Organizing knowledge base content in categories and sections

Available on all Suite plans Available on all Guide plans

Quick Look: Help Center or Guide Admin > Add button

You can organize your knowledge base content into categories and sections and manage the order of those categories and sections.

You must be a Guide admin to add and edit sections and categories.

The article covers the following topics:

Adding a category to your knowledge base
Adding a section to your knowledge base
Editing categories or sections
Deleting categories and sections
Working with category and section drafts

Adding a category to your knowledge base

Categories are the top-level organizing containers of the help center. Categories contain sections. The help center must have at least one category. If you have only one category in your help center, then the category itself is hidden to end users, and they see only the sections in your help center.

For more information, see About the help center knowledge base structure.

To add a category

In your help center or Guide Admin, click Add in the top menu bar, then select Category.
Enter a Name and optional Description for your category.
(Enterprise plans only) In the sidebar, if you have multiple category templates in your live theme, click the Template menu, then select a template.
If you do not select an alternate template, the default category template will be applied.
In the sidebar, ensure the correct Source language is selected.
Click Add.
The category is created. Remember, if you have only one category, then the category itself is hidden to end-users, and they see only the sections that are in your help center.

Tip: For information about how you can display a section in multiple categories, see Displaying an article or section in multiple sections or categories in our Support tech notes.

Adding a section to your knowledge base

Sections contain related articles. To add a section, you must have at least one category to act as its parent container, except on Enterprise plans. On Enterprise plans, sections can also contain subsections, so a section can be a child of a category or a section, whereas on other plans, each section must be a child of a category.

Permissions for viewing and managing articles in a section are set at the article level, not the section level.

If visibility for all the articles in a section is internal (not available on Suite Team), then the section will not be visible to end-users, but if one article in an internal section is visible to any end-users, then the section will become visible as well.

To add 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 (not available on Suite Team).
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 where you'd like this section to appear in your help center.
On Suite Growth and above or Guide Professional, you must select a category as the parent for this section. Sections cannot contain sections.

On Enterprise plans, you can select a category or a section as the parent for this section. You can nest sections in sections for a maximum of five section levels, with up to 200 sections in a section.
(Enterprise plans only) 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. Remember, if you have only one category, then the category itself is hidden to end-users, and users see only the sections that are in your help center.

Tip: For information about how you can display a section in multiple categories, see Displaying an article or section in multiple sections or categories in our Support tech notes.

Editing categories or sections

You can change the properties of a category or section, including its title or description.

To edit a category or section, do one of the following:

In Help Center, navigate to the category or section you want to edit, then click Edit section in the top menu bar.
In Guide Admin, click the Arrange content () icon in the sidebar and drill down to the category or section you want to edit. Click the options menu at the end of the section title, then select Edit category or Edit section.

Deleting categories and sections

When you delete a category, all the sections contained in the category are also deleted, all the articles (including any translations) contained in the sections are archived.

When you delete a section, all the articles contained in the section (including any translations) are archived.

To delete a category or section

Do one of the following to edit the category or section you want to delete:
- In Help Center, navigate to the category or section you want to delete, then click Edit section in the top menu bar.
- In Guide Admin, click the Arrange content () icon in the sidebar and drill down to the category or section you want to delete. Click the options menu at the end of the section title, then select Edit category or Edit section.
Click Delete in the bottom of the sidebar.
Confirm that you want to delete the category or section.
You cannot recover deleted categories or sections. Any articles contained in a deleted section are archived. You can restore archived articles to another section if you need to.

Alternatively, to delete a category or section, you can click Articles > Arrange articles, then click the name of the category or section you want to delete, (you'll have to expand a category to see its sections). In the edit page, click Delete in the bottom of the sidebar. If the edit page doesn't open when you click the name of the category or section from Arrange Articles, it is likely being blocked by a pop-up blocker.

Working with category and section drafts

If you create a category or section that is a work in progress, and want to restrict who can access it, you can mark it as a draft. Marking a category or section as a draft applies the draft status to any elements within it.

Note: You must be a Guide admin to view draft categories and sections, and the content within them.

The steps for marking a newly-created category or section as a draft are slightly different than those for marking an existing category as a draft.

To mark a newly-created category or section as a draft

Create and save a new section or category, as described in Adding a category to your knowledge base or Adding a section to your knowledge base.
The section or category is created and remains open for editing.
Click the Mark as draft option in the sidebar.
Click Update at the top of the page.

To mark an existing category or section as a draft

Open the category or section in edit mode, as described in Editing categories and sections.
Click the Mark as draft option in the sidebar.
Click Update at the top of the page.

Categories and sections marked as drafts are not viewable by end-users, and can only be accessed by Guide admins.

To determine whether a category or section is marked as a draft

Open the category or section in edit mode, as described in Editing categories and sections.
- An existing category or section in draft mode section in draft mode is indicated by the Draft label at the top of the edit page:
- A new section added to a category in draft mode displays a banner at the top of the page:
  When the category is published, the section is no longer in draft mode, and the banner is removed. However, if the section is manually marked as draft, it will remain in draft mode until the marker is removed.