Creating and inserting reusable information with content blocks



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Jennifer Rowe

Zendesk Documentation Team

Edited Nov 25, 2024


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58 comments

It seems that if you include accordion content within a content block, the accordion toggle functionality no longer works when the content block is then added to another article. Is there a workaround for this? Thanks.

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Technical Writer - Marco Haber

We are not supporting advanced article components in content blocks just yet, so I'm not surprised that this is not shared. 

Out of curiosity, how have you tried to implement the accordion? was it directly in the content block source code? It might work better if you define a class for the accordion in the theme and apply it to a given element in the block.

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Katarzyna Karpinska It would be great if we had greatly more flexibility when using HTML source code. We're desperate for a solution that supports images on CBs, even if we source images from outside and code them directly with HTML. Other things too e.g. text color.

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Ricardo Novais Pereira, if there are no unforeseen earthquakes we'll be launching images in CBs within the next month! Add-ons to formatting tools in CBs will follow shortly after.

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That would be a great update!

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Any news on inserting images into content blocks?

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Jeff Stephenson, yes!! We are planning to launch it within a few weeks!

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I would also see a better use case for content blocks in macros in our company, likely even better than for the articles. Is there something planned along these lines, or is there an alternative we can use?

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Hello, is there any way to make the content block visible to only certain users? I'd like to add a content block to an article that's only visible to signed-in users

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Rick Marx, thank you for your comment, we definitely see the potential of extending content blocks to macros but we have some other pressing work in the pipeline we need to get to before that will be possible. The same applies for visibility permissions for content blocks Eduardo Escobar

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Hi Katarzyna Karpinska,

I was wondering if there is any news on the availability of tables in Content Blocks?

I was hoping to create a banner displaying which articles relate to certain products my company offers (similar to the image Zendesk uses in their articles :D ) and found creating a html table was easier than using an image.

Best regards
Stephen

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Want to chime in here that even lightweight custom html would be incredibly useful. I'm currently trying to use blocks to replicate ~6-10 workflow articles that are mostly the same with some variance, but since I can't edit the html, numbered lists in blocks must start with 1. 

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Stephen

We had to shift our priorities a little and are currently looking into working on tables in content blocks in Q3 this year. 

Laine Brusk

I hear you, we are working on integrating our article and content blocks better in the future. In the meantime, I'll check with my team if we can add support to <ol> start attribute.

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Adding a content block seems to hamper my ability to then edit source code. Is this expected behaviour? I can no longer access source code for the whole article. I have to click above the content block to access that piece of code, then below the block to access that piece of code. Is it possible to retain a view of the entire article, including the content block, in the source code editor? 

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Aoife O'Neill It is true that content block "slices" the content of articles in pieces and if you want to see HTML you need to look into all blocks separately (in the case of the article content - if you should put the cursor in the text below content block to see its HTML). We are working on some improvements in this area that will hopefully allow you to see all the article content as one consecutive HTML but content blocks will always be separate as they don't "live" in the article.

 

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Katarzyna Karpinska Do you have any plans to allow correct update of the body of articles with content blocks via the API.

Updating an article with content blocks from the API is kind of allowed, but creates some strange state for the article. The changes (made via API) will be visible in the online (published) version but not in the Guide Editor. So basically an article changed this way will have two content states: one with the API changes AND the Guide editor state (without the API changes). If a further change is made from Guide editor, this will overwrite all the changes made with the API.

This issue creates some serious limitations for some of my customers who have content blocks enabled and trying to use functions like find and replace across many articles (we're a Zendesk development partner providing apps such as the Help Center Manager to Zendesk customers).

Thank you!

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Sorin Alupoaie, yes, and hopefully within the next couple of weeks. Keep an eye on our announcement page :) 

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This is great news! Thank you Katarzyna Karpinska

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Once a content block exists, is there a way to nest it under a different language? Like if it was created under English, can it be moved to Spanish so it shows up with the other Spanish content blocks when you go to insert it?

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Kaarina

You can use any content block in any language, e.g. you can use English content block in Spanish translation. When it comes to searching for it however it won't be visible under Spanish, in order to find it you'd need to search for it either in its original language or use All languages option in the drop-down by the search field. 

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Katarzyna Karpinska do you have update on being able to correctly update the body of articles with content blocks via the API? 

Currently, if you have a content block in an article, and update the article through the API, that content block will be converted to regular text. Then you need to go to the article and manually revert that piece of text to a content block, which is very time consuming.

This is causing significant problems for customers who are using a programmatic way to make bulk changes to articles with content blocks (like find and replace across many articles), either through a third party app or by using the API themselves.

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Sorin Alupoaie, unfortunately I don't have a timeline for this change at this moment. 

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Just want to upvote Aoife's feedback. Would be very useful to have content blocks in Macros. We have a “how to contact support” PDF that we attach to lots of macros, and content blocks could replace that.

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How do you create a block with bullets and change the color of the entire block? Here's an example:

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Shawna James

Community Product Feedback Specialist

Hey Dave and Aoife, thank you so much for taking the time to provide us with your feedback here. I wanted to point you in the direction of our product feedback forum for Guide where we collect product feedback and where our PM’s review feedback from our customers. We would greatly appreciate you using this forum to share your feedback with us for better visibility. Here is our product feedback template to get you started. Thank you!

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Why would my content block styles look different from native content?

In this example, both headers are H1. I am using the Picto template and it is up-to-date.

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We have accumulated several content blocks and are no longer using some of them. I see no option to delete them to reduce clutter. Will this be an option soon?

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Hi dear Zendesk Team,
we would like to clean up and change the locale of the content block? We have a big mess of various ways of created content blocks in the wrong locale - bu I cannot find any way to change the locale after it was created. 
It is not feasible to delete and create them all anew!
Any info on this would be highly appreciated. :) 
Best,
Annika

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