My work on LibreDesk over the last month

[mageaustralia]

Hi @abhinavxd ,

First off, thanks for releasing LibreDesk for everyone to use and modify. It's actually a really great system. When I first tested it, I made a few modifications to see how feasible for our needs it was.

I did try and submit some of those changes as PR's but our project started moving quickly and I've been pumping through many many changes per day that it was hard to submit all as PR's and align our business goals with those goals of the LibreDesk project overall.

In any case, I wanted to bring our branch to your attention as I think there's a lot there that could be valuable to the LibreDesk community. I have no intention of running my own fork and I'd rather see much or all of this brought back into LibreDesk so we're not running our own fork in isolation but I do realise not all of it will fit with your goals.

My branch is here
https://github.com/mageaustralia/libredesk/tree/v1.0.1-plus-enhancements

And it contains all the following:

AI & Knowledge

• OpenRouter AI provider — 100+ models via OpenRouter, encrypted API key storage
• RAG AI assistant — "Generate Response" button, knowledge sources (webpages, macros), system prompt config
• Multimodal AI — Conversation images extracted, resized to 500x500, included in AI prompts
• External search API — Pluggable search integration for RAG pipeline
• AI HTML sanitization — Prevents prompt injection in AI-generated content

Ecommerce Integration

• Maho Commerce / Magento 1 provider — OAuth2 auth, customer & order lookup
• Multi-stage context gathering — Auto-fetches customer + recent orders, scans conversation for order numbers
• "+ Orders" button in reply box for AI responses with ecommerce context
• Ecommerce settings page at /admin/ecommerce

Email & IMAP

• Per-inbox email signatures with dynamic placeholders, From switcher
• Auto-assign on reply — Per-inbox toggle to assign conversation to replying agent
• Agent name in From header — Emails show agent's name, not just inbox name
• IMAP/SMTP connection testing with debug logs
• SMTP test for notification settings
• Multi-folder IMAP polling — Comma-separated mailbox folders
• Email HTML sanitization — Clean incoming email HTML
• DMARC rewrite detection — Detects real sender from forwarded emails (X-Google-Original-From)
• Contact form field parsing — Extracts real customer name/email from HTML form bodies
• Inline CID fix — Non-image attachments (PDF) render as download links instead of broken images
• CC/BCC clear buttons — Per-email remove (X) buttons on TO, CC, BCC fields

Spam & Trash

• Spam/Trash statuses — New conversation statuses with sidebar nav, routes, and API
• Bulk trash — Trash multiple conversations at once
• TrashManager worker — Background auto-purge with configurable retention
• Spam detection — Thread IMAP mailbox name through for spam folder detection

Conversation List & Views

• Table view layout — Card/table switcher with resizable columns
• Bulk actions — Checkboxes, shift+click range select, bulk assign/status/priority
• Quick-assign dropdowns — Inline agent/team assignment from list
• Subject, ticket number, status, priority shown in conversation list
• Filter pill bar with in/not_in/in_or_null operators for views
• Full-width toggle — List/detail and full-width message layout
• Unassigned view fix — Shows all conversations without an agent (not requiring no team too)
• View reactivity — Closing/reassigning tickets removes them from filtered views immediately

Reply & Editor

• Collapsible reply box with unified scrolling
• Larger fullscreen reply editor (92% width/height)
• Send & Set Status dropdown — Send and change status in one click
• Delete draft button
• Macro toolbar button (Zap icon) — Quick access without Ctrl+K
• Cursor position fix — Editor focuses at start, not end of content

Search

• Auto-focus on search input
• Messages as default tab (renamed "Conversations" to "Tickets")
• Back navigation returns to search results
• Session persistence — Search query and results survive navigation
• Null result crash fix

UI & Theme

• Fresh theme — Teal palette, dark sidebar, theme switcher with localStorage persistence
• Fresh theme as default (our needs)
• Sidebar toggle visible in conversation view
• Subject hover preview — Tooltip showing first incoming message
• File attachment redesign — Color-coded icons by file type
• Image rendering fix — Emails render at natural width, not stretched
• Relative timestamps
• Favicon
• Previous Conversations accordion defaults to open
• Contact name from email — Derives name when no display name available

Security

• SSRF protection for external URL fetching and webhooks
• Prompt injection mitigation + O(n^2) stripHTML fix
• Sensitive data redaction in ecommerce API logs
• Internal error detail suppression — No stack traces leaked to clients
• Inbox ID validation on message send
• Encrypted API keys in database

[abhinavxd]

Sorry for the late reply, I read this and forgot to reply.
Thanks for sharing this and for the kind words about Libredesk.

There's some interesting stuff in here! Especially the bulk actions that I plan to add soon.

Yes we both diverged a bit - different requirements that happens.
Right now I've finished adding a live chat widget in PR #114 (going live this month), I am adding a RAG layer next.
Adding a live chat channel was necessary as an AI bot typically works best with it.

If you'd like to contribute any of these back, focused PRs (one feature per PR) would be easiest to review.

[Peter2121]

It would be nice to see 'Table view layout' (like FreshDesk) integrated in mainstream.

[mageaustralia]

Hi @abhinavxd - thanks for the response. It's difficult trying to balance our needs with the projects but I'd love to see as much as possible implemented upstream. Much of our original changes happened really fast but now we're live in Libredesk, I can start to bundle each 'feature' as a PR as I try and cherry pick / merge v2.1.1 with my changes . I will first target the smaller, most relevant or requested changes that I think are no brainers for the project. I hope we can get some of it merged, at least.

[mageaustralia]

@abhinavxd - I've now submitted four PR's - I obviously have a lot of PR's to try and make. I understand running an open source project is a load and a thankless job. That said, I've seen and am concerned about many PR's taking weeks to get a response. It took ~5 weeks to get a reply to this ticket, for example.

Libredesk is gaining traction and that's great. I guess it's what you wanted originally but it's also important when people are actively contributing and building out tooling around it that tickets / PR's have some sort of reasonable response - even the smallest - "Hey thanks, this looks good, I'm under the pump but I'll try and look at it soon" is enough. So far, 2 days is nothing but I wouldn't like to wait a 1-2 weeks to get a response of any kind on a PR.

[ecobisi]

@abhinavxd - I've now submitted four PR's - I obviously have a lot of PR's to try and make. I understand running an open source project is a load and a thankless job. That said, I've seen and am concerned about many PR's taking weeks to get a response. It took ~5 weeks to get a reply to this ticket, for example.

Libredesk is gaining traction and that's great. I guess it's what you wanted originally but it's also important when people are actively contributing and building out tooling around it that tickets / PR's have some sort of reasonable response - even the smallest - "Hey thanks, this looks good, I'm under the pump but I'll try and look at it soon" is enough. So far, 2 days is nothing but I wouldn't like to wait a 1-2 weeks to get a response of any kind on a PR.

I agree with this.

First, a huge thank you to @abhinavxd and all the contributors: there’s been some really great work here! That said, I do think PRs should be reviewed and merged more quickly. I only discovered Libredesk a few weeks ago and was considering contributing, but the long delays are a bit discouraging and could end up undermining contributors’ efforts.

I also took a look at the branches @mageaustralia has been carefully maintaining and improving (for example, the earlier enhanced 1.0.3 branch and the newer enhanced 2.1.1 branch he is currently porting those improvements into): they include a substantial number of features and enhancements that seem like they would greatly benefit the project as a whole.

If high-quality, focused PRs like these continue to sit unmerged, there’s a real risk that contributors may lose interest or move to a fork. @abhinavxd, could you please consider prioritizing and merging @mageaustralia’s PRs when possible?

Thanks again for all your work on this project!

[abhinavxd]

Thanks for splitting these up @mageaustralia, the smaller single-feature PRs are much easier to reason about.

A note on expectations, since it came up: Libredesk is a personal project I build on evenings and weekends.
My full time day job is unrelated to Libredesk, so this runs on whatever time is left after work and family.

Review pace reflects that, and that applies to initial responses too, not just merge decisions. Some weeks I don't open GitHub at all.

Reviewing a PR carefully often takes more time than writing it. Whether and when a PR merges depends on how well it fits the project's scope, direction, code conventions, and priorities, and on the time I have available. That is at my discretion as
the maintainer, and I can't commit to a response SLA on unsolicited PRs.

Concretely: I'll go through the batch in order, starting with #286 since bulk actions were already on my roadmap (see ROADMAP.md file). If any PR diverges from where I'm taking the project, I'll say so on the PR rather than leaving it open.

Thanks for building on top of Libredesk. You're always free to run your fork with whatever mix of features suits your needs, and I'd rather you do that comfortably than feel blocked by my review pace.

[mageaustralia]

@abhinavxd - Thanks for the clear feedback about everything and clarifying about where the project fits in your life priorities (which sound like they're in the right order) and I appreciate you 'blessing' a fork if I our objectives don't align. My preference was always to just PR to Libredesk but as you said, our pace, needs and vision might not align.