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, promote a post by pinning to the top of its topic or featuring it on the home page, 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 might 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 and comments
• Moving a post to another discussion topic
• Closing a post for comments
• 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 and comments

You can edit or delete community posts as needed, and you can also edit or delete comments on community posts.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Creating a ticket from a community post or comment

You can create a ticket from a community post or you can create a ticket from a comment on a community post or on a knowledge base article. 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 itself, the ticket number link appears at the top of the post so you can easily access the ticket from the post. For community and knowledge base comments, 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 or a knowledge base article

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 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 comment as the requester, that person will receive an email notification.

3. Click Create ticket.