Back up your Help Center articles at the click of a button!
Welcome
Let me introduce you to kBackup! This little app will allow you to back up your help centre content at the click of a button to your local hard drive.
Using this app makes backing up your help centre content a breeze.
Features
The app currently has a number of features and may be expanded to include additional features if the demand is there.
- The app will back up your help centres or web portals content to a specified folder as HTML pages in the format of [ArticleId].html. The app will first verify that the user exists in the given Zendesk domain. This is included for security reasons so only users who exist in the domain can back up the content.
- The app will work for any Zendesk help centre or web portal even if you chose to use the Host Mapping feature as the original Zendesk subdomain will still exist, regardless of what you have currently set as your hostname.
- Using the app to back up your help centre or web portal content is completely safe and will not affect any existing data, it will simply take a copy of it so there is no possibility for data loss during the process.
Requirements
There are some requirements for using this app that need to be met in order for it to function correctly. I've included these requirements below:
- This program is compatible with Windows only.
- Please note that SSO sign-in and 2FA is not currently supported. A Zendesk account that was created and is managed within Zendesk is required.
- Your user must have ‘Password Access’ to the API enabled in Zendesk. You can do this by going to Settings > Channels (Subsection) > API and enabling ‘Password Access’.
- The app requires Microsoft.Net Framework 4.6 or higher to be installed on the Windows PC or Laptop where it’s being run, this version of the .NET Framework can be downloaded here.
- I recommend running the app as Administrator to avoid any permission issues backing up to your selected backup location. This can be done by right-clicking the kBackup.exe and selecting ‘Run as administrator’.
Getting Started
To get started with backing up your help centre content ensure that you have met the requirements above, then go ahead and follow the steps below:
- Download a copy of the app here
- Extract the downloaded kBackup.zip file to your Desktop
- Right click the app and select 'Run as administrator’
- Enter your Zendesk subdomain into the Domain field
- Enter your Zendesk users email into the Email field
- Enter your Zendesk users’ password into the Password field
- Select your Portal Type from the drop-down
- Select the Backup button
- Browse for a folder where you would like to back up your content and select Ok
After you have selected a folder and clicked Ok the backup process will begin and you will receive a notification letting you know when the backup is complete.
Download kBackup here!
Release Notes
Release notes have been moved into ReleaseNotes.txt which is now included in the download package.
Giving Feedback & Reporting Bugs
For any feedback, feature & functionality requests or bugs you may have come across please leave a reply here or email me at felix.stubner(at)gmail(dot)com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
If kBackup has helped you and you want to show your appreciation feel free to click on the little up arrow on this post to up vote it. Thanks for your support!
Disclaimer
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
If kBackup has helped you, please consider up-voting this post by clicking the up arrow below. This will help other users to find the post more easily. Thank you!
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Wonderful app. Thank you! Any ideas on why only articles in one language are being exported? We have aricles in Portuguese (Default) and English but only pt-br are being exported at this time. Thanks in advance.
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@Yasmin - Thanks for getting in touch. When I first created the app I focused only on downloading the articles from the default language. Unfortunately, at this time it's not possible to download multiple localisations.
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Hi Felix! So, if I change the default language I would be able of downloading them?
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Hello Felix,
Is there a way to make the backed up .html files point to the files in the images folder?
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Oh dear, Yasmin, apologies for the late response I just have missed this. In theory that may work for you though.
@Andrew - At the moment there isn't a way for you to do this, I would need to code this functionality from my side.
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Hi Felix,
as I am still not sure after reading all the comments:
Does the backup work for every language the Help Center is set up?
We have English as default language but also added Content in Dutch.
Thanks in advance!
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@David - Thanks for leaving a comment. It only works with the default language at the moment. That being said a workaround suggested (but unconfirmed) was to change the default language to target the specific content you wish to backup. Hope that helps!
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Hi Felix,
thank you for your reply.
It tested it with the workaround (changing the default language), and what can I say:It works!
So as long as Zendesk is not able to add a feature like this I highly recommend kBackup!
You did a fantastic work with it!
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@David - That's great! I am glad to hear that the workaround works for you and you were able to get your content downloaded that way. Also great to have confirmation of this for others who might be looking to do the same in the future. Thanks again David, glad kBackup could help! :)
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Hi Felix,
it´s me again.
I used the program but for I don´t know what reasons it stopped working and giving me an error message instead:
It seems an error with .NET Framework, but after checking with my Admin I can confirm I have .Net 4.7 installed.
If needed I can send you the Details via email.
Do you have any idea?
Best
David -
@David - No worries. We can have a look and see what might be causing that. Could you email me felix.stubner(at)gmail.com the log files from the backup directory. Could you also expand the Details on that error message and copy the text and include it in your email as well. With that info I should be able to get an idea of what might be causing this.
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@Felix, thank you for your response. I have sent you an email a minute ago.
Thanks a lot,
David -
Pardon me if the information is already found somewhere and I missed it. But do you have a Mac specific file to download? The .exe from my understanding is specific to PC.
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Hello @...,
Would you be willing to respond to your and if it is Mac-specific?
Best regards.
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@... - Thanks for the nudge.
@... - A Mac version isn't currently available I'm afraid. I have considered creating one in the past and may do so but don't have an ETA. If you don't have access to a Windows machine, you may get it to work using a software such as Wine that emulates Windows. Hope that helps! -
Hello @...,
Way to be a "Titan" with your response there!
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@... kBackup has been going for a while now and I try to respond usually within 24-48 hours to make sure users get answers relatively quickly.
Really liking the new Mention feature, when I @someone it now actually tags them which is cool. Thanks for stopping by!
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Thanks for the positive feedback on the mentions functionality, @...!
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HI Felix, it's Great tool!
I want to let the sandbox do the uploading.
If you use Google Drive.
It takes time and effort to convert from HTML files to Google documents.
The URL number of the article is displayed in the title.
These two points are very troublesome.I wonder if there is a better way.
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Hi @...,
Thanks for giving kBackup a try.
I understand that being able to export the files into different formats would be beneficial and it's an idea I have noted as an enhancement in the past. Whether I will get to it anytime soon, I cannot say.
Regarding the second point you had about the article ID being displayed in the title. I'd like to better understand the use-case here. Why is this causing an issue for your use-case?
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Hi Felix, glad to hear back.
I'm using kBackup to keep the production and sandbox environments the same, but I see the ID in the title.
This ID is not necessary for me.
I don't want to confuse our users by showing extra numerical information in the title.
As for modifying the files, I think it would be difficult to remove them if there are too many files.If you have any useful suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.
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Hi @...,
thanks for getting back to me and clarifying.
As the format of the way titles are saved is hard-coded there isn't a way to customize this.
That being said, if you are familiar with Python or another scripting language, it wouldn't be too difficult to write a script that will simply rename the files to not include the numerical value and brackets.
As for the files, you could similarly use a script to change the file contents and remove any of the HTML formatting and change the file extension to convert it to a plain-text file.
Hope these suggestions are helpful.
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Hi Felix, glad to hear back.
I have one more question.I have a lot of files that have been converted with broken file names.
In fact, when I install it in the sandbox, it is reflected as a choppy file.
Has this ever happened before?
I would like to ask for a fix if possible.
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Hi @...,
What you are seeing is actually expected behavior.
I purposely shortened it to a reasonable length and replaced any remaining characters with ... to indicate that the title exceeded this limit.
This is to ensure that when a file is saved, there's a much lower chance that the file path exceeds the Windows imposed 259 character limit for file paths. Exceeding the character limit will prevent interactions with the file. You can find more info on this here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/naming-a-file.
I think the only real solution to this behavior is for the app to handle backup and also restoring the content and managing the data itself. It's something I've considered in the past but haven't had the time to implement this functionality.
That being said, the full title should still be included in the HTML header within the file, so this is something you could potentially also script if you'd like to work around this, by extracting the title from the file content and then updating the file name.
Hope that helps to answer your query. If there's anything else don't hesitate to let me know.
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Hey Felix
Really great tool, and one that we are hoping to utilize over the coming weeks.
I am curious if there is a file size or article number limit as we appear to be missing a handful of articles from one of our exports?
Kind regards
Andrew
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Hey @...
Thanks for giving kBackup a try.
There is no limit of any sort. However, kBackup can currently only back up articles that are available publicly. So any that have an auth wall will not be backed up.
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Hello Felix,
I downloaded kBackup and want to use it for our Help Center (aka Knowledge Base) backup.
I entered Domain, email, and password as instructed. Just that it keeps saying the username and password are incorrect. Yet, I can use the same username and password to login to my Zendesk Guide and Support. BTW, my OS is Windows.
Any ideas as to what could be the cause?
P.S. The exe is dated 2018. Version 0.9.2.
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@... thanks for reaching out.
Are you using an SSO account or a Zendesk local account?
Please note that SSO accounts aren't supported at this time so this may be why you are receiving such an error.
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Hi @...,
I see 504 published articles in our help center but after using kBackup it's only showing 131 items in my backup folder. What might be the issue? Thanks.
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Hi @...,
Thanks for reaching out.
kBackup only takes a backup of publicly available KBs. This may be why you are seeing a difference in the number of published vs. the number of backed-up KBs.
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