

You can edit, move, or delete community posts, as well as edit or delete comments on community posts. You can also take a number of actions on the post or comment.
Guide Managers have full permissions to manage community posts. Users with moderator rights can perform a limited number of actions on posts depending on their moderator group permissions. Regular agents, who are not part of a moderator group, don't have permissions to take any actions on community posts.
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 a comment as the official comment for a post
- Promoting a post by pinning or featuring
- Setting status on a post
- Marking a post as answered
- Approving pending content
- Moving a live community post to the moderation queue
- 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 a post
- In the post you want to edit, click the Post actions icon (
), then select Edit.
- Make your changes, then click Update.
To delete a post
- In the post you want to delete, click the Post actions icon (
), then select Delete.
- 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 a comment as official (see Marking a comment as the official comment for a post).
To edit a comment
- Beside the comment you want to edit, click the options menu, then select Edit.
- 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
- In the post you want to move, click the Post actions icon (
), then select Edit.
- Click inside the Topics box and select another topic.
- 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 as 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 can manually add styling for pinned posts so that they appear different than other posts in the topic.
When you feature a post, it is labeled as "featured" and appears in the featured posts component, which you can add to any page in your theme.
- 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
- In Guide, click the Customize design (
) icon in the sidebar.
- In the Theme panel, click Edit theme.
- Select the Community post page in the template drop-down in the upper-left.
- Click Post actions.
- Click Pin to top.
- 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;
}
- Click Save, then Publish changes.
- 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
- In Guide, click the Customize design (
) icon in the sidebar.
- In the Theme panel, click Edit theme.
- 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>
- 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.
- Click Save, then Publish changes.
Setting status for a community post
You can set a status of Planned, Not planned, or 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.
- In the post you want to close for comments, click the Post actions icon (
), then select Close for comments.
Marking a comment as the 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. Make sure that you mark only one comment as the official comment for 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 its current place in the order and timeline 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
- In the post where you want an official comment, either enter a new comment or edit an existing comment.
- Click Official comment under the comment.
- 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. The official comment checkbox is then hidden for all other comments related to the post.
Marking a post as answered
If a comment has been added that answers the subject of a post, you can mark the post as answered.
- In the post you want to mark as answered, click the Post actions icon (
), then select Answered.
If you have the correct moderator permissions, you can set the status as Answered only if a status has not previously been set.
If you are a Guide Manager, you can change the status to Answered from any other state.
Approving pending content
If a post or comment is marked as pending approval, you can mark it as approved.
- In the post you want to mark as approved, click the Post actions icon (
), then select Approve.
Note: This action is not available for content that is pending approval in the spam queue.
Moving a live community post to the moderation queue
You can send a live post to the content moderation queue if it contains content that you want to review. The post is then hidden from the community and appears in the content moderation queue for Guide Managers.
- In the post you want to moderate, click the Post actions icon (
), then select Hide for moderation.
The post is no longer visible to the community, however Guide Managers can see the post in the content moderation queue. From there, a Guide Manager can review the post and decide which action to take. See Moderating end-user content.
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. If you click the link, you can access the ticket directly.
To create a ticket from a community post
- In the post you want to convert to a ticket, click the Post actions icon (
), then select Create a ticket.
- A Create a ticket window appears with the following fields prefilled with information from the post:
- Subject:
Request created from: <community post title>
- Description:
This request was created from a contribution made by <post creator name> on <date and time>.
There is a link to the post itself, followed by the post contents.
- Who should be the requester of the ticket?:
The default ticket requester is the person who created the post, but you can change this to be yourself. The person specified in this field receives an email notification when the support ticket is created.
The person specified in this field receives an email notification.
- Subject:
- Click Create ticket.
- In Support, the ticket is created, and is triaged by your support team.
To create a ticket from a comment on a community post
- Beside the comment you want to convert to a ticket, click the Comment actions icon (
), then select Create a ticket.
- A Create a ticket window appears with the following fields prefilled with information from the comment:
- Subject:
Request created from: <community post title>
- Description:
This request was created from a contribution made by <comment creator name> on <date and time>.
There is a link to the comment itself, followed by the comment contents.
- Who should be the requester of the ticket?:
The default ticket requester is the person who created the comment, but you can change this to be yourself. The person specified in this field receives an email notification when the support ticket is created.
The person specified in this field receives an email notification.
- Subject:
- Click Create ticket.
- In Support, the ticket is created, and is triaged by your support team.
100 Comments
Hi there.. I hope I am posting this in the correct place. Is there any way to delete comments made by end users on your knowledge base articles?
In the case of spam or distasteful comments?
Hi Storm,
Yes! You need to be a HC Manager or have the ability to moderate the section in which the article (and thus the comment) is. You just locate the comment on the article and click the Delete link, which depending on your customization is usually at the bottom of the comment or in a drop-down with a little gear icon.
@Laura D. any updates on the multi-language communities? The issue with how you've "faked it" is that it adds more and more topics presented to the end user to select from the dropdown when posting. This gets messy fast and is not at all user friendly.
With a little JavaScript magic and dynamic content we can present users the same topic names in their respective language. Now all we need is a filter on the posts so that each user only sees posts in their language by default (perhaps with the option to "show all").
I just found this thread with a hack for Hiding Topics by language. Any way to make this hide posts by language? This could work in the interim. A proper language filter with a "show all" option would be best so that users could look at responses in other languages for reference if one in their language didn't exist.
Hi Scott,
Laura alerted me to your question.
We are aware that multi-language communities are a need and that the current "hack" isn't cutting it. Though its not currently on the roadmap, we hope to support multi-language communities before the end of this year.
Kr,
Deepa
Hello:
How can I view all comments that have been made on help center articles?
Hi Will!
This has recently been upgraded, and you can view all pending Comments and Spam at this URL in your Zendesk
/hc/admin/manage/pending
@Allen Hancock: Thank you for that. What I'm really look for is a listing of all comments, or at least the most recent comments. I'm very concerned that I might miss replying to someone, and I don't want to turn on moderation to do that. People in general interact less with brands that moderate their comments.
Agreed Will.. I don't think the the view you're looking for exists.. it's just a matter of Following all your categories for Comments+ Replies, and at least then you'll get emails as comments come in.
@Allen Hancock: That appears to be something that would work, but that's very time-consuming and seems like a hack. Not your fault, of course. Thanks.
Hi Will!
I can confirm that email notifications are currently the only way to monitor the activity in your Help Center. I myself monitor the activity here with a designated Gmail inbox, and I use filters and labels to sort notifications and indicate what actions were taken on a post.
It's not as smooth as it would be if something existed in-product, but it works very well for us. Feel free to ask if you have any additional questions about it!
Agents can use the CRM to respond to Facebook, Twitter, now Google Play, but not the community that is hosted by the CRM. This is unfortunate. Zendesk should prioritize allowing community posts AND responses to automatically create new tickets, just as other social media sites do, . It would be so helpful for companies that want to engage with every customer within the Zendesk agent portal.
@Will Strohl @Tanya Sawyer Could you set up a rule in your mailbox to auto-forward community notifications to your Zendesk? A business rule could tag them for a Communities Ticket view.
The only downside is they would all be from one sender (either your inbox name, or the Community notifications email if you enable agent forwarding), so while you could keep track of all comments and solve as needed, they won't tie back to your end user's profile automatically.
@Zac Garcia I like your proactive thinking! I do think this would be problematic because all comments, including agent responses, would create a ticket. So, although we could create a problem code to not include all those tickets in reporting (to not inflate my ticket count) and try to manage it, it still feels like a manual process. What other ideas have you got?
Way to put me on the spot, haha. I'm unsure of how to answer. We don't have this feature active in our Zendesk, so I don't have a notification email to reference (besides the one I just got from your comment!).
It would be hard to see the difference between an end-user response and an agent response. However, if there are any text strings that will reliably be in every agent response notification (but not in end user ones), you could add a trigger - based on that string being in the ticket description - to set an "agent_community_response" tag. You could then exclude tickets with that tag from relevant views and reporting.
Still pretty manual, but without official support, anything coming from a single sender will take a little bit of upkeep.
Hey guys!
I'm loving this conversation. :) Unfortunately, trying to get Help Center notifications into your Zendesk as tickets is going to result in bounces, since Zendesk is built to reject emails that come from no-reply addresses. Plus, as Tanya observes, it's going to create A LOT of tickets. Further, unlike the other social media channels that are available with Zendesk, even if you could get them into Zendesk there's a good chance they wouldn't thread properly, and responses in the ticket itself wouldn't automatically go into the Help Center.
Here's how I handle Community posts and comments here at Zendesk:
We've actually created an email account specifically for Help Center notifications. That email address exists in Zendesk as an end-user, and it is subscribed to every Section and Topic in the Knowledge Base and Community.
Now, I know what you're thinking. "THAT IS SO MANY NOTIFICATIONS." You are not wrong. However, I have filters set up so that stuff I don't have to see gets labeled and filtered out of the inbox.
Each notification has a link directly to the post or comment, so I use that to go to the thread and read what's going on, and determine what action (if any) should be taken on the post.
I then have other labels set up, which I apply to the notifications so I know what action has been taken on a post or comment. Some labels stay in the inbox so I can go check on them later. Some get archived.
It's not an ideal solution, but it works well for what it is. We're aware that content moderation and management is a missing piece in the Community right now and it's something that we want to improve. At this point there isn't any info to share on that, but be assured that it's on the radar and we feel the pain as much as you do. :)
Sounds like that workflow could work really well with Google Inbox (though labeling is definitely not as easy in Inbox, the bundling and Snooze features are awesome). Thanks Jessie!
Hey Zac!
No problem. :) We actually use Gmail here at Zendesk, so that's part of what makes this work really well. I haven't tried doing it in Inbox, although that's a really interesting idea. For me, though, the big question would be whether you can turn off threading in Inbox. I have threading turned off in the Community inbox because it gets too hard to follow what's going on when every reply ever is bundled into the same conversation. Might be work checking out, though!
@Larisa, I know that our Product Team is in the very, very beginning stages of info gathering for a community moderation/management solution, so it's definitely on the radar. At this stage in the game is impossible to say what it might end up looking like, or when/whether it'll make it to production (changing priorities and all that), but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for something great. :)
Hi, I'm wondering if there is a way to have users who post content to Community appear as anonymous to other users. Or, at least, anonymize them enough so that there isn't a way for a different user to figure out who they are or who they work for. From my poking around, I haven't found anything to guarantee that. We couldn't use the Community feature without that guarantee.
Hi Kristin - You can just remove the curlybar placeholder for that information. For example on the "Community Post Page" remove the following: **the code below is from the Copenhagen theme so it may look a little different on other themes**
<span title="{{author.name}}">
{{#link 'user_profile' id=author.id}}
{{author.name}}
{{/link}}
</span>
That will remove the name of the person posting along with the link to their profile, a few line up you could remove the avatar as well.
<img src="{{author.avatar_url}}" alt="Avatar" class="user-avatar"/>
You can pretty much hide or show whatever you would like. Hope this helps getting you going in the right direction and feel free to ask any follow up questions. Hope you have a great day :-)
@kristin - here are some screenshots in case you are a visual person.
BEFORE
Thanks, Wes, that's great!
Hello! I was curious if anyone knows if there's a way to change the existing statuses of PLANNED, NOT PLANNED, COMPLETED for Community posts? Thanks in advance!
Hi @Brenda - Sure you can see the following post here.
Just let me know if you have any further questions.
Wes - You are truly awesome. As always. Thank you!
@Brenda - You are welcome and if you need anything you know how to get in touch with me. Your Help Center is still looking good :-)
Wes, are you saying that because you worked on Brenda's HC!? Haha. Caught you. :)
@Jennifer - I will never tell but I may or may not have had a very small part on Brenda's HC :-)
@Jennifer - I'll tell! :-) Honestly, our redesign would still be a bunch of mock-ups if it weren't for Wes. He's truly the best!
Haha, I knew it Brenda! And I agree, Wes is the best. We've actually got him busy on our HCs now!
Will moving a notification from one discussion topic to another alert users that it was moved? I want to move a lot of posts in our "Product Feedback" topic to a "Question & Answer" topic because it better belongs there. However, I don't want anyone notified of the change.
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