Add, Edit, Clone, Unpublish and Delete KBase Articles

Add, Edit, Clone, Unpublish and Delete KBase Articles

The Knowledge Base is where your customers can access the solution articles you create for addressing various issues. You can create articles and group them under custom sections for ease of access. Before you get started with adding articles, please read through the knowledge base tips mentioned below:
  • When you sign-up for Zoho Desk, a default category that goes by the name of your portal will be added to your knowledge base. You can rename this category later.
  • When you create a new department, its associated category will be added to your knowledge base. You can choose to hide this category from being displayed to your customers in the Help Center.
  • You can add a custom category without adding a new department.
  • A category can be further divided into sections and sub-sections. A maximum of three hierarchy levels is supported for a category. That is, a category can be structured like:
                      /Category
                            /Section
                                  /Sub-section
                                        /Sub-subsection
  • In the absence of a section, an article will be directly added underneath a category.
  • When you've created a sub-section, you can't add or have articles beneath the section.
  • The agent who creates an article will be its owner. Article owners will be notified of the feedback received from the customers.

To add your first KBase article:
  1. Click the Knowledge Base (KB) module.
  2. In the Category Home page, click Add article button.
    You can also click the Add icon (  ) from the top panel.
  3. In the Add Article page, perform the following actions:
    • Enter article Title (mandatory to save the article)
    • Type the solution in the editor window (mandatory as well)
    • Attach files that are related to the article. You can use one of the following methods to upload files:
      • Drag files from your desktop and drop them on your content window.
      • Click Browse and select the file(s) you'd like to upload.
      • Click Gallery to upload a file from your KBase media gallery.
    • Select the category, section, and sub-section using the drop-menu (only if you've created any)
    • Set the access permission. You can choose to display the article to Agents, All users or Registered users in the Help Center
    • Enter relevant tags. Tags will be used to display suggested articles for your customers in the Help Center. It will also pull up relevant solutions when your agents respond to tickets
    • Set an expiry date for the article. This way, you can automatically remove the article when it loses its relevance
    • Specify the Title, Meta description and the Meta keywords for the article. These will decide what pages from your help desk should be found in the various search engines
  4. Click Publish.



If you intend to send the article for review, simply enable the review option and click Send for Review. Your help desk administrators or the KB owners will receive an email notification requesting them to review and publish the article. This option will be available only when your KBase is enabled for review. Lean more

When you have organized your category into sections and sub-sections, navigate to the relevant section and click the Add icon (  ) from the top panel. This will add the article directly into the current section.

Edit Articles
Edit the articles that were added to your knowledge base. You can perform an edit from the list view or the article's detail view. 
To edit a published article:
  1. Navigate to the article you want to edit. 
  2. In the Article Detail page, click the Edit icon (  ) on the upper-right side of the page.
  3. In the Edit Article page, update the article as required.
  4. Click Publish.


For unpublished articles, click either Send for Review or Save as Draft to save the changes. Alternatively, you can edit an article from its list view, by clicking the Edit icon (  ). 

Clone Articles
Sometimes you want to use the content or format of an existing article. One way of doing it is to copy, paste and edit the new article. But there's a quick way to do this. Clone an existing article to create a draft version that you can edit with further changes. 
To clone an article:
  1. Navigate to the article you want to clone. 
  2. In the Article Detail page, click the Clone icon (  ) on the upper-right side of the page.
    The draft version of the cloned article will be created.
Notes:
  1. The cloned article will retain the title, content, SEO properties, tags, attachments, permalink, and folder structure of the original article.
  2. The permalink of the cloned article will be appended with the current date.

Unpublish Articles
If you no longer want your article to be available online on your help center, you can unpublish it. You can still access and update the unpublished article from the agent interface, just that it won't be accessible for end-users or crawled by search engines. You can also republish the article using the same permalink or a different one at any time. If users try to visit your unpublished article, they'll see a message that the page doesn't exist.

Here are some key points to keep in mind while unpublishing articles:
  1. When an article is unpublished, the article status will be updated as Unpublished.
  2. Unpublishing an article without a draft is not considered a revision and will not create a new version.
  3. Unpublishing an article having a saved draft will create a minor version of the unpublished content. Additionally, the article will be unlisted from the Drafts view.
  4. If the unpublished article is edited, it gets listed under the Drafts view in addition to the Unpublished view, and both will display the same contents.

To unpublish an article:
  1. Navigate to the article you want to unpublish.
  2. In the Article Detail page, click the Unpublish icon (  ) on the upper-right side of the page.



  3. Click Continue to confirm unpublish.
    The article will be unpublished and listed under the Unpublished view.



Notes:
  1. You can also unpublish articles from the List view. Hover over an article, click the More icon (  ), and then select Unpublish from the menu.
  2. My Unpublished and All Unpublished views are available only when at least one unpublished article is present.
  3. Articles cannot be unpublished in bulk.

Delete Articles
Deleting an article removes it from your knowledge base. You can delete an article from the list view or from the article's detail view.
To delete an article:
  1. Navigate to the article you want to delete. 
  2. In the Article Detail page, click the Delete icon (  ) on the upper-right side of the page.
  3. Click Delete to confirm your action. 
The article will be moved to the Recycle Bin folder available within your knowledge base.


Also Read:      Creating Table of Contents      |      Using Text Styles

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