Flexible Hierarchies enables you to add subsections (sections in sections), to your help center knowledge base to create more levels in your hierarchy, up to six levels deep. You cannot add more levels to your community.
You must be a Guide admin to add subsections to your help center knowledge base.
About subsections
You can put articles at any section level of the hierarchy, but articles cannot appear under categories. Sections can contain sections or articles or both.
The following diagram shows a help center hierarchy with four levels, including three section levels.
Getting started with subsections
If you have never used Flexible Hierarchies functionality to add a subsection to your help center, there are some considerations and possible theme updates to make before you add subsections to your help center.
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Ensure you have added code to your custom theme to enable subsections, if necessary.
If you are using a theme customized before March 29th, 2019, you need to add code to your custom theme to enable subsections before you can add subsections to your help center. Subsections are available by default in standard themes and themes that were customized after March 29, 2019.
If this step applies to you, see Enabling subsections in your theme.
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Decide on the design you'd like for subsections in your help center and update your theme to display subsections.
By default, the standard Copenhagen theme's section page template displays each section's subsections. You can modify the theme's code to display subsections on other page templates or change the look of the subsections lists. For some examples, see Displaying subsections in your help center.
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Add subsections to your help center.
If you have ensured that subsections are enabled in your theme and you are happy with how subsections display in your help center, then you can add subsections and articles to your hierarchy.
When you're ready to add subsections to your help center, see Adding a subsection to a section in this article.
Adding a subsection to a section
You can add subsections (sections in sections), to your help center. You can nest sections in sections for a maximum of five section levels. Each section can contain up to a maximum of 200 subsections in a section.
To add a section in a section
- In your help center or Guide Admin, click Add in the top menu bar, then select Section.
- Enter a Name and optional Description for your section.
- Ensure the correct Source language is selected if you support multiple languages.
- Under Order articles by, select an option for how you'd like articles to appear in this section.
If you select to manually order of articles, see Manually changing the order of articles to change the order of your articles.
- Under Hierarchy, click in the field, then select the section where you'd like this section to appear in your help center.
Click the names of categories and sections to drill down in the hierarchy and use the breadcrumbs to move back up in the hierarchy.
- If you have multiple section templates in your live theme, click the Template menu, then select a template.
If you do not select an alternate template, the default section template will be applied.
- Click Add.
The section is created.
25 comments
ecaulfield
So just to be clear: all of the above instructions and instructions from this page will only work for me if I have a Pro licence?
2
Brett Bowser
Hey Ecaulfield,
Subsections are only available on Guide Enterprise so you'd at least need to at least be subscribed to that plan level to have the functionality available.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
0
ecaulfield
Hi Brett, thanks for the reply. The company I work for is an existing customer of Zendesk. Is Guide Enterprise something that can be added on to our current license/subscription? Or is it normally bundled into a specific licence?
0
Brett Bowser
Hey Ecaulfield,
The owner of your account should be able to upgrade your Guide subscription as mentioned here: Viewing and managing your subscription
If you have a managed account, your account owner would need to reach out to their account rep to assist further.
Let me know if that doesn't make sense!
0
Michael Clarke
I've followed all of the steps in the various articles to allow for subsections to be used, but I still don't seem to be able to set the hierarchy for the sections/subsections.
![](/hc/user_images/HJ-5aHimypxoLa0_b9PmNQ.png)
![](/hc/user_images/Tb9x5YtT6ZZg2qjMfMAHbg.png)
The hierarchy only allows me to select a Category on the Edit Section page.
There's no way to drilldown further.
1
John Espina
Hi Michael,
In regards to that, we appreciate you following the steps on this article but as per checking currently, there is a way to enable the hierarchy of the sections/ subsections. However, you can always send feedback/ post comments on our community channel regarding this: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/new
John Espina | Customer Advocate
0
朱肇平
Need to know what it looks like in the Help Center when the number of subsections is 3 & 4 & 5
or
Demo Stations ?
0
Ifra Saqlain
Hey JP,
The subsections in the Help Centre looks like this:
In default Copenhagen theme - Section Page
You can change the sequence of subsection and articles code. Move your subsection code after the articles code then it will look like:
and depends on you that how you want to show the subsections on the category and section page. You can add the subsection code into your category and section page then you can use the CSS to change the UI. You can make subsections as a accordion, list, list with the icons to identify easily, etc.
You can share the screenshot here that how you want to show subsections on your template then I can explain more about your query.
Thanks
0
Patrick Leahy
Hi,
I want to manually arrange the order of the articles in a section. I followed the instructions above. Get to the section etc. But I don't get a list of the articles so that I can rearrange them.
Must you have a particular license to do this?
0
Ifra Saqlain
Hi,
If you have your own sandbox then you can re-order the articles. Follow the below steps:
1). Go to the Guide Admin.
2). You will get the left sidebar, click the icon, highlighted by a red border.
3). After clicking, you will reach the window you have seen in the above screenshot.
4). Click the category of that section where you want to re-order the articles, via clicking on the dots, see in the below screenshot.
5). After clicking, you will reach to all the sections, now select that one section where you want to re-order the articles and click the dots again.
Now you have all the articles to re-orders.
Now you can re-order the articles because you have been reached.
If any confusion do let me know :)
Thanks
Team Diziana
0
Silas Johnson
We have a suite growth subscription. Is there any way to just upgrade GUIDE to enterprise without upgrading the whole suite subscription to enterprise?
Thank you!
1
Jeff C
Hi Silas,
Suite plans are bundled to have each product to be on a specific plan. I am afraid it is not possible to upgrade a product in a Suite plan. You many want to consider working with your Zendesk Sales Rep on what alternatives would be available to you.
0
Joshua Bentley
My question here may be better for the Explore community. I'm trying to do a report on # of views and we have several subsections with the same title. For example, there is a "Getting Started" subsection for each of our products. When I use Explore, it bundles up the view count for any subsection that shares the same title.
I see that I can add the section ID to the query, but that doesn't help me since I'll have to look up each ID and create a customer attribute for it. Is there any easy way to show the complete path of a section/subsection/article in situations like our?
0
Dane
For Zendesk Guide queries, the only attribute available for article sections are Article section ID and Article section title. There's no other attribute that can be used to narrow down queries based on sections.
0
Roy Bramer
I have the same problem as Michael has.
In the hierarchy I only see the Category?
How can I activate that I also see the the sections within the selected Category?.
Grtz. Roy
0
Ifra Saqlain
Hi Roy Bramer,
I think it's because of your Plan.
You must have Enterprise Plan or plus and then the code of sections/subsections must be added on your templates.
Thanks![](/hc/user_images/rUI_SodKuLdNTkTvpU-Ifw.png)
Team
0
Roy Bramer
Team Diziana,
As far as I can see we are invoiced for the Enterprise Subscription and our template has the following code:
{{#if section.description}}
<p class="page-header-description">{{section.description}}</p>
{{/if}}
{{#if section.sections}}
<ul class="section-list section-list--collapsed {{#if settings.content_layout_columns}}single-column-layout{{/if}}">
{{#each section.sections}}
<li class="section-list-item">
<i class="fas fa-folder"></i>
<a href="{{url}}">
<span>{{name}}</span>
</a>
</li>
{{/each}}
</ul>
{{/if}}
{{#if section.articles}}
<ul class="article-list {{#if settings.content_layout_columns}}single-column-layout{{/if}}">
{{#each section.articles}}
<li class="article-list-item {{#if promoted}} article-promoted{{/if}}">
{{#if promoted}}
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="10" height="10" focusable="false" viewBox="0 0 12 12"
class="icon-star" title="{{t 'promoted'}}">
<path fill="currentColor"
d="M2.88 11.73c-.19 0-.39-.06-.55-.18a.938.938 0 01-.37-1.01l.8-3L.35 5.57a.938.938 0 01-.3-1.03c.12-.37.45-.63.85-.65L4 3.73 5.12.83c.14-.37.49-.61.88-.61s.74.24.88.6L8 3.73l3.11.17a.946.946 0 01.55 1.68L9.24 7.53l.8 3a.95.95 0 01-1.43 1.04L6 9.88l-2.61 1.69c-.16.1-.34.16-.51.16z"/>
</svg>
{{/if}}
<a href="{{url}}" class="article-list-link" title="{{title}}">{{title}}</a>
</li>
{{/each}}
</ul>
{{else}}
<a href="{{section.url}}">
<i class="section-empty"> {{t 'empty'}} </i>
</a>
{{/if}}
But also if I copy the template and replace it exactly by your code and set is a the live template, I still cant select the sections within a category when I create a section.
Hope you can help!.
Grtz. Roy
0
Ifra Saqlain
Then you can create a ticket: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/new
0
Ifra Saqlain
@Roy Bramer, you have section to create a subsection under parent section.
Ex.
i). Create a Category.
II). Create a Section under that Category.
III). Create a Section again. Then, you will get the Category (Select it), you will get a Section (Select it) and then save your new Section under this parent Section.
0
Lilian Herman
Is there any way to add more than 5 levels of sections? Any one out there figured out a workaround for this?
0
Jupete Manitas
0
Lilian Herman
No, I'm not referring to the number of subsections under a section. I'm talking about the levels as in hierarchy structure.
From a ZD article: You can have a maximum of six levels using nested sections: Category > section > section > section > section > section.
This states 6 levels, but that includes the Category. I was referring to the number of section levels under a category.
0
Jupete Manitas
We encourage you to add this as product feedback here in the community to engage with other users who have similar needs and discuss possible workarounds. Conversations with a high level of engagement ultimately get flagged for product managers to review when they go through roadmap planning. Otherwise, we can refer you to our Professional Services team or you check with your account executive to learn more about Services team. They can build custom applications and other tools for your Zendesk when native functionality is not meeting your needs. Thank you!
0
Ivette Lavin
Can subsections display on navigational side menus? I see it in the breadcrumb but not the side menu
0
Ifra Saqlain
Hi Ivette Lavin,
Do you have sidebar but subsections are not showing in that?
If you explain your use case then I can answer your query better.
Thanks :)
0