You can insert images in the body of your help center knowledge base articles and content blocks. When you insert images, they are added to the media library. Large images are automatically resized to fit the width of the article.
When you copy and paste images from a Google doc or Microsoft Word (365) document to the body of your article, the image is automatically uploaded to the media library and inserted into your article. See Working with images in the media library
This article contains the following sections:
Inserting images into articles
You can insert images into articles using the following procedure. As an alternative to inserting images directly in your articles, you can host your images on a public file server and link to them.
To insert an image in an article
- In your help center or Guide Admin, create a new article or edit an existing article.
- Place the cursor where you want the image to appear.
- Click the Insert image icon () on the article toolbar. Alternatively, you can drag and drop an image into the article. In both cases, the media library opens.
- In the media library, choose the images you want to insert or click Upload media
if you want to add a new image to the media library. Alternatively, you can drag and drop
an image into the media library. The image file size limit is 20 MB.Note: You can filter the displayed images by clicking the options in the left-side menu. For more information about the media library, see Working with images in the media library.
- Click Insert media.
The images you selected appear in your article.
Images are automatically adjusted to fit the width of the article. It's a good idea to manually resize images that are more than 1600px wide before you insert them, as the automatic size adjustment might cause the image to appear distorted in the published article. You also might want to manually resize images if you are using Web Widget to ensure they're displayed correctly (see Optimizing images for Web Widget below).
- Click Save.
Inserting images into content blocks (Enterprise plans only)
Content blocks let you create content that you can share between multiple articles. You can insert images into content blocks in a similar manner to how you include them in help center articles. You can add up to 50 images per content block.
To insert images into content blocks
- In help center or Guide Admin, create a new content block or edit an existing content block
- In the content block, place the cursor where you want the image to appear.
- Click the Add image icon () on the content block toolbar.
Alternatively, you can drag and drop an image into the content block.
- In the media library, choose the images you want to upload or click Upload
media if you want to add a new image to the library. In both cases, the media
library opens.Alternatively, you can drag and drop an image into the media library. The image file size limit is 20 MB.Note: You can filter the displayed images by clicking the options in the left-side menu. For more information about the media library, see Working with images in the media library.
- Click Insert media.
The images you selected appear in your content block.
Click the image to display a toolbar where you can select text wrapping, image alignment, and image display size options. You can also click ALT on the toolbar to enter alternative text to improve the accessibility of your article. To manually resize the image, drag the corner of the image.
- If this is a new content block, click Create. If you're updating an existing content block, click Update.
Optimizing help center images for the Web Widgets
To make sure the images in your help center articles display correctly in the messaging Web Widget and Web Widget (Classic), it’s important that the images are added to the article at the desired size.
When help center articles are converted for viewing in the widgets, the article’s images are stripped of their attributes in the HTML tags (except for the src and alt attributes), and custom CSS rules are ignored. For most images, this isn’t a problem. However, if the original images are very big, and significantly resized in the HTML or in a custom CSS, they can appear awkwardly large.
Say, for example, you want to display an icon in your help center article. The icon’s
original image is 300x300 pixels. To display it at a more reasonable size, the HTML is
modified by adding the attributes width=“6%”
height=“6%”
.
In the help center article, the icon is 18x18 pixels, 6% of the actual image size. When the article is processed for the widget, and the width and height attributes are removed, it goes back to its original size and, even after being sized down to fit inside the widget, it’s too big for an icon.
Resizing the original image down to the size you want, rather than manipulating the size in your code, avoids this problem.
29 comments
Bryan Hilton
Hello Zendesk Support,
I would like to learn more about placing alt text in images. Here are my questions:
a. Open guide and navigate to the Edit screen in your article
b. Click on the image that I want to edit within my article.
c. Click the Source Code button.
d. Locate the alt text by navigating to the Alt =
e. Edit your alt text within the "".
****Update**** I was trying to use Narrator from Microsoft which was not reading my Alt Text. However, I just installed NVDA and it seems to be reading the alt text just fine. The Source Code Editor is also accepting my edits.
Any help is greatly appreciated in this matter. Thank you.
I would just like to know how I can tell which image i am working on in the Source Code Editor if I have many images in an article.
Also, I am thinking image tags may be separate from alt text which why I do not see an image tag when I hover over the image in the Preview in Help Center screen.
0
Jean-Charles Pascale
Hi Brian,
Indeed, alt-text is not necessarily text that will be displayed when hovering over an image. Alt-text is text that will be displayed in place of the image if the image cannot be displayed for some reason.
To know which image you are working on, you can take the value of the "src" tag of the image you are working on, and open it in a browser to see the image.
If the "src" tag is a full link, simply copy and paste it in your browser.
If the "src" tag starts with "/hc/...", simply add "https://subdomain.zendesk.com" before it, replacing "subdomain" by your subdomain.
For instance https://subdomain.zendesk.com/hc/hc/article_attachments/360067323131/foxgiphy.gif
I hope this helps.
Jean-Charles - Zendesk Support
0
Ramadan Elsayed
hello All,
im looking to put an image on an article to be wrapped around the text or next to it like the photo.
but there is no option for that.
2
Molly Phillips
Hi Ramadan,
I'd suggest using a borderless table or flexbox to get the layout you're looking for.
1
Ramadan Elsayed
very good workaround, however, such simple photo format feature should be added to the article design tools.
2
Maria Artamonova
Hello Zendesk Support,
Is there any chance to set up zooming on pictures? Our customers always ask for it. It is not easy to see all the details on a big picture. It would also enhance support pages accessibily which is one of the key factors for Google optimization.
7
Mark Wiles
Yes, I agree with Ramadan Elsayed that it would be great to have an easy "wrap text" option for images. And as for your comment Maria Artamonova, we have been using a lightbox feature to zoom in on images; the lightbox option came with a theme we purchased, so I'm guessing some custom CSS would also work (https://zendeskthemes.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000405784-Images).
1
Oleh Bash
Hi! The web widget does not display images from the articles. If you open an article in the help center - all images in it are displayed correctly. But if you open the same article through the web widget, the images are visible as "image name.jpeg". I tried other image formats and changed the size to smaller, but it did not help. Can you help?
0
Giuseppe
Hi Oleh,
This could be due to a number of reasons.
One reason could be due to article restrictions to specific group of users. This could be the case if you are viewing your articles while signed-in in your Help Center, which will indeed show you the images, when your Web Widget is in another environment where users are anonymously browsing your articles. If this is the case, then you may have to update your Article settings to make them visible to all users. You may view these articles for more information about this:
Can I restrict access to articles?
Inline images in Guide articles display as broken across all browsers
Please note that the information above applies to articles in general, and not specific to Web Widget.
In case the scenario above is not the cause of the issue, then this could be due to Content Security Policy (CSP) support
To check if this is the case, once you have the article open in your Web Widget displaying the broken image, you can go to your console (right-click > Inspect > Console) and you will see an error similar to this:
To fix this, you'll have to follow the setup as provided in the article above. This means you'll have to modify the Web Widget script to comply with CSP guidelines.
0
Marco Esposito
I have the same need described by Maria Artamonova
a few images issues could be solved by images that can be clicked. That would work as a pop-up displaying the image in a bigger size in the middle of the screen.
2
Katie | Yola Team
Hello Zendesk support! Is it possible to display different images within the article on desktop and mobile devices? So, for example, when a customer is viewing an article from a desktop, they see image 1, however, when they are viewing from a mobile device, they see image 2 instead.
We are also interested in the feature Maria Artamonova and Marco Esposito asking about.
Thank you!
0
Tipene Hughes
There isn’t currently a way to dynamically display images based on the device using native functionality, but you could implement some JavaScript to achieve the same effect. Something like this would display images depending on the viewport width of the device:
One thing to be aware of is that you won’t be able to access the image assets in your help center using this method so you’ll need to have the externally hosted image URLs for display.
0
Thomas Foley
We have some images that we use in multiple articles. To make this happen, I usually write the first article, upload the image to that article, and then copy its <img> tag to the other documents. This seems to work fine.
The problem comes if I need to change an image. I would like to update the original and have the updated version used in the other articles.
In Theme:Assets, there is a menu that gives the option of Replace or Delete. Replace works great because it basically overwrites the existing image with a replacement that is then used everywhere.
In Article:Images, there is only the option of Delete. Is there a way to replace the existing image with a new version?
Right now, I just upload the new image into the original article, use Source code to copy the ID from the new version, and then use Source code in each file where the image exists, replacing the old ID with the new one -- the filename remains the same. It doesn't always work well because I miss some places where the image was used.
Suggestions would be great. Just being to use something like FTP to access those images and upload/overwrite with replacements would be a huge improvement.
0
Charles Gresula
Hi Thomas Foley,
Currently, the recommended approach in attaching images is either you upload images individually(update individually if needs to be changed) to each article or use the Guide assets section. This is to avoid the potential issue of images displaying as a broken link as described in this article:
Inline images in Guide articles display as broken across all browsers
0
Erica Dyson
Can't you enter a url from a Google Shared Drive or a shared folder? That way if we had to restore we get the article back with the images. Any ideas / best practice? Embedding each image in article seems rather "old school".
3
Brett Bowser
You should be able to do that still. The only reason we recommend uploading it is if a users doesn't have access to your shared drive or if the image got deleted from Google drive. If that happens, then the user would only see a broken image icon on their end.
Hope this clears up any confusion!
0
Dave Jensen
Does Zendesk have a list of external image hosting options it recommends partnering with? We've currently been uploading images directly to articles and a few needs have arisen that seem like they'd be solved if we had an external image hosting site where we could host/maintain all images.
Just looking to get a list of which vendors work best for this purpose.
0
Brett Bowser
I don't have a list of recommended options, however, it may be worth taking a look at our App Marketplace to see what's available there. I know we have a Dropbox integration that's fairly popular but there are others that may be worth taking a look at as well.
I hope this helps!
0
Rich Andersen
Hi, Does anyone know if it's possible to use 'hotspot' interactive images? I have a large image explaining all the different element on a webpage. I'd like to have it so when the reader hovers over the number point it pops up some a little callout with more details. Is that possible at all?
1
alexandria.gazzillo
We've been struggling to get our uploaded images to appear in our support widget on our site. We have tried uploading via the image uploader in the article builder but the image does not load properly once we test it live on the site.
Any advice?
0
Jane M Langschied
Agreed. Any idea if Zendesk will be enhancing how images work? Would love to see:
0
Thomas Foley
Jane.
For alignment, three different classes (.align-left, alight-right, .align-center) that I apply using either <div> or <span> in the article code. A bit ackward, but workds.
For wrapping, I really don't have a clue. I have actually messed with using tables, but that is a lot of manual effort and there are issues depending on the display resolution of the browser window.
To have the ability to make a picture bigger, I added the following to our style sheet:
.collapsed img {
border: none;
box-shadow: 0 .5em .5em 0 #202020;
}
img.collapsed:hover {
-ms-transform: scale(2); /* IE 9 */
-webkit-transform: scale(2); /* Safari 3-8 */
transform: scale(1.75);
transform-origin: left top;
}
When I insert an image, I edit the html code to be:
<img class="collapsed" [filename] [width] [height]>
...where width and height are smaller versions of the original image. When I hover over the image, it transforms to the scale I set in the stylesheet (i.e., 1.75 times the displayed image). The top-left corner is anchored, and the image expands down and to the right.
There is all sorts of stuff you can do with transform, so it is something worth taking a look at.
For ZENDESK FOLKS, it would be nice if the article editor would actually look at our stylesheets and allow us to choose the class to use for an html tag from a drop-down of available classes. Right now, all I see is Paragraph, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and Heading 4. Couldn't the lookup show me all the styles from the stylesheet in the order they appear and be sensitive to my cursor location, for example:
They should be listed in the order they appear in the style sheet, which allows me to modify the list to put my most used ones at the top.
0
Katarzyna Karpinska
Jane M Langschied, thank you for your comment. When it comes to the images in Content blocks the two items below are already available out of the box (no HTML needed)
We will be also working on adding them to the article editor in the future.
We currently don't have plans to add:
0
Geoff Wang
We have found that images in Guide articles are scaled differently when they are viewed from the end user portal vs. in an email that includes the Answer Bot suggested article. The first screenshot below shows how an article with images looks when viewed from the end user portal (note that the article is redacted and the screenshots in the article are the proper width).
The second screenshot shows the same article as it appears in an email with the Answer BOT suggestion. Notice how the images are huge and out of scale.
So here's my question: Do you have any guidelines on how to include images in Guide articles so that they display properly from the end user portal and also in emails?
0
Elizabeth Brown
Hi Zendesk: does Zendesk still use image filenames as alt text, if no alt text is provided?
I feel certain this advice existed at some point? and I create meaningful filenames for images for this reason, but can't find confirmation in the articles.
Please advise?
0
Katarzyna Karpinska
Hi Elizabeth Brown,
What you are describing has not been a Zendesk feature, but I saw on our Community that some of our users made similar customizations, maybe you've seen it there? However, we've recently changed the structure of our file urls so they are not containing names anymore.
0
Elizabeth Brown
Hi Katarzyna,
Hmmm - here's what I see in my code view, in an article, for an image + alt text.
This isn't default behaviour? Our web design team tweaked our template to match our brand but I wasn't aware of a change to alt text.
0
Katarzyna Karpinska
Elizabeth Brown,
I'm sorry I'm a little confused as to what is your actual question :) . As you can see in the image you shared we are not providing file names in the image src attribute anymore. This was a change that we needed to introduce to support adding more image-related features to Guide. We have never had a native feature that enabled adding alt text based on the image file name. It's possible however that it was a customization added by someone in your team as I saw similar ones on our community
0
Haley McRae
I am looking for a group of symbols (arrows, boxes) that my team can place on top of images to point to a highlight certain areas of our platform. What is the best way to do this?
0