Flexible Hierarchies enables you to add subsections (sections in sections), to your help center knowledge base to create more levels in your hierarchy, up to six levels deep. You cannot add more levels to your community.
You must be a Guide admin to add subsections to your help center knowledge base.
About subsections
You can put articles at any section level of the hierarchy, but articles cannot appear under categories. Sections can contain sections or articles or both.
The following diagram shows a help center hierarchy with four levels, including three section levels.
Getting started with subsections
If you have never used Flexible Hierarchies functionality to add a subsection to your help center, there are some considerations and possible theme updates to make before you add subsections to your help center.
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Ensure you have added code to your custom theme to enable subsections, if
necessary.
If you are using a theme customized before March 29th, 2019, you need to add code to your custom theme to enable subsections before you can add subsections to your help center. Subsections are available by default in standard themes and themes that were customized after March 29, 2019.
If this step applies to you, see Enabling subsections in your theme.
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Decide on the design you'd like for subsections in your help center and update your
theme to display subsections, if you'd like.
By default, the help center category page lists all sections in the category and all articles in each section in the category. When you add subsections to a section, the category page does not list subsections in the section by default, but instead the section with subsections appears as "empty" on the category page.
If you want to modify your template to change how subsections display, see Displaying subsections in your help center.
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Add subsections to your help center.
If you have ensured that subsections are enabled in your theme and you are happy with how subsections display in your help center, then you can add subsections and articles to your hierarchy.
When you're ready to add subsections to your help center, see Adding a subsection to a section in this article.
Adding a subsection to a section
You can add subsections (sections in sections), to your help center. You can nest sections in sections for a maximum of five section levels. Each section can contain up to a maximum of 20 sections in a section.
To add a section in a section
- In your help center or Guide Admin, click Add in the top menu bar, then select
Section.
- Enter a Name and optional Description for your section.
- 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 the section where you'd like
this section to appear in your help center.
Click the names of categories and sections to drill down in the hierarchy and use the breadcrumbs to move back up in the hierarchy.
You can nest sections in sections for a maximum of five section levels. Each section can contain articles or sections, up to a maximum of 20 sections in a section.
- 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.
49 Comments
Hi there,
This is great! I've really hoped for this feature. I've enabled it but, even though I've added two subsections in this "Task Management" section, it says empty. Does anyone know how I can rather show the clickable subsections here please.
Are there published articles in your subsections?
Yes, there are.
Hi Marisa,
When you add subsections to a section, the category page does not list those subsections on the category page by default.
You need to modify your theme if you want to display subsections on the category page.
Check out this article and let us know if it helps: Displaying subsections in your Help Center
Also, check out this community tip: Displaying subsection lists on the category page
Fantastic, thanks Jennifer! I've fixed my problem with the help of the community tip.
Great to hear, Marisa! Glad that worked for you. :)
I've been looking forward to this feature which could prove very crucial for us. I'm very disappointed that it isn't included in the Professional plan. Is a full upgrade to Enterprise the only way to get it? This is a feature needed in our single help center. We don't need multiple Help Centers.
Hey Sara,
This feature is only available on Guide Enterprise unfortunately. You may be able to set up a similar functionality using custom code but that would be outside our scope of support. There are some other features available on Guide Enterprise as well which you can find out more about here: Guide Pricing Comparison
Apologies for not being able to provide another alternative for you.
Hi Brett,
we have recently purchased enterprise of Zendesk and currently adapting our current theme to support the subsection functionality.
How do I display a list of sub-section within section page?
Thanks,
Nilesh
Hi Nilesh,
To add subsections, go into your Guide admin and click on Arrange Content. Click into the Category and then into the Section you want the subsection in. You can then click Add section. You can add the new section and on the left, you'll notice a Hierarchy field. It will pre-fill with the Section you are in but you can also change it by clicking the pencil icon and then use the Category/Section structure to place it where you'd like.
Thanks,
Maggie
Hi Nilesh,
Check out this article and let us know if it helps: Displaying subsections in your Help Center
Hi Maggie
Thank you for your responses.
We have configured our Zendesk theme to support the new subsections with a list of the articles (see screenshot below).
Is it possible to display a list of nested sections from section_page.hbs (not within category page)?
I haven't seen any supporting documentation related to this but if you point me in the right direction or provide a snippet of code that allows me to do this that would be great.
Thanks,
Nilesh
Hi Nilesh,
I am far from a developer so will leave those suggestions to the experts:) However, there is some information on controlling the display of our subsections in this article https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021269734 that could help or get you started with it.
Thanks,
Maggie
Hi--I was trying to create subsections in our Help Center and found the code provided did not work. I think this is because we have Legacy and not Enterprise--are subsections available only for Enterprise users?
Hi Christopher Vickery,
Unfortunately, Zendesk has decided only to allow Enterprise (not Legacy Enterprise) customers to access this feature. Hopefully, they'll see the error of their ways and make this a standard feature or a la carte option soon, so they don't lose customers.
We're considering upgrading to Enterprise, but I want to understand why it is priced at 'per agent' level. Let's say that we have 100 seats with 95 customer support agents and a team of 5 people who manage all our Help Center content (both external and internal). Why should we pay for 100 agents in Guide Enterprise? Can it not be priced as a subdomain/company level? Or at least upgrade only 5 seats to Guide Enterprise? This is a VERY poor pricing policy structure.
^ Aswin, I 110% agree with you! There's no need to force EVERY agent to upgrade to Enterprise when only a small subset of users will actually utilize these features. It's exceptionally frustrating.
Indeed, the step up in price to Enterprise is quite extensive. Especially if only a few people are in charge of dealing with the help center content as Aswin stated. One could argue the fact that support and help center two different products, which need a separate pricing model. At least for us, we cannot justify the step up in pricing for all agents just to have a better help center. In fact, we might be forced to look into other solutions. At the very least for the help center.
On a separate note, I can't see why this feature is not available in other plans. I don't feel like this is an 'enterprise' worthy feature. In fact, it is a shortcoming that help center only supports 2 levels of content structuring.
It's all about the $$$. We'd love to have that feature available, but we won't upgrade to that tier just to benefit from that feature specifically.
Pricing per agent is the most ridiculous pricing plan ever! I'm the only person responsible for maintaining our FAQ / Troubleshooting Help Center and you guys force us to upgrade all the Agents???
This feature should be a core feature right from the start!
I'm having too much pet peeves regarding Zendesk besides this one and will undoubtedly search for alternative options in the future. Don't worry, I won't hit the door on my way out :)
Hi,
Would flexible hierarchies be available for Guide Legacy customers at any point?
I have to agree with others posting here. Its disappointing that we would have to pay almost twice as much if we upgraded the Guide Plan for one core improvement in the product. It is nearly impossible to get approval for such an upgrade when upper mgmt asks for a ROI and list of added functionality and all I can provide is "we get more subsections" As nice as it would have to have that capability paying almost twice as much for it doesn't make sense.
I think ZD Sales went overboard on this roll-out and should reconsider this pricing policy.
The pricing premium to get subsections is outrageous. The people who are complaining about this on this thread are, like me, happy to pay something extra. But the multiplier of costs for such a basic feature feels more like price-gouging than extra value.
Zendesk, please rethink this and make this a flat fee around $50 or something. That's all it is worth; not a per-seat hike.
C'mon, be reasonable.
Subsection fee per seat make zero sense. I would understand if it was a part of the Support product, but being part of the Guide it is just a pure rip off.
How about getting a response from Zendesk on the pricing plan and the complaints about this topic? We only see complaints here but I have no idea whether or not Zendesk is planning to address this issue in any way. Are they even reading this?!?
Hi all,
I am currently on Guide Legacy and don't have plans to move to this due to cost. I totally understand why charging per Agent could bristle feathers. I feel similarly.
That said, I know for a fact that Zendesk reads these comments. Their timeline and plans aren't always what we'd like them to be, but I assure you they hear you!
FWIW, I personally find the Enterprise editions of all their products the best level to be at, and yes the price point is higher, but usually worth it!
That said, I know budgets vary widely from company to company.... I'll be over here ducking from the tomatoes some people might wanna throw at me!
Ok, so you say that they read these posts and hopefully take these complaints to heart. But unfortunately I personally heven't seen or heard anything from ZD to take a standon this matter. No feeback whatsoever. And with all due respect, I dont really get what you are trying to say in your response. On the one hand you say that you personally dont want to move to the enterpirse plan due to costs and on the other hand you are saying that their enterprise plan is what everyone should want and that the extra charge is worth it. Clearly a lot of other people in here think differently. The licenses for agent and guide should be separated!
Sub sections shows empty despite adding having articles in them. Tried all the tricks here not working.
I am on the same page as the above comments, I would like to use this functionality for a few sections in my Help Sites )(but the additional tiers are not needed for all) so we definitely cannot justify the additional cost (we are loyal ZD customers for 10 years and are still on Legacy)
Can't you add this functionality as an "a la carte item?"
Thanks for the info! We signed up for the EAP and saw the benefit, but the cost to move to Enterprise is not in the cards at this time.
Checking in here regarding any feedback for the above comments from 8mo-1yr ago. Has any of these concerns on pricing and being able to have sub-sections been addressed? Really interested in having this for our Help Center as well, but Enterprise level is just not for us.
Hey Anh,
No updates to provide at this time but I'll poke the appropriate team so they're aware of this need on lower plan levels.
Appreciate you taking the time to share this with us!
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