Article revisions are the body and title edits that are made to each version of a knowledge base article. Each time the Update button is clicked, a version of the article is saved. You can view the changes that were made to any version, and you can restore any version, if you need to.
In addition to viewing the body and title revisions for an article, you can also easily view the article's complete history of changes, including: publishing events, author changes, label changes, body updates, and section changes.
To view the history of the article, see Viewing article events and history for a specific article.
Viewing revisions for an article
You can view previous versions of an article and the revisions that were made in each version. Revisions include all changes made to the body and title.
To view revisions for an article
- Navigate to the article you want to review, then click Edit article in the top menu bar.
- Click Revisions at the top of the article.
- Select any version in the article sidebar to see the changes that were made to that
version.
Note: If you were an existing customer on February 15th, 2017, you can see revisions beginning February 15th, 2017. If you became a customer after that date, revisions begin on the date you enabled Guide. - Review the changes.
The revisions show you the differences between the selected version and the previous version. Removed content is shown in red and added content is shown in green.
You can restore a previous version if you want, by clicking Restore, see Restoring a previous version of an article. You can see the article's history by clicking Article history.
- If you want to hide the revisions while you are viewing a version, click Show changes at the top to toggle changes off.
- Click Back to return to the published version of the article.
Restoring a previous version of an article
You can view previous versions of an article and restore any version to make it the current published version.
To view a previous version of an article
- Navigate to the article, then click Edit article in the top menu bar.
- Click
Revisions
at the top of the article.
- Select the version you want to restore in the article sidebar, then click Restore.
- Click Restore again to confirm that you want to revert to that version.
The article editor shows the restored selected version.
- To publish the restored version differs depending on your plan type, For Professional, click Save. For Enterprise, click the drop-down arrow on Save, then select Publish now.
16 Comments
We enforce a content retention policy. Will there be any cap on the number of revisions captured by this feature?
This is a great added feature, thank you!!
I agree! Glad you like it, Heather!
Hey Holly!
This is an interesting question, but I don't know the answer. I'll see what I can find out for you!
As far as I know there is not a cap on the number of revisions/versions you can have. And the revisions/versions don't expire. We'll see if Jessie can get a validation on that.
I am editing an article currently. I see no menu bar; as a Guide Admin, it seems that when I click on an article I am automatically in edit mode. And I see no Revisions button anywhere at the top. This is what I see:
What am I missing?
Hi Chuck,
First thing's first, obviously make sure you're logged in to your Help Center from your admin account.
Next, navigate to the article you want to review in the Help Center. Edit article won't appear in the menu bar until you are actually on an article.
When you're on the article in the Help Center, the menu bar is the white bar across the top that looks like this:
From this menu bar, you'll click Edit article, and it should take you to the editor screen which looks something like this:
And then you'll click on revisions and the list of revisions should pop up.
Let me know if that helps, or if you're still having trouble and we'll see what else might be going on.
Do you have to be an admin/Guide manager in order to see the revision button? Or can you just have editing/publishing permissions to the article as a light agent?
Hi Melina -
Thanks for your question! You have to be a full/regular agent in order to see revisions. So, light agents in Guide Enterprise accounts can edit articles (so long as they're visible to agents) but they cannot see the revisions. Regular agents and Guide Managers can do both.
Also, I see that this is your first post - welcome to the Zendesk Community! If you'd like to say hello to everyone, you can introduce yourself here.
Hello,
I've noticed that sometimes when I'm looking at the revisions history of an article, instead of showing the particular words/lines that were edited, it will just show the entire section that an edit took place in RED crossed out, with that entire section with the new content shown in GREEN as new (as if the entire section was edited, rather than just a few words within it).
Obviously this makes revisions much less useful for seeing what was changed from version to version, as I end up having to manually search for what few words might have changed in those entire sections.
It's not on every article that this issue occurs. I'm thinking something possibly in the HTML might impact displaying the revisions properly, but I haven't put my finger on what that might be exactly? Possibly <div> tags or <span> tags?
If you have any insight on this, that would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Jay Lee,
Do you have an example of the revisions or HTML that you can share? If this issue includes private information in your account or we need to get into the specifics of your HTML, I would be happy to create a ticket with our Advocacy Team to further investigate your concern.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Hi Katie Dougherty I do have an example that came up today, but I think I'd prefer to work on a ticket if you don't mind.
Hi @...,
Sounds good! I have created a ticket for you with our Advocacy Team. Please lookout for an email update and you can reply back with your example.
Have a great rest of your day!
Hi...
I have been using this 'Restore" feature extensively this week but now, all of a sudden. Zendesk keeps giving me an error message: 'Article wasn't restored. Please try again.' when I try to restore an older version! I was able to do it all the while but can't now.
Can I know why or how to fix this as it impacts our timeline?
Hello Lithya Kris,
Looking into this issue, it seems you are running into a potential bug. We will have to investigate further. I see you are currently working with one of our specialists in a ticket, but if other questions of any of our products the Community is here to help.
Best regards.
Hey Everyone! This update is great and I know a lot of hard work went into making this available.
I was wondering if you had any plans to take this a step further and allow for writers to make updates to an existing, published article but not publish those updates until they're ready to. For example, let's say we have a product and an article that shows customers how to do something with that product. Changes are made to the product, but not released to the public yet. We want to be able to update the article but not publish it until the product updates are released.
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