You can organize your knowledge base content into categories and sections and manage the order of those categories and sections.
You must be a Guide Manager to add and edit sections and categories.
The article covers the following topics:
- Adding a category to your knowledge base
- Adding a section to your knowledge base
- Editing categories or sections
- Deleting categories and sections
- Working with category and section drafts
Related articles:
Adding a category to your knowledge base
Categories are the top-level organizing containers of the Help Center. Categories contain sections. The Help Center must have at least one category. If you have only one category in your Help Center, then the category itself is hidden to end-users, and they see only the sections in your Help Center.
For more information, see About the Help Center knowledge base structure.
To add a category
- In Help Center or Guide Admin, click Add in the top menu bar, then select Category.
- Enter a Name and optional Description for your category.
- (Guide Enterprise) In the sidebar, if you have multiple category templates in your live theme, click the Template menu, then select a template.
If you do not select an alternate template, the default category template will be applied.
- In the sidebar, ensure the correct Source language is selected.
- Click Add.
The category is created. Remember, if you have only one category, then the category itself is hidden to end-users, and they see only the sections that are in your Help Center.
Tip: For information about how you can display a section in multiple categories, see Displaying an article or section in multiple sections or categories in our Support tech notes.
Adding a section to your knowledge base
Sections are collections of related articles. To add a section, you must have at least one category to act as its parent container. On Guide Lite and Professional, each section must be child of a category. On Guide Enterprise, a section can be a child of a category or a section.
Permissions for viewing and managing articles in a section are set at the article level, not the section level.
If visibility for all the articles in a section is internal (Professional and Enterprise only), then the section will not be visible to end-users, but if one article in an internal section is visible to any end-users, then the section will become visible as well.
To add a section
- In Help Center or Guide Admin, click Add in the top menu bar, then select Section.
- Enter a Name and optional Description for your section.
- (Guide Professional and Enterprise) Ensure the correct Source language is selected if you support multiple languages.
- Under Order articles by, select an option for how you'd like articles to appear in this section.
If you select to manually order of articles, see Manually changing the order of articles to change the order of your articles.
- Under Hierarchy, click in the field, then select where you'd like this section to appear in your Help Center.
On Guide Lite and Professional, you must select a category as the parent for this section. Sections cannot contain sections.
On Guide Enterprise, you can select a category or a section as the parent for this section. You can nest sections in sections for a maximum of five section levels, with up to 20 sections in a section.
- (Guide Enterprise) If you have multiple section templates in your live theme, click the Template menu, then select a template.
If you do not select an alternate template, the default section template will be applied.
- Click Add.
The section is created. Remember, if you have only one category, then the category itself is hidden to end-users, and users see only the sections that are in your Help Center.
Tip: For information about how you can display a section in multiple categories, see Displaying an article or section in multiple sections or categories in our Support tech notes.
Editing categories or sections
You can change the properties of a category or section, including its title or description.
To edit a category or section, do one of the following:
- In Help Center, navigate to the category or section you want to edit, then click Edit section in the top menu bar.
- In Guide Admin, click the Arrange content (
) icon in the sidebar and drill down to the category or section you want to edit. Click the options menu at the end of the section title, then select Edit category or Edit section.
Deleting categories and sections
When you delete a category, all the sections contained in the category are also deleted, and all the articles contained the sections are archived.
When you delete a section, all the articles contained in the section are archived.
To delete a category or section
- Do one of the following to edit the category or section you want to delete:
- In Help Center, navigate to the category or section you want to delete, then click Edit section in the top menu bar.
- In Guide Admin, click the Arrange content (
) icon in the sidebar and drill down to the category or section you want to delete. Click the options menu at the end of the section title, then select Edit category or Edit section.
- In Help Center, navigate to the category or section you want to delete, then click Edit section in the top menu bar.
- Click Delete in the bottom of the sidebar.
- Confirm that you want to delete the category or section.
You cannot recover deleted categories or sections. Any articles contained in a deleted section are archived. You can restore archived articles to another section if you need to.
Alternatively, to delete a category or section, you can click Articles > Arrange articles, then click the name of the category or section you want to delete (you'll have to expand a category to see its sections). In the edit page, click Delete in the bottom of the sidebar. If the edit page doesn't open when you click the name of the category or section from Arrange Articles, it is likely being blocked by a pop-up blocker.
Working with category and section drafts
If you create a category or section that is a work in progress, and want to restrict who can access it, you can mark it as a draft. Marking a category or section as a draft applies the draft status to any elements within it.
The steps for marking a newly-created category or section as a draft are slightly different than those for marking an existing category as a draft.
To mark a newly-created category or section as a draft
- Create and save a new section or category, as described in Adding a category to your knowledge base or Adding a section to your knowledge base.
The section or category is created and remains open for editing.
- Click the Mark as draft option in the sidebar.
- Click Update at the top of the page.
To mark an existing category or section as a draft
- Open the category or section in edit mode, as described in Editing categories and sections.
- Click the Mark as draft option in the sidebar.
- Click Update at the top of the page.
Categories and sections marked as drafts are not viewable by end-users, and can only be accessed by Guide Managers.
To determine whether a category or section is marked as a draft
- Open the category or section in edit mode, as described in Editing categories and sections.
- An existing category or section in draft mode section in draft mode is indicated by the Draft label at the top of the edit page:
- A new section added to a category in draft mode displays a banner at the top of the page:
When the category is published, the section is no longer in draft mode, and the banner is removed. However, if the section is manually marked as draft, it will remain in draft mode until the marker is removed.
- An existing category or section in draft mode section in draft mode is indicated by the Draft label at the top of the edit page:
91 Comments
Hi @Brenda,
You can mark a category as a draft and then it will only be visible to your agents and the managers. You can find the option in the left sidebar when you'll edit the category.
Team Diziana
@meghan,
Sorry but this is not possible currently. You need to maintain the hierarchy i.e., categories > sections > articles.
Team Diziana
I am making a support site with 3 different categories listed on the main page. I would like each category to display a unique template with its own FAQ page inside. I know you guys just released a feature allowing you to edit a unique category template. But my question:
Is it possible to be able to click on a category and then inside that category could have its own FAQ page? Or can I only have one FAQ page? Is there any way I could make my site to display a FAQ page within a category? Or do I have to set up multiple Brands to get different FAQs?
I'm trying to explain this the best I can but just in case another example of what i'm aiming for:
mywebsite.support.com/category1 would have a different FAQ then mywebsite.support.com/category2
I'd really appreciate the help and let me know if I worded this too confusing :) Thanks!
Hi @Jared Babinec,
You can use {{#is}} component and can create different UI for different categories. Something like this:
Let me know if this solves your issue.
Team Diziana
Hi there,
I am new to Guide and just learning about it as I set it up for the first time for our company. So it is possible I am missing something obvious.
I know that if there is only one Category, users will only see the Sections. Is there anything like this for if a Category has only one Section in it, so that users click the category and see the articles?
We have several top-level categories we want, but in one of them is a really all-encompassing topic that doesn't need multiple sections. Will our users have to click a redundant section title once they click that category? Or will they be able to see articles as soon as they click the category? Is there another way to make this work that I should know about?
Thanks!
Hi Liz,
We have a similar situation in our HC, so you can see how it will look here:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/categories/200198203-Getting-Started
When users click into the category, they will have to click the section to see all the articles in it.
Hope that helps!
In the screenshots currently showing in the Editing categories or sections, the sections blocks have a 0 section under them. This is the same one you see when looking at Categories, to see how many sections are under them.
However, I can't find a way to add a section under a section. Could someone tell me how to? Or am I misunderstanding something.
Hi Celine,
Sorry for the confusion. The feature for adding sections in sections is in beta now. It is available for Guide Enterprise.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207106547-Current-and-upcoming-Zendesk-betas#h_59389384221544798823204
The number of sections in sections in the UI (where you are seeing 0 sections) might be hidden in the future for users who do not have the feature. It is still being decided.
Hope that helps!
Hi @Jennifer,
Will this only ever be a feature for Guide Enterprise or will it be considered for the Guide Professional/Legacy?
Thanks!
Hi Celine -
We can't speak to the long-term pricing and packaging as those things evolve over time, but in the near-term future it looks like it will just be available to those on Enterprise plans.
Hi Nicole,
Thanks for the info!
@Trapta We have been using the code for category FAQs and it does not seem to be showing the correct article title in other languages. If we switch to say German, it still shows the English title. The rest of the page is in french as it should be. Is there to make sure it is doing this?
Hi @Ed Ball,
I am little out of context here, can you show some screenshots of share the URL so that I can see what exactly you are doing and what exactly is happening?
Team Diziana
Hello @Trapta,
Sorry, it was a little out of the blue... On page 2 of the comments here you left some code to allow the category section to only show top FAQs related to the category. I should have posted a link...
Go to https://support.bladeandsoul.com/hc/de/
On the home page at the bottom you will see the FAQs in German
back at the top click Login-Support link
You will go to the Account category and see the FAQs for Account, but they will be in English.
@Ed Ball,
Please replace
with
and you will be good to go.
Let me know if this solves your issue.
Also, your help center looks really clean and cool :)
Cheers!
Team Diziana
Thanks a ton Trapta,
I did have to change one part but it seems great after that.
'/api/v2/help_center/'+$('html').attr('lang').toLowerCase()+'/categories/'+{{category.id}}+'/articles.json'
And thanks... We are about to do a refresh of the look as it's old and not responsive.
Is there any way to add custom IDs or classes to categories?
Hi @David,
You can definitely add some custom classes to some categories using {{#is}} or to all the categories.
I am more curious to you in your case what is your purpose of adding custom classes to the categories?
Thanks
@Trapta, I've got side navigation that is comprised of the categories. I want to assign icons to general classes rather than the specific class numbers assigned by Zendesk.
@David,
You can add custom class to HTML code of the template. If you can share the URL of your HC then maybe I can share some piece of code for you to add icons in the sidebar.
Thanks
@Trapta,
I have the following code:
{{#each categories}}
<li class="cat-{{id}} {{name}}"><a {{#if sections}}class="has-sub-menu"{{/if}} href="#">{{name}}</a></li>
{{/each}}
A category ID is assigned to each line item class. Also the category name is included in the class. Including the category name creates some unusable class names such as:
<li class="cat-11500728228 Basics & Tips">...</li>
Is there a helper (or another way) to stringify the {{name}}, removing spaces and unusual characters (such as the ampersand)?
Hi @David Bjorgen,
There is no such way to do the same other than JS. However, if you are adding this just to add icons in the sidebar then you can use the jQuery function mentioned here: https://community-tutorial.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004178674-Adding-Images-in-Copenhagen-theme#bottom
Let me know if this solves your issue.
Team Diziana
@Trapta, I'm looking to create pieces of content that don't show up in the section browse pages. I'll be linking out to them from articles, but I don't want them cluttering up the section browse pages.
How can I more greatly control what sections show up in the category browse pages?
@Sarah M.
This might be a more complicated way than necessary, but you can setup articles visible to 'everyone' in sections which are 'restricted'. That section/category will not show in browse pages, but the 'public' user will still be able to access the article via link, and search for it in the search.
So you could maybe setup an 'additional resources' section somewhere, and put all of those in there, just to be linked to.
@Celine Ladoire Thanks for the response! I was reading other threads and saw that permissions seemed to cascade down (so for example, if you delete a section then the articles within it get archived). Is this not the case anymore?
@Sarah M.
I'm not sure about deleting/archiving. I was talking about a regular, live section, just with 'visible to' set to you/your team, but with articles inside set to 'visible to' = everyone.
So like:
Category X (Visible to everyone or your team)
--- Section A (visible to you/your team)
------ Article a (visible to everyone)
------ Article b (visible to everyone)
------ Article c (visible to everyone)
In this instance, Category X is visible to everyone, but Section A is hidden inside of it, so its articles won't show inside of Category X. But you can still link to articles a, b, c because they're visible to everyone
Sorry, does this make sense?
@Celine Thank you for this! Is setting the visibility of a section only available for Guide Enterprise, by chance? I tried this out, but the only way I could hide the section was to make it draft...which meant that when I tested as a signed-in user (our end users) they couldn't see my test article. :/ (I provided a direct link to the article, which was shared at a settings level where they should have been able to see it.)
Hey Sarah,
There's actually no way to set the Section visibility within Guide. This is controlled at the article level as shown in the screenshot below:
That being said, if all articles within that Section are only visible to Group A, then the Section should not show up for any agents within Group B.
If you're looking to hide Sections that do have articles visible to everyone, then you'll most likely need to use some custom code to hide those sections.
I was able to track down the following article that may help get you started: Selectively hiding Help Center components using Curlybars
Cheers!
@Sarah M. it looks like @Brett is entirely right and I jumped the gun. For some reason I didn't notice that the category where that one single 'Visible to Everyone' article was under was showing on our homepage, instead of being hidden like before.
I'm not sure why I thought you could set visibility through the sections. Sorry :(
Our software involves 4 different end user types who need to access the knowledge base (ZenDesk Guide) for different purposes. Therefore, we want to keep all four quite segmented. I know that I can set up segmentation for sections and articles, but how do I set up segmentation in ZenDesk so that when user role X clicks Help from the application, there that user will be brought to a role X category page from which s/he can drill down and see sections and articles specific to that user? I am trying to build 4 of these and am wondering how to set it up at that level, instead of having a single "landing" page for all 4 roles, where they click the role they are and it branches off from there. Guidance?
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