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Enabling users to vote on knowledge base articles without signing in

Jennifer Rowe
  • Edited
Zendesk Documentation Team

What's my plan?

Suite allall plans

You can enable anonymous end-users to vote on Help Center knowledge base articles without signing in. This enables you to get more votes on content and better understand how effective your content is.

You must be a Guide admin to enable anonymous voting. Anonymous voting is not available for community posts.

To enable anonymous voting on articles

  1. In Guide, click the Settings icon () in the sidebar, then select Help Center settings.
  2. Under Content Management, select Anonymous voting on articles.

  3. Click Update.

    When anonymous voting is enabled for articles, all votes are recorded, regardless of whether the user is signed in. User data is recorded only for users who have signed in.

    Note: Voting buttons on articles are part of the standard Help Center theme. If you do not see them on your articles, then they might have been removed from your theme. To add them back, see Add voting buttons to articles.
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14 Comments

  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Hi Joe, 

    Did you get this working? 

    0
  • The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    Hey Nicole, it did update after several hours.

    Thanks,

    Joe

    0
  • Nicole Saunders
    Zendesk Community Manager

    Glad to hear it, Joe.

    0
  • Amelia Cantrell

    Hi Nicole! Is there a way to clear vote counts off of the articles? Our articles were created long ago and we currently did some major edits and want to start off on a fresh perspective. EX our articles say 3 out of 8 found this helpful but we are wanting to completely clear those without having to recreate all new articles. Is this possible?

    0
  • Ekaterina Sumolaynina
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Amelia Cantrell Hi Amelia! It is indeed possible to remove the votes without re-creating the article. For this, you would need to use Help Center API:

    1. By calling below endpoint, you will be able to get vote_id  
      GET /api/v2/help_center/{locale}/articles/{article_id}/votes
    2. Then you would need to call Delete Vote endpoint 
      DELETE /api/v2/help_center/votes/{vote_id}
      For more information, please refer to our API documentation: https://developer.zendesk.com/api-reference/help_center/help-center-api/votes/
    0
  • Patrick Passarella

    Hi, when voting with an anonymous user (while not logged in), the vote on the article is assigned to the user_id of who created the token to make the request, is that right? I wanted to differentiate the anonymous users from the ones who are signed in.

    0
  • Dave Dyson
    Hi Patrick,
     
    As the article above states, user data is recorded only for users who have signed in – so no user data will be recorded for anonymous users who vote.
    0
  • Patrick Passarella
    • Edited

    I understand, but that's not what's happening for me. When an anonymous user votes, it's recorded as if the vote was from the admin (the creator of the token used for the vote request).

    But what I understand is that the user_id for the vote should be null. It only works if I explicitly pass an empty string (or unexistent id) to the user_id on the vote object.

    0
  • Dave Dyson
    HI Patrick – just to clarify, are you using the Create Vote API endpoint for this?
    0
  • Patrick Passarella

    Yes exactly.

    And I wanted to create an anonymous vote, but the user_id always gets saved with my user_id.

    But I managed to do that, by passing an empty string on the body's user id.

    {
      "vote": {
        "user_id": ""
      }
    }

     

    0
  • Tom Hrock

    I am just an Administrator and not a programmer.  And therefore I know nothing about JSON or coding.  Is there an easy way to clear vote counts via some sort of Admin configuration or setting changes?

    1
  • Charles Gresula
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Tom Hrock,

    Clearing vote counts is an action that's not native within the UI which is why you would need to use the Help Center API as shown here. If you are not able to make API calls, then it would need to be your Devs/Engineering team. 

    0
  • Tom Hrock

    Charles Gresula  Thanx Charles.  Unfortunately, I do not have a Devs/Engineering team.  If this can be done by an Administrator such as myself, would it be possible to provide explicit step by step instructions on where to go and how to perform the end point steps shown in the comment above?   If you can also provide the breadcrumbs to the 'Help Center API" that would be helpful as well.

    Any additional information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

    Thank you.

    0
  • Charles Gresula
    Zendesk Customer Care

    Hi Tom Hrock,

    I recommend that you check this documentation: Delete Vote

    0

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