Question
What does Follow mean in Guide or Gather?
Answer
For Zendesk Guide and Gather, Follow means subscribe. When you follow a community post, topic, article, or section, you'll get an email notification when certain updates are made to it:
- For articles/posts, you will receive email notifications for new articles/posts only in the section or topic.
- For articles/posts and comments, you will receive email notifications for all new articles/posts in the section or topic and any new comments.
- You will receive email notifications for any new comments on the article or post; however, you will not receive notifications when the content in the article or post is edited or updated.
Tip: To notify followers of updates within the body of the article, add a comment to the article informing followers that there is new content.
For more information about the following content in the Help Center and the community to get notifications, see the article: Help Center guide for end users.
For more related content, see this article: How can I remove the Follow button on my Help Center articles?
42 comments
Nazir Kabbani
Would be nice to optionally enable "notify followers of updated article" upon save (as an on-demand option. not every save).
21
Kyle Johnson
We are having an issue where two different admins for our account are "following" our User Content list for when someone comments on an article or posts in the forum, but neither of us are receiving email alerts when new comments are made. We need a way to get notified of new comments.
1
Lauren Mulkern
I will add that notifications will send to followers of a topic when you move an existing post to a new topic.
A way to turn this off or pause notifications while performing this kind of administrative change would be very helpful.
My use cases:
0
Dave Dyson
Hi Lauren –
I think you can avoid this (at least sending notifications to end-users) by setting the article to be viewable by agents and admins only, then moving the article, and then resetting the viewing permissions.
1
Jim
@... this link no longer works - https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/1-How-can-I-remove-the-Follow-button-on-my-Help-Center-articles-
Could you advise as to remove the Follow button now?
0
Brett Bowser
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us!
You'll want to remove the subscribe helper from the article_page.hbs page in your Guide theme.
Screenshot below:
I hope this helps!
2
Jim
Thanks!
0
Jenna Strausbaugh
Is this a change?: "you will not receive notifications when the content in the article or post is updated."
We have long communicated with our end users that they can subscribe to existing/published articles in order to receive notifications when there are changes.
9
Support Admin
I find it very strange that the follow function for an article does NOT do the one thing a user would expect -- email them when the content is updated. Seems a very basic function?
10
Ad Astra Support
Nazir Kabbani
I found 2 posts in the product feedback section that we can upvote to have notifications sent when articles are updated. I have upvoted both articles.
Follow article feature to notify users of article content updates
Notifications for updated content in articles
5
K.S.
Client is noting that all users are receiving new article notification except for one. We have done a some trouble shooting and it does not appear to be blocked or hung up in a firewall. Is there a way to see when a new article notification is sent, what the distribution list was? I can open a ticket with the specific user information but wanted to see if there is something I can view before I do that. Thanks!
3
Dane
K.S.,
Due to the nature of this concern, I have created a ticket for you. Please wait for an update from one of our Advocates.
0
Rachel Inbar
My users (and I) have stopped receiving notifications when I publish a new article in the section that they are following. How can we troubleshoot this, as this is a huge problem for our company--this is how we are sending out release notes to people who are interested.
1
Rachel Inbar
The feature is to follow a section and then be notified of all newly published articles in that section.
0
John Cahill (Scribestar Support)
Sorry, probably being a bit thick here, but is this and your reply not a comment?
0
John Cahill (Scribestar Support)
ah ok, sorry for all the questions I was just trying to understand how this all works.
0
Stephen
Hi,
Is it possible to customise the mails sent via Guide?
The mails I receive from Zendesk for new articles in a section seem to render the html in the mails, than those sent from my own Help Centre.
Best regards,
Stephen
0
Dave Dyson
Unfortunately, it's not possible to customize these emails. Can you add your use case to this product feedback thread? Customize Help Center "Follow section" email notification
0
Shana Blackstone
When reading this article I was wondering, do you mean instead of
you mean:
I ask because I read this as if I follow a section I WOULD get emails for when new articles are added, but for following an article I would get new emails ONLY when comments are added. Just ensuring we understand this. (We don't allow comments which is why I want to confirm)
0
Rachel Martin
How can I remove the follow button on Guide content authors? If you click on the author as an end user on an article you get taken to their 'profile' page with a 'Follow' button. How do I remove this?
0
Christine
To completely remove the subscribe helper from your help center you can remove the script within the article page's code.
0
Jane M Langschied
Would love to be able to have a link/section for agents on the home page so that they can more easily view the articles they have followed. Is there code I could add or an update coming?
0
Gab
That's a customization that can be done with your Help Center theme. However, I'm afraid we cannot build custom code for your Guide or help you troubleshoot your customized code.
Before you can add a link to the home page of your help center, please note that you will need to add custom HTML to your help center theme, which can be added to your page template under the Header page (header.hbs) tab.
We do have the following resources available to help your developers regarding Guide customization:
Customizing your Help Center theme
Help Center API Helpers
Help Center API Advanced Helpers
0
Jeff Bistrong
It seems that the email that is generated when the new comment is added is vague and doesn't give a lot of information in the subject. Is there a way to customize the email that is sent out?
0
Volodymyr Radchenko
Thanks a lot for your contribution to the topic.
Also, to disable "Follow" for categories/sections, check for {{subscribe}} in the category or section_page.hbs.
0
Kelli Cain
There are Follow buttons at the Topic level as well as Post level - If a user clicks Follow at the Topic level, will they receive notifications each time someone posts or comments anywhere within that Topic?
0
Audrey Ann Cipriano
Hi Kelli Cain that is correct!
When end user follows a topic, they will have the option to either receive notifications for New posts or New posts AND comments :)
Hope this helps!
1
Kelli Cain
@Audrey it does help! Thank you!
0
Camila
So, if my users follow a section they will get an email for when new articles are added.
If they follow an article, they should only expect to receive an email notification when a comment is posted on the article. They won't receive an update when the article is updated, and to circumvent this all I can do is post a comment each time? I guess this means I need to tell them to select “Post and comments”, right?
But then I wonder, what is the purpose of solely following an article?
0
Karl Dominic Guerra
Thank you for your feedback here. Please take a look at this post: Follow article feature to notify users of article content updates
Our product team has confirmed that the May 2023 update is still the most up to date, and this feature is not being prioritized at this moment.
As you're already aware, the standing workaround at the moment is to comment on the article any time changes are made so that people who follow it get a notification. We understand this is highly manual and not very scalable, but we'll share updates should this be changed moving forward.
Thanks again for your feedback!
0