Managing community posts (Guide Professional and Enterprise)

The community consists of posts associated with different discussion topics. A post might be anything, including questions, tips, or feature requests.

You can edit, move, or delete community posts, as well as edit or delete comments on community posts. You can also close a post for comment, mark an official comment, promote a post, set status on a post, and create a ticket from a post or comment.

Note: The user interface described in this article is based on the default Copenhagen theme. If your theme is customized, options might appear differently or be missing.

Only Guide Managers can manage community posts. Regular agents don't have the permissions to make any of these changes. The community is available on Guide Professional and Enterprise.

For information about managing the discussion topics that contain community posts, see Managing Help Center community discussion topics.

Topics covered in this article:

• Editing and deleting community posts
• Editing and deleting comments on community posts
• Moving a post to another discussion topic
• Closing a post for comments
• Marking an official comment for a post
• Promoting a post by pinning or featuring
• Setting status on a post
• Creating a ticket from a community post or comment

Editing and deleting community posts

You can edit or delete community posts as needed.

To edit the text of a post

1. In the post you want to edit, click the Post actions icon (), then select Edit.

   

2. Make your changes, then click Update.

To delete a post

1. In the post you want to delete, click the Post actions icon (), then select Delete.
2. Click Ok to confirm the deletion.

   The post is removed from the topic and cannot be recovered.

Editing and deleting comments on community posts

You can edit or delete comments on community posts as needed.

You can also mark an official comment (see Marking an official comment for a post).

To edit a comment

1. Beside the comment you want to edit, click the options menu, then select Edit.

   

2. Make changes, then click Update.

To delete a comment

• Beside the comment you want to delete, click the Comment actions icon (), then select Delete.

  The comment is removed from the post and cannot be recovered.

Moving a post to another discussion topic

You can move a post from one discussion topic to another in your community. You cannot move a community post to the knowledge base.

To move a post to another topic

1. In the post you want to move, click the Post actions icon (), then selectEdit.

   

2. Click inside the Topics box and select another topic.
3. Click Update.

Promoting a post by pinning or featuring

You can promote community posts by pinning or featuring.

When you pin a post, it moves to the top of the posts list within its topic and has a star beside it. This enables you to draw attention to important posts in a topic, such announcements or guidelines.

Pinned posts always appear at the top of the topic, regardless of any sorting option chosen. The most recently pinned post will be the top-most. You need to manually add styling for pinned posts so that they appear different than other posts in the topic.

When you feature a post, it appears in the featured posts component, which you can add to any page in your theme.

To pin a post to the top of a topic

• In the post you want to pin, click the Post actions icon (), then select Pin to top.

  If you don't want the post to be pinned to the top of the topic anymore, select Unpin from top.

To add styling for pinned posts to your theme

1. In Guide, click the Customize design () icon in the sidebar.
2. In the Theme panel, click Edit theme.
3. Select the Community post page in the template drop-down in the upper-left.
4. Click Post actions.
5. Click Pin to top.
6. Click the CSS tab, then add the following CSS to style pinned posts or modify it to fit your design:

   .post-pinned .question-title:before {

   content: "\2605";

   margin-right: 5px;

   color: $color_5;

   }

7. Click Save, then Publish changes.

To feature a community post

• In the post you want to feature, click the Post actions icon (), then select Feature post.

  

  You must have added the featured posts component to your theme for the post to be featured. Otherwise, selecting the feature post option does nothing.

  If you don't want the post featured in the Featured Posts component anymore, select Unfeature post.

To add featured posts to your theme

1. In Guide, click the Customize design () icon in the sidebar.
2. In the Theme panel, click Edit theme.
3. Select a template from the template drop-down in the upper-left, then paste the following snippet of code where you want featured posts to appear (on your Home page, for example).

   <div class="featured-posts">
       <h2>{{t 'featured_posts'}}</h2>
   
      {{#if featured_posts}}
   
         <ul class="featured-post-list">
   
           {{#each featured_posts}}
   
             <li><a href="{{url}}">{{title}}</a></li>
   
           {{/each}}
   
         </ul>
   
       {{else}}
   
         <p>{{t 'no_featured_posts'}}</p>
   
       {{/if}}
   
     </div>

4. Click Preview at the top to ensure it looks as intended. To preview a featured post, use the preview window to the right of the theme editor, locate a post, click Post actions and click Feature post.
5. Click Save, then Publish changes.

Setting status for a community post

You can set a status of Planned, Not planned, and Completed on any community post. This can be especially useful if you have feature requests in your community and want to communicate status.

When you set status, the status appears in the list of posts within the topic and on the post itself. You can filter by any status to see all posts in a topic with the selected status.

To set status on a community post

• In the post where you want to set status, click the Post actions icon (), then select one of the statuses: Planned, Not planned, Completed , and Answered.

To filter community posts by status

• In a community topic, click Show all, then select one of the status options.

Closing a post for comments

If you don't want to allow comments on a community post, you can close the post for comments.

To close a community post for comments

• In the post you want to close for comments, click the Post actions icon (), then select Close for comments.

Marking an official comment for a post

You can mark a comment as the official comment for a community post. You can make either a new comment or an existing comment the official comment. There can be only one official comment on a post. You cannot mark an official comment on a knowledge base article.

When you mark an official comment, it appears as the first comment on the post and is indicated as the official comment. That means that if you edit an existing comment and mark it as official, that comment moves from it's current place in the order and time line of comments, and appears at the beginning, ahead of any older comments.

If a comment is marked as the official comment and the user who made the comment is downgraded to end user, the comment remains the official comment.

To mark a comment as the official comment

1. In the post where you want an official comment, either enter a new comment or edit an existing comment.
2. Click Official comment under the comment.

   

3. Click Submit or Update, depending on whether you are making a new comment or editing an existing comment.

   The comment becomes the first comment on the post and is indicated as the official comment.

Creating a ticket from a community post or comment

You can create a ticket from a community post or comment. When you do, a ticket is created in your instance of Zendesk Support with the body text from the post or comment and a link to the post or comment.

In the community post, the ticket number link appears at the top of the post so you can easily access the ticket from the post. In a community comment, the ticket number link appears beside the comment.

To create a ticket from a community post

1. In the post you want to convert to a ticket, click the Post actions icon (), then select Create a ticket.
2. Make any changes to the title or body as needed, then select yourself or the poster as the requester of the ticket.

   If you select the person who made the post as the requester, that person will receive an email notification.

3. Click Create ticket.

To create a ticket from a comment on a community post

1. Beside the comment you want to convert to a ticket, click the Comment actions icon (), then select Create a ticket.

   

2. Make any changes to the subject or description as needed, then select yourself or the poster as the requester of the ticket.

   If you select the person who made the comment as the requester, that person will receive an email notification.

3. Click Create ticket.