
Guide admins can add or edit draft articles. Agents who are not Guide admins can add and edit drafts in sections where they have been granted permission (see Restricting access to knowledge base content).
Topics covered in this article:
Adding draft articles
When you create a draft article, it is saved but not published, so that you can continue working on it until it's ready to publish.
To add a draft article
- Select
Add > Article in the top menu
bar.
The article that is created is a draft by default, as indicated at the top of the article.
- Enter the initial content of your draft article.
- Select a section for your article from the Publish in section menu.
- Click
Save.
Be sure to note the URL for your draft. If you're not a Guide admin, you'll need to the URL to get back to the draft because there is no navigation to the article until it is published. If you're a Guide admin you can view a list of all drafts.
The URL for the published version of the article will be the same as the URL for the draft version.
Editing draft articles
You must know the URL for the draft you want to edit, unless you are a Guide admin who can view a list of all drafts (see Viewing a list of all drafts).
To edit a draft
- Go to the draft article you want to edit, then click
Edit
article
in the top menu
bar.
Alternatively, if you are a Guide admin, you can view a list of all drafts, select a draft you want from the list and it will open in edit mode.
- Make your changes.
- Click
Save.
The draft article is updated. You can make more edits, if needed. Or you can click Preview to preview your article in your Help Center.
Publishing draft articles
You must know the URL for the draft you want to publish, unless you are a Guide admin who can view a list of all drafts (see Viewing a list of all drafts).
- Go to the draft article you want to publish, then click Edit article in the top
menu bar.
Alternatively, if you are a Guide admin, you can view a list of all drafts, and select the draft you want to publish from the list.
- Select a section for your article from the Publish in section menu.
- Chose any of the following options:
- To close the article for comments, deselect Open for comments.
- To promote the article in its section, select Promote article.
- To add an attachment, click Upload attachment on the lower side of the
editor.
The file size limit is 20 MB.
- (Guide
Professional)
Add any Labels you want.
As you start typing, a list of existing labels appears for you to chose from, or you can add a new keyword by selecting Add as a new label.
Labels can be one word or a multiple word phrase. Labels are indexed for search with a little less weight as the article title, but multiple labels with similar words can outweigh the title and body of the article, so use labels carefully to balance your search results.
- Click
the drop-down arrow on the
Save
button, then select
Publish.
The article is published.
Viewing a list of all drafts (Guide admins only)
On Guide Lite and Professional, you can access a complete list of your draft articles. You must be a Guide admin to view a list of drafts.
To view a list of drafts
- In
Guide, click the Manage articles (
) icon in the sidebar.
The Lists tab opens by default.
- Click
Drafts.
A list of all your drafts appears.
19 Comments
Question: I'm creating a set of articles that will link to each other. Is there a best practice for creating those links before the article is published? My preference would be to publish the articles all at once, but it appears that the URL of the article will change when it is published, so I can't link between the articles while they are drafts. What is the recommended practice?
Thanks!
Hi Jacob,
You can definitely link to the articles while they are drafts. The URL is already determined, you just have to link to the right part of it.
When you are editing a draft it has a URL that looks something like this:
You want to link to the part of the URL up to the end of the number (the article ID). So this is the URL, in our example:
You can also see the "real" URL by clicking Preview in Help Center from your draft. Then the article will display with the URL that will be the final URL when it's published. It doesn't change.
Does that make sense? Let me know if you need more help!
Thanks, Jennifer, that's good to know. I thought I had seen examples where the actual ID changed at publication, but I guess not.
I do like the way that, when you've published an article and you view it in the section, the URL you get includes the title (e.g. https://youraccount.zendesk.com/knowledge/articles/360000268830-Troubleshooting-Zombie-Attacks) and it doesn't look like you can get that link any other way -- but presumably I can just create it that way myself.
Thanks!
Oh, yes, you can type anything you want after the after article ID. So you can manually add the title in the link URL if you prefer that.
I don't like to include the title in my URLs when I link just in case the article title changes. It could be confusing for a user to see a different title in the URL than in the article, depending on how much it changes.
Good luck! And let us know if you need anything else.
Sorry if this question has already been asked, but how do you delete drafts?
Hi Holland! Welcome to the Community!
Go to the draft article you wish to delete. At the very bottom of the right-hand sidebar, you'll see Archive article in red. Click on that. Once the article/draft is archived, the sidebar will show the option to delete.
If I publish an article on a different date/at a different time than I created the draft, which date/time will appear when published?
Hi Brad!
The date displayed will be the date the article was published
Can you have multiple drafts of one article? We have existing articles that will need major updates with a new launch in about 6 months. However, I am worried that if I update the article to reflect the changes and save it as a draft, I will not be able to make minor adjustments in the meantime.
Hi Brooke,
Are you using Team Publishing?
Hi Nicole,
We are not currently, but are looking into it. We are just now refining our process, and how we will handle this scenario will be one of our determining factors of rather or not we do.
Ok. Team Publishing does have workflows that are meant to handle this kind of thing.
Without it, the best recommendation is to copy the content from the existing article into a to a temporary article that you basically stage in a restricted section (set as visible to only agents and managers) and work on it there. Then copy/paste to the live article when you're ready for those updates to go live.
Hi Nicole,
Can you tell me a little bit more about how this would be possible with Team Publishing? I still don't see how I will be able to maintain multiple copies of the same article.
Thanks
Hey Brooke -
In Team Publishing it's called a "Work in Progress" version of the article, details here: Staging content updates for an existing article for review
Take a look at that and let us know if you have further questions!
Hello, why is the Community post interface so different from the articles? Perhaps this depends on which theme is active (in this case, Copenhagen).
Also, as far as I can see, there's no way to save a draft in Community..? And the text editor is very different (can't center text, edit HTML, etc.). We wouldn't require all the functionalities of articles, but it would be nice to be able to save a community post as a draft, just in case, and to create better formatted content.
Is it expected behavior that an article that is a Draft ("Work in Progress") and has never been published, should be visible to anyone on the Help Center (frontend) - whether the author or anyone else?
Have encountered 2 articles this week that were in draft mode, not published (one of which had never been published) but could be seen on the front end of our Help Center. Trying to establish what is the expected behavior on this
Hi Jay Lee, I just tried seeing a draft article while being logged out in my account, and I can't replicate it. Just to clarify, you were logged out and you could still access it?
HI Pedro. No, to clarify, I was surprised that anyone (including author/guide admin) could see an article on Help center (frontend), that had never been published. I realize now that it is basically an "article preview" that I'm seeing on Help Center, and anyone who has permissions to edit that draft can also see that "preview". So, I think I've clarified the behavior and resolved my question.
I think that if I were going to make a product suggestion around this, there should be a visible cue to the viewer that the article is not actually published. That I can see, there is no visual cue anywhere when I'm viewing that "preview" through Help Center that would give any clue that the article is not actually published. Thanks!
Thanks for the clarification! I do agree there's room for improvement regarding article status visibility, and other potential visual cues. If you create a feature request, please do share it here :-)
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