About help center federated search

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42 Comments

  • Kelsey Davis

    Hi, if I use Copenhagen but the theme has been duplicated and then customised, will we still need to edit the theme ourselves or will it be updated as the Copenhagen themes are to be updated by Zendesk? Thanks

    0
  • Maggie Ungerboeck

    Hi Kelsey,

    Once you customize the theme, then you don't get the automatic theme updates from Zendesk. 

    Thanks,
    Maggie

    0
  • Amanda Quarman

    Hi, 

    I'm very excited about this new feature but under Help Center settings, there is no category 'Search Settings' where I can configure the Federated Search. 

    Is anyone else not seeing this option in their Help Center settings? 

    Thanks, Amanda

    0
  • Augusto Silva
    Zendesk Engineering

    Hey @...

    This feature is currently only available for Guide/Suite Enterprise customers. Check you Guide subscription to see if it is available.

    0
  • Tray Cushing

    Augusto,

    According to Ray at Zendesk, in addition to having the Guide/Suite Enterprise edition, you must also have the Support Enterprise edition, correct?

    0
  • Augusto Silva
    Zendesk Engineering

    Hey @...,

    Just checked with the team and you don't need Support Enterprise for this specific feature. 

    You do need Support Enterprise to Enable search across multiple help centers

    Hope this clarifies it 🙂

    0
  • Tray Cushing

    Wanted to see if anyone could share a sample scripting for an external content record via REST API - thanks.

    1
  • Anton M.

    I wonder if federated search results will be accessible by AnswerBot and in Agent Workspace? 

    4
  • Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi @... both of those features are on our roadmap and expected to be delivered in 2021. Making federated search results available in Agent Workspace is the first of the two to be delivered.

    1
  • Jon Simone

    Is there a specific reason why articles need to be added through API or am I missing something? Also happy to hear that there are plans for these to be accessible by AnswerBot and Agent Workspace!

    0
  • Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi @..., we have chosen to expose an API to ingest external content records as the first interface because it allows for full flexibility to integrate with any other service that hosts the content you want to make discoverable through Help Center search, but we are currently working on adding no-code methods for adding external records as well. Unfortunately I can't give an ETA yet.

     

    1
  • Darren Stagnaro

    One thing we are noticing is that article filtering based upon title and URL is not unique enough. While we are using the description field, it would be good if federated search also supported the attribute to pull in tags (similar to how it works with Guide articles) to be able to present better search results.

    0
  • Laura Mirto

    Hi, 

    I'm looking for the best method to ingest content from an external website. I've tried testing the curl method for creating an external content record, but I am getting errors. Each property gets this message "curl: (6) Could not resolve host:".

    I have successfully added my content source and types. 

    Also, does anyone have a suggestion on a quick way to create records for each page of an external website?

    Thanks, Laura

    0
  • Eric Nelson
    Zendesk Developer Advocacy

    Hey @..., can you send us the curl request that you're trying so we can take a look?

    Thanks!

    Eric

    0
  • Laura Mirto

    Hi Eric, 

    Sure, I did end up opening a ticket for this issue as well. 

    So I tried two methods. The first was creating a text file with the JSON data and then used the following curl request in my Command Prompt. I've edited out a few things for sharing. 

    curl https://zuken.zendesk.com/api/v2/guide/external_content/records -d @CreateContent.txt ^
    -u *MyUserName*:*MyPass*

    Where the CreateContent.txt file included the following. 

    {
    "record": {
    "title": "E3.series Drawing Notes Manager",
    "body":
    "The E3.Drawing Notes Manager makes managing and automating notes generation in Zuken E3.series simpler than ever. It eliminates the need to manage individual notes, track attributes and manage free-text notes. Images inside the notes help augment the information and instructions making them more effective and streamlined.Centrally managing notes of various types and interactively placing them in the desired location is sure to revolutionize the effectiveness of communicating design intent for production and beyond. Consistent communication of engineering principles and intent is a very important part of maintaining high-velocity operation without sacrificing quality or increasing costs. Engineers have yearned for a solution to replace the equivalent of Post It notes on drawings and Zuken has responded with an amazing tool that is sure to boost productivity and increase their competitive advantage. Why Do You Need a Notes Manager? E3.Drawing Notes Manager eliminates the risk of managing notes from becoming excessively complicated, leading to questions, delays, and errors on the manufacturing end. Manage instructions and provide essential notes within drawings and across the project. Add images and other visual markers in the notes to decisively improves drawing comprehension. Automatically assign unique note- numbers and hyper-link important Flagnotes to improve navigation and traceability. Create nested notes for a complete and professional layout of important design data. Re-use and share notes across design teams/projects to improve and maintain consistency. Attach instructions to parts, symbols, and drawings to improve communication of engineering principles and design intent."
    ,
    "external_id": "drawingnotesmanager",
    "locale": "en-us",
    "source_id": "*SourceID",
    "type_id": "*TypeID*",
    "url": "https://www.zuken.com/us/product/e3series/drawing-notes-manager/",
    }
    }

    The second method I tried was just using a curl request. 


    curl "https://zuken.zendesk.com/api/v2/guide/external_content/records" ^
    -d '{ "record": { "title": "E3.series Drawing Notes Manager", "url": "https://www.zuken.com/us/product/e3series/drawing-notes-manager/", "locale": "en-us", "body": "The E3.Drawing Notes Manager makes managing and automating notes generation in Zuken E3.series simpler than ever. It eliminates the need to manage individual notes, track attributes and manage free-text notes. Images inside the notes help augment the information and instructions making them more effective and streamlined.Centrally managing notes of various types and interactively placing them in the desired location is sure to revolutionize the effectiveness of communicating design intent for production and beyond. Consistent communication of engineering principles and intent is a very important part of maintaining high-velocity operation without sacrificing quality or increasing costs. Engineers have yearned for a solution to replace the equivalent of Post It notes on drawings and Zuken has responded with an amazing tool that is sure to boost productivity and increase their competitive advantage. Why Do You Need a Notes Manager? E3.Drawing Notes Manager eliminates the risk of managing notes from becoming excessively complicated, leading to questions, delays, and errors on the manufacturing end. Manage instructions and provide essential notes within drawings and across the project. Add images and other visual markers in the notes to decisively improves drawing comprehension. Automatically assign unique note- numbers and hyper-link important Flagnotes to improve navigation and traceability. Create nested notes for a complete and professional layout of important design data. Re-use and share notes across design teams/projects to improve and maintain consistency. Attach instructions to parts, symbols, and drawings to improve communication of engineering principles and design intent.", "external_id": "drawingnotesmanager", "user_segment_id": null, "type_id": "*TypeID*", "source_id": "*SourceID*" }}' ^
    -u *MyUserName*:*MyPass*

     

    Please let me know if you need anything else. 

    Thank you,

    Laura

    0
  • Laura Mirto

    I was able to resolve my create content records issue by using the Postman application instead. 

    Here is a great article for anyone else who is new to APIs with Zendesk. 

    https://developer.zendesk.com/documentation/developer-tools/working-with-the-zendesk-apis/exploring-zendesk-apis-with-postman/

    1
  • Kaela Chandrasekaran

    I would like to be able to set the base URL for my sources. For example, if my blog is at www.[domain].com/blog I want the source link to go there. Currently, it looks like the link is autogenerated to www.[domain].com URL. I can change this via customization in the theme but it would be nice to have that as part of the create source API. Is that something you may support in the future?

    0
  • GS Admin

    we are using zendesk suite enterprise version .but the search is not visible to me in our settings menu.

    could you please help.

    1
  • Phoebe Morin
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Gaurav, 

    You need to add External Content via API first. As soon as you add one External content Record (which will require at least one Type and Source), the option should be enabled for you. 

    To create external content, please visit the following resources:

    I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any further questions. 

     

    -1
  • Jay Parafina

    Hi Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen

    in a previous post you stated: 


    Hi @... both of those features are on our roadmap and expected to be delivered in 2021. Making federated search results available in Agent Workspace is the first of the two to be delivered.


    Is Federated search live for the Agent Workspace today (Specifically in 'Knowledge Capture')? If not, do we know then the live date is? 

    We have 'suggested articles' live on our Support Ticket Submission flow (as a means for ticket deflection) -- if we implement Federated Search, will external articles generate in the those results?  

    Thanks in advance! 

    0
  • WhatsApp Connector

    Hello Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen and rest of the Product Management team,

    Please let me know if federated search is now available for the articles/content that Answer Bot recommends. Curious also about the availability of that functionality for the Agent Workspace search as well.

    Thanks.

    1
  • Gorka Cardona-Lauridsen
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi WhatsApp Connector, great question!

    Unfortunately Federated search is not yet available in Answer Bot answers, but we intend to make it available to Answer Bot as well. I can't currently give an ETA though.

    The good news on the other hand is that Federated search (external content) is available in the Knowledge tab in the Agent Workspace. See:

    0
  • Jay Rohrer

    If we are using external articles, how do we add labels so that Answer Bot will pick them up?

    Thanks.

    0
  • Brett Bowser
    Zendesk Community Manager
    Hey Jay,

    I double checked on my end and it doesn't look like this is possible to link up Answerbot with your external articles. The Answerbot API can only work with Help Center content in Guide.
     
    Let me know if you have any other questions!
    1
  • Steve Steffel

    Hello! Will external content show up in the customer side of the ticket request form? That would be massively helpful for us (as well as appearing in the agent workspace, which it looks like it will). Thank you!

    0
  • Jupete Manitas
    Zendesk Customer Care
    Hi Steve, thanks for writing in!
     
    This Federated Search in your Help Center is limited to the search functionality at the moment. But this could be a great feature while making a request in the ticket request form. We encourage you to post this in our guide product feedback for our product team's reference. Lastly, you can consult our professional services team as they can make custom apps outside the native feature. Thank you!
    0
  • Paul Moran

    Hi, it would be great to associate the external content with existing zd categories so that when you do a search 'By Category' the external content will show up in under that category's search results.

    I can try to fudge it by using the associated external record's 'Type' or 'Source'. i.e. create a 'Type' record with the same name as the category i.e. a 'Widget A' category would have a 'Widget A' 'type' record. Not a great solution though.

    0
  • Kel S.

    Is it possible to include Vimeo videos in the search results, so you could return videos hosted externally instead of having to embed them into articles?

    0
  • Walter

    Hi Kel S.,

    Yes, it is possible. You just need to have an appropriate description in the Federated Search index for each video.

    1
  • Hi All

    I'm guessing that external knowledge (federated search) is still not available for AnswerBot or Flowbuilder?

    Just wondering if this is still on the roadmap? No stress on ETA, just want to know if it's being pursued.

    Cheers :)

    1

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