

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
Is "how to style pinned posts" out of date? Pinned posts have a "Pinned" label by default, it looks like this in the CSS:
.status-label-pinned, .status-label-featured, .status-label-official {
background-color: $color_1;
The following has no impact on how the posts appear:
.post-pinned .question-title:before {
content: "\2605";
margin-right: 5px;
color: $color_5;
}
I tried adding a comma to match the style of other code, no effect:
.post-pinned, .question-title:before {
To play with things, I drafted the following but it placed a blue star in front of /every/ post (pinned or not):
.post-pinned, .striped-list-title:before {
content: "\2605";
margin-right: 5px;
color: blue;
}
Bottom line, I'd like to try things like change the "PInned" label into a star, move it to the left of the post title, etc. Can you let me know if I'm doing something wrong, or if the instructions just need to be updated? Thanks!
great
How do you add the topic description to the community topic list?
Hey, Tiffany - you should be able to find the information you're looking for here:
Managing community discussion topics
Let me know if that helps or if you have any further questions!
Hi Nicole. this wasn't exactly what I was looking for...if you look at the Zendesk community home page it includes the topic title and title description. My community only shows the title on my topic list page...how can I make it show the description?
Hey Tiffany -
It's something that should just work. Do you have any custom code running that could be interfering?
Hi Nicole,
No I didn't implement any custom code, I turned the communities on, and it's always looked like that.
Hi Nicole,
I found the found that was missing... I was missing this line of code for some reason -
https://developer.zendesk.com/apps/docs/help-center-templates/community_topic_list_page
Thanks!
Hey Tiffany -
Glad you got it sorted out!
Hey guys,
Not sure if I am at the right place. Anyway, asking it here. :)
I am trying to retire some really old community posts. Is there a way I can see all community posts in "date created" order?
Hey Sharma -
Welcome to the Zendesk Community!
Go to your community and click the arrow to the right of "Community Topics," and select "Show all posts." From there, you should get a dropdown that allows you to select "Sort by newest post." Then you'll just have to go to the end of your list to see your oldest post.
It's not the most elegant, but it should get the job done. Let us know if you have any additional questions!
Thank you, Nicole!
you're welcome!
Is it possible to for end users to post comments to community posts without signing in or even providing an email address?
Hi Sam -
I see that this is your first post - Welcome to the Zendesk Community!
To answer your question, users must log in in order to be able to post or vote. They can, of course create an anonymous account with whatever email address they wish, but the platform does require users to log in to post or vote.
Hi, if someone vote in Community topic and makes a comment, where can I see the notification of that? I can't see the option in Guide Main Panel.
Thank you.
Hey Carlos -
You will need to subscribe to the topic to receive email notifications of Community activity. As for votes, there is no notification system for those.
Thank you for your previous answer. And what's going on if one post have a lot of clicks on "Was this article helpful? -> NO" ? Is there any way to know it and then make changes on the article? Thank you.
Hey Carlos -
Just to clarify, it sounds like you're asking about Knowledge Base Articles, but the thread you're commenting in is about Community posts.
To get the data on your Articles, you'll want to go into your reporting, then click "Knowledge Base" and then "Net Votes". This will then give you a list of articles that have been voted on. It lists them in order of most to least ("no" votes being counted as -1) so if you go to the bottom and head to the last page of results, you'll see which articles have received the most "no" votes.
Then you can go in and simply edit or archive those articles.
Let me know if that helps, or if you have more questions. You can also check out this community conversation on the topic for more info.
Hi Carlos,
Just to add to Nicole's answer, if you are on Guide Pro, you might consider customizing your Help Center to request feedback from any user who gives an article a negative vote.
This community tip will show you how: Request feedback after negative article vote
We have several customers who have done this. It will give you a better idea of why an article was voted not helpful, and how you can update it to make it better.
@Jessie Schutz, you commented on Thursday, June 2, 2016, "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."
My understanding is:
Is my understanding correct?
Thanks for your time
Hey Andrew -
Yes, that's correct. Our Knowledge Base comments and Community posts do not automatically generate tickets; we manage them via a GSuite email account. We can and do create tickets for questions or comments that need to be escalated internally, but the day to day management is done through an inbox.
Hi Nicole,
Thanks for the clarification. I'm disappointed to hear that even you are relegated to GSuite to manage Zendesk's Community.
We tested what would happen if we enabled Gmail Forwarding so that an incoming Community update notification email is forwarded to Zendesk but, as you probably already know, the noreply@XXX.zendesk.com email address was maintained somewhere in the message's metadata, which caused the message to be suspended.
Have you, or someone you know on the Community Team, toyed with Gmail scripts as a way of ingesting Community activity notification emails into Zendesk?
I'd greatly appreciate it if you let me know that I am pursuing an ultimately fruitless cause.
Thanks for your time
Hey Andrew -
We have not played with the Gmail scripts, though I know some users have played around with building apps that can generate tickets out of posts. If you play with it and get it to work, do let us know! I'll see if I can take a look into it as well.
One of the questions that always arises when we discuss this is whether you would set up a system that creates tickets out of just new posts, or generates a separate ticket for each post and each comment on the post.
If you create tickets just out of the post, then do you have to figure out a way for comments on the post to turn into comments on the ticket?
What if the original post is answered, but then a new question from a different user is posted in the comment thread? Do you manually create a ticket then? Or does that one not receive a ticket?
Of course, if you create separate tickets out of every comment, then you're not threading the conversation at all, and most of the tickets don't need responding to, since they're comments answering a question... But, some of this depends on how your community operates, and whether you tend to have longstanding threads or shorter ones that close out once the OP has been answered.
But it is something we're always looking for new solutions or processes on, so if you find a solution that works for you, perhaps you could share it in the Tips & Tricks section?
Nicole,
1) I will comment on this post if I find a better solution than managing Community update notifications in Gmail. I will also post or comment in the Tips & Tricks section.
2) To briefly answer your question about whether a new ticket is created for each post or comment.
You can find a more in-depth summary of, what I believe is, my ideal community management workflow at https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204132436/comments/115006064487. I hope this summary answers your question.
3) I've mentioned this elsewhere on the Community but, unlike what I think your Community moderation workflow is, we cannot afford have two independent teams where one is dedicated to fostering conversations on the Community and one is responsible for addressing support requests. With only one team for both responsibilities, the current system requires each agent to be in two completely separate platforms, which prevents us from providing them with a single stream of priorities. Without a single stream of priorities I am torn between introducing more variable's into our agents' daily lives or letting the Community remain unsupervised and stagnant.
Do not hesitate to let me know if something is unclear and I'll be happy to provide more information.
Thanks for your time
Hey Andrew -
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I think we'd like to see a similar workflow, as far as how tickets would be created, threaded, and followed up to. It would help with management, assignment of posts, and, most of all, reporting and tracking.
To give you a little insight to how we work, our Community team is actually just two people - myself and Jessie. We are responsible for all of the community strategy, content, and answering questions in the Community. When you see other folks from Zendesk weigh in, it's typically because we've sent them a post and asked them to respond. Thankfully we do also have the help of our awesome team of volunteer Community Moderators, and they help out a ton with managing the question responses when other community members don't have an answer.
But you are right that we have a whole fleet of Customer Advocates who manage the rest of the support tickets - calls, emails, chats, etc. It would definitely be challenging to be trying to manage both.
We'll keep you posted as we figure out processes, integrations, or tools that help. I wish I could tell you that improvements to the Community platform were coming, but we've been told that development for it is on hold indefinitely at this point. Keep sharing your feedback though!
Nicole,
Kudos to you and Jessie for all of the Community activity.
Other than regularly reading through the latest activity on the Zendesk Community, what is the best way to stay informed about the integration of Community activity into the ticketing system?
Andrew
Hey Andrew -
I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you're asking. What do you mean by "integration of Community activity into the ticketing system"? Could you give an example or clarify?
Nicole,
By "integration of Community activity into the ticketing system" I am referring to my hope that it will be possible for agents to manage and moderate Community activity seamlessly within the ticketing interface so that we can put an end to the workaround that is managing Community activity in Gmail. It's my best way of describing the feature in a single sentence.
I understand that Community development has been put on hold indefinitely, nevertheless I haven't seen an official post for this feature request that I can Follow for updates. I found the following post that is related to the topic of managing Community activity in the agent's ticketing interface, https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204132436, but this doesn't appear to be an official post where an update about this feature request would be added.
If none of this clarifies what I meant, please consider my comments at https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/204132436/comments/115006064487 for more information.
No worries if you do not know of an post that is related to managing Community activity in the agent's ticketing interface.
Thanks
Hey Andrew -
The Community platform does not currently integrate with Support. We have the ability to manually create a ticket out of a post, but it is not automated. At Zendesk, we only use this function when we need to escalate a community interaction and get someone from another department to weigh in.
There are no plans to integrate the platforms. Should that ever happen, we'd make an announcement in the "Product Updates" section, and we would update the thread you pointed to. I see that you did add your feedback to it. I make a point search out and track all of the threads relevant to any upcoming release so that we can be sure to update all of them when something is built.
So I think you've done all the right things!
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