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
Devan La Spisa
Hello @...,
We appreciate you sharing feedback with us. I would recommend also sharing this feedback and your use case in our product feedback forums so our product managers can consider these suggestions for future updates.
Best regards.
-1
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
Lana Banjavcic
How can I see/amend what the email received by end users looks like when a section they are following is updated?
0
Brett Bowser
At this time there is no way to customize this email that is sent out to users when they are following an article or a post.
I would recommend sharing you feedback on this post: Customize Help Center "Follow section" email notification as that's is being monitored by our Guide/Gather product managers.
Thanks for taking the time to share this with us!
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
Hiedi Kysther
Hi Rachel Inbar,
I'd like to troubleshoot this issue further, I've created a ticket on your behalf so we troubleshoot this together. Please check your emails for more information. Speak soon! Thanks!
0
Rita Pang
Hello, I'd like to troubleshoot this as well. I've already created a ticket and have yet to hear back, but we have a major update which we need to communicate to our customers next Tuesday.
I would like to know about the following:
1. If I "follow" a section and publish an article in that section as the author, would I ever receive notifications? I've noticed that I've never received any notifications but I would like to know how those notifications look like so we can verify our users' test cases.
2. Our clients have told us that some people did not receive any notifications even though they followed the section. How can we resolve this? They made sure to whitelist our emails and have received notifications successfully in the past.
It'd be really great if someone can help me out ASAP. Thank you!
0
John Cahill (Scribestar Support)
Is it still the case that if you a following an article and that article is updated then no notification is sent to the subscriber?
0
Rachel Inbar
Yes. This is true both for our end users and our staff members.
0
John Cahill (Scribestar Support)
I agree with the other comments above that you should look ot change this. It seems odd to follow a page/article but then not be informed of updates to that page.
So basically if you follow a page you only get notifications if someone posts a comment on that page?
0
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)
OK, just trying to understand this. So by adding a comment to this article I am now following comments in this article and any new articles created in Managing your knowledge base?
0
Rachel Inbar
There are two kinds of follow. One is new articles and one is new articles and comments. Our help center has no comments, so it isn't relevant for us.
0
John Cahill (Scribestar Support)
Sorry, probably being a bit thick here, but is this and your reply not a comment?
0
Rachel Inbar
I'm a Zendesk user. The help center that I'm talking about is the one I run for the company that I work for--not this, which is part of Zendesk's support center.
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