminder notifications for task reminders