Team Publishing enables you to assign an article to an agent and add an internal note for them. This is useful for making a team member responsible for updating, reviewing, approving, or publishing an article.
You can only assign an article to an agent who has permission to edit the article. You can add an internal note to the let the assignee know what is needed. You can reassign articles as needed, as they move through the various article states in the workflow.
When you assign an article to a user, that person receives an email notificaiton with a link to the article. Guide admins can view all of their assigned articles in an article list. Users who are not Guide admins cannot view article lists, so they need the direct URL to access the article.
You must have Guide Enterprise to assign articles using Team Publishing.
Assigning an article to an agent
You can assign an article to any agent who has permission to edit the article. You cannot assign articles to end users. You can add an internal note on the article to the let the assignee know what is needed.
If you need to assign multiple articles at once, see Updating knowledge base articles in bulk.
- Open an article for editing.
- Click Assign in the right panel of the article.
- In Select a team member, start typing to search for an agent or select an agent
from the drop-down list.
You can only assign the article to an agent who has permission to edit the article. If you select an agent who cannot edit the article, you'll see a message indicating that you cannot assign the article to that user.
If you do not see a list of users, your agent role may not have permission to view all users in the account. For more information on configuring this setting, see Why can't I assign an article to a user in Team Publishing?
- In What's the update, enter an internal note.
- Click Send.
The agent will receive an email notification with a link to the article. Guide admins can view a list of all their assigned articles. Users who are not Guide admins cannot view article lists, so they will need the direct URL to access the article.
Reassigning an article to an agent
You can reassign articles, as needed, as they move through the various article states in the workflow. When you reassign an article, you can update the internal note. The note history is not retained.
When you reassign an article, the new assignee receives an email notification with a link to the article. The previous assignee does not receive a notification that the article has been reassigned.
- Open an article for editing.
- Click the options menu beside the assignment, then select Reassign.
- In Select a team member, start typing to search for an agent or select an agent
from the drop-down list.
You can only assign the article to an agent who has permission to edit the article. If you select an agent who cannot edit the article, you'll see a message indicating that you cannot assign the article to that user.
If you do not see a list of users, your agent role may not have permission to view all users in the account. For more information on configuring this setting, see Why can't I assign an article to a user in Team Publishing? - In the note box, enter a new internal note.
It is not possible to retain a notes history. The new note will overwrite any existing note.
- Click Send.
The new assignee will receive an email notification with a link to the article. The previous assignee does not receive a notification that the article has been reassigned. Guide admins can view all of their assigned articles in an article list. Users who are not Guide admins cannot view article lists, so they will need the direct URL to access the article.
Viewing all articles assigned to you
In All articles, you can use a filter to view articles assigned to a specific person.
- In All articles, to the right of the Search bar, open the Filters
drop-down list.
- Open Assigned > Assigned to.
- Enter your name in the search field.
Unassigning an article
You can unassign an article, when you have finished with it, in any of the various article states in the workflow.
- Open the article for editing.
- Click the options menu beside the assignment, then select Unassign.
14 Comments
Hello, is it possible to assign an article to an end user (requester role); or is it only restricted to agents ?
If yes, is it even posssible for an end-user to create a draft content ?
The question seems weird, but it could be usefull in our case: we have internal workflow documents in our comapny, involving several other teams (end users, not agents). Such a possibility could let them fill a document with various informations and then make it finalized by an agent in order to process one or several tickets related.
Hi Yann!
Articles can only be assigned to agents, so you won't be able to put together that workflow in Zendesk. Google Drive is a great collaboration tool that could work, though. Then your agents can just copy/paste the content when it's ready and publish.
I've updated the article to make it clearer that articles are assigned to agents, not end users (and only agents who have permission to edit the article being assigned). Thanks!
Hey Stephen -
An "agent" is someone who uses one of your company's "agent" licenses. Typically this is going to be an employee who has permissions to use parts of Zendesk (such as one of your support agents) but is not an admin. So basically you have four roles:
I hope that helps clarify things. Let us know if you have further questions!
I need two lists of articles. I need a list of articles by assignee and another list by author. I was hoping to get this list from the manage articles screen. I do not see a way to easily get this information. The only way I see to the get the information is to click into each article. Is there an easier/quicker way for me to get the information?
I am using Guide Enterprise.
Hi Rebecca,
You can pull a list of your Help Center articles using the API: https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/help_center/articles#list-articles
Once you have your list you can side-load by author. More information in the following documentation: https://developer.zendesk.com/rest_api/docs/help_center/articles#sideloads
Hope this helps!
Question/request: Is there a functionality in the works to have a "take it" option with guide articles like there is for tickets in support?
Our help center consists of 900+ articles, many composed from agents who no longer work here, thus articles have no authors or owners and I have to type in a name every time. This is a small issue but the time it takes adds up.
Thanks!
Hello William,
Currently, there is nothing we can announce regarding your request being a part of our development roadmap. I would recommend posting this request on our Product Feedback page so our Guide team an consider this suggestion for potential future updates.
Best regards.
When an article is assigned to an agent they receive an email notification.
Is there any way we could change the subject for these notifications? It's not particularly descriptive.
Hi Chris -
Thanks for your question! You should be able to edit the template for those email notifications. Here's an article on how to do that:
Customizing templates for your email notifications
Hi, is there any way in which to assign to a group of agents rather than just one? We have multiple people that can sign off documents which will help to get the quickest response as we don't know who's in or out of the office.
I second what Lauren Williams has asked. It would be beneficial to assign to a User Segment or Group
Hi Sydney and Lauren,
Unfortunately this isn't possible at this time. You might want to consider setting the article ready for review, and having dedicated team of users that checks to see if articles are ready for review. Would this work for either of your use cases?
This document has more: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000725568#topic_prz_lst_ddb
I hope this is helpful, but I definitely agree that this would be a feature request that would help multiple customers. I can definitely flag this interaction as product feedback as well so it is passed to the correct team.
Are there plans to be able to assign an article to a reviewer based upon the group the user is in? We have some internal documentation that would be great to automatically route to an approver on that person's team (by what group they are in, or possibly what category is selected).
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