Exporting and importing dynamic content

To streamline the translation of your dynamic content, you can easily export the content as CSV (comma separated values) files that you can send off to a translation agency and then import the translated files back into your Zendesk. You can do this when first creating the dynamic content and any time you need to update the content thereafter.

An excellent way to manage your dynamic content translation is to first create all the dynamic content in your default language and then export the files. The export creates separate files for each of the languages you support in your Zendesk. Your translation agency can add all the translated content into the files and when you import the files back into your Zendesk the language variants will be created automatically for you. In other words, there's no need to manually create language variants in your Zendesk if you're sending the export files out for translation.

Note: Before exporting and importing your files, you must first create dynamic content items in your Zendesk account. For information on creating dynamic content items see, Providing multiple language support with dynamic content.

Exporting dynamic content for translation

You can quickly export all of your dynamic content into CSV files that you can send out for translation and then import back into your Zendesk when the translations are complete.

The export process creates separate CSV files for every language that you support. For example, if your default language is English and you also support French and German, the export generates the following three files:

• en-US.csv
• fr.csv
• de.csv

The CSV files are contained in a zip file.

To export your dynamic content

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Dynamic Content.
2. In the Import & Export wizard (right side of the page), select Export your dynamic content.
3. Click Export. When the export is complete, you'll receive an email containing a link from which you can download the zip file.
   Note: You can export your dynamic content once in a 15 minute period. Additional requests to export the content within that period return results for the first request you made. After 15 minutes, the export will reflect any changes you made to the content since the first export request.

Each file contains all of your dynamic content in the default language in which you created them (in this example, English). Here's an example of the French CSV (fr.csv) file.

"Title","Default language","Default text","fr text","Variant status"
"Agent signature","English","The MondoCam Support Team","",""
"Welcome message","English","Welcome to MondoCam Customer Service!","",""

The first row of the CSV file is the header row, which contains the names of the data contained in the file: title, the default language, the default text of the dynamic content, the variant's language, and the status.

The CSV file can be opened in a text editor, a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc, or imported into some other translation system so that the French translations can be added. The translators add the text in the 'fr text' column and then send the CSV file back so that you can import it into your Zendesk.

Note: The CSV files are exported in the UTF-8 format and you must import the files back into your Zendesk in the same format. Note that Microsoft Excel for Mac does not support the UTF-8 format.

"Title","Default language","Default text","fr text","Variant status"
"Agent signature","English","The MondoCam Support Team","Toute l'équipe du Support MondoCam",""
"Welcome message","English","Welcome to MondoCam Customer Service!","Bienvenue au support de MondoCam",""

The identifier for each dynamic content item is its title. When you import the file, the title is matched to the existing dynamic content item and the translations are added as language variants.

Importing the translated CSV files

After your CSV files have been translated, you can import them back into your Zendesk.

To import dynamic content

1. Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Dynamic Content.
2. In the Import & Export wizard (right side of the page), select Import content.
3. You can either choose the CSV file you want to import or paste the CSV data in directly.
   • To import a CSV file, select Choose File.
   • To paste in the CSV data, select Let me paste in data instead.
4. Click Import. You'll receive an email when the import is complete.

If your CSV file is properly formatted and is in the UTF-8 format, your import will be successful. If the import fails, you'll receive an email describing the errors that occurred.

While importing a CSV file is a straightforward process, there are some details about importing this content that you'll want to be aware of.

• Even though the CSV file contains the status, you cannot set the status via the import. If you manually change the status in the import CSV file, your changes will be ignored.
• If you import content for a variant that does not exist (but the language is supported in your Zendesk), the variant will automatically be added and its status set to Active.
• The only data that is required (in fact, the only data that is imported from the CSV file) is the title and the language text. Therefore, you can import variant translations using a CSV file in this format:

  "Title","fr text"
  "Agent signature","Toute l'équipe du Support MondoCam"
  "Welcome message","Bienvenue au support de MondoCam"

• If the language text in a variant is blank or is just spaces (in other words, no valid text) then the variant content is not added. However, all other valid entries in the file will be added.
• If an error occurs during the import, the import will fail and you'll receive an email message with the error details.