When you set up help center federated search, either through the Federated Search API or the search crawler, you define sources and types for the external content that you want to make available in your help center. You can also use the Search filters page to create sources and types for your external content. “Source” refers to the origin of the external content, such as a forum, issue tracker, or learning management system. “Type” refers to the kind of content, such as blog posts, tech notes, or bug reports.
Once you define external content sources and types, you can configure your search results to identify the external content sources that you want to appear in your help center search. See Including external content in your help center search results.
When external content appears in a help center search, that content is grouped under the appropriate source and type names, making it easier for users to find the information they are looking for. To help users filter and locate content quickly, consider useful groupings and names for your external content sources and types when creating them. See Help center guide for end users (Using the search filters).You can use the search settings described in this article to create a source or type, edit the source or type names that you defined during setup, or to delete a source or type altogether.
This article covers the following:
Create an external source and type
You can create new sources and types for your external content. The search results filter will display the new name whenever external content associated with that source or type appears in the search results.
To create an external source or type
- In Guide, click the Settings icon (
) in the sidebar, then click Search settings.
- Under Search filters, click Manage.
- On the Sources tab, click Create source.
- In the Name field, type a name that describes where this content
lives, then click Create.
- On the Types tab, click Create type.
- In the Name field, enter a name that describes what kind of content
this is, then click Create.
Edit an external source or type name
You can change the name associated with an external content source or type if you want to control how that element appears in the UI. The search results filter will display the new name whenever external content associated with that source or type appears in the search results.
To edit an external source or type name
- In Guide, click the Settings icon (
) in the sidebar, then click Search settings.
- Under Search filters, click Manage.
- Select the Sources or Types tab, depending on the element that you want to edit.
- On the row of the source or type that you want to edit, click the options
menu (
), and then click Edit name.
- In the Name field, type the new name and then click
Save.
Delete an external source or type
You can delete an external source or type if you no longer want to ingest external content associated with that source or type into your help center search.
When you delete an external source or type, the following will occur:
- External content records belonging to this source or type won’t be searchable.
- Any search crawler associated with this source or type will be deleted.
- If you have any API integrations that add external records to this source or type, they may break.
To delete an external source or type
- In Guide, click the Settings icon (
) in the sidebar.
- Under Search filters, click Manage.
- Select the Sources or Types tab, depending on the element that you want to delete.
- On the row of the source or type that you want to edit, click the options
menu (
), and then click Delete.
- Click Delete.
- Read the Delete source confirmation content and select the check
boxes to indicate that you understand each item.
- Click Delete.
19 comments
Carl Taylor
Hi,
Has anybody else had any issues with search functionality since this roll out started. We have not enabled any of the above but are having various issues across our help centers. Our issues started on the 10th which coincide with this roll out.
0
Orsolya Forster
Carl Taylor, can you elaborate about the issues you're experiencing?
0
Carl Taylor
Orsolya Forster - we seem to have resolved the issue, and it does not appear to have been related to this :)
1
Anne Ronalter
glad to hear that you were able to resolve the issue. :)
Thank you for letting us know, that it did not seem to be related.
0
Norm Van Eeden Petersman
I have set up a crawler and followed all of these steps but I don't see any of our external content populating our search results.
What steps can I take to have external results appear alongside the articles and community comments that are currently showing up?
0
Orsolya Forster
Norm Van Eeden Petersman, I suggest to double-check if you have external content records include in your help center search. See the example here:
If you have external records included in your help center search, you should be seeing the records in your search.
Cheers!
0
Heather Firth
Elizabeth Williams - The "help center federated search" link at the start of this article is broken.
0
Cheeny Aban
Thank you for reporting. We'll make sure to have it updated!
0
Elizabeth Williams
Thank you Heather Firth! The link has been fixed and is now pointing to the About Zendesk Federated Search article. Thanks again!
1
M Rogers
How do we add content to the source/type?
I'm hoping to add more searchability options that point to our Zendesk articles. Currently when searching for a keyword, there are 3 options under "By Type": All types, Articles, and Community. Instead of Articles we would like to have more options, instead of making the end user drill down with a bunch of clicks.
0
Zsa Trias
Hello M Rogers,
After you created the sources/types, you can then identify the external content you want to appear in the search results. Please refer to this other doc: Including external content in your help center search results.
-1
Kel S.
Is it possible to have a type selected by default on the search results? For example, we don't use community so we only have articles and would love our users to see the categories immediately. Having to click "articles" first isn't obvious the functionality exists.
3
Justin Near
I second Kel S. - there are far too many unintuitive clicks to get to the categories that we've so painstakingly created for our Guide articles.
0
Zsa Trias
Hello Kel, Justin,
You can disable "Community" as a search source in your Guide's Search settings to exclude Community from the results. You can uncheck this option here:
For reference: Enabling search across multiple help centers
0
M Rogers
Zsa Trias What if we don't want to disable it, we just don't want it included by default in the search results? It would be nice if search results defaulted to articles first, with a secondary option to include the community.
0
Zsa Trias
Hi M Rogers,
That may require custom coding. I have found this other community post that you may want to check out: How to exclude Community posts from Guide search results? It's a discussion of our Community members on how to achieve this, however, we cannot guarantee the code.
As mentioned in the last comment there:
0
Anne-Flore Caire
Hello. How do we manage the translation of type names?
0
Mike DR
If you're referring to a title of a field or anything related to a translation, we would suggest using Dynamic Content that also works for Zendesk Guide.
0
Anne-Flore Caire
Hi Mike DR
I'll let you test and confirm. I can send you screenshots if you need them.
0