Suggesting restricted help center articles in a bot answer

Attention: Zendesk has renamed our bot capabilities. Answer Bot is now Zendesk bots, Flow Builder is bot builder, and Article Recommendations are autoreplies. For more information on this change, see this announcement.

Bot builder’s Show help center articles step recommends specific help center articles to your customers that may help them self-solve their questions. If you have public and restricted articles (articles requiring end users to log in), you can configure which articles to show anonymous (unauthenticated) end users and which to show for authenticated end users.

You may want to restrict help center articles so only your internal employees and agents can view them. Or, restrict content so that only end users who have purchased your product or service can access your help center articles.

Suggesting restricted help center articles in a bot answer is available on all plans that can use Messaging.

This article includes the following topics:

• Restricted help center article overview
• Showing the title of restricted help center articles
• Searching for restricted help center articles

Restricted help center article overview

There are three use cases for bots and articles:

• Bot handles anonymous user queries and shares public help center articles

• Bot handles authenticated user queries and shares restricted help center articles

• Bot handles anonymous and authenticated user queries, builds conditions based on whether the user is authenticated, and shows all articles to authenticated users and only public articles to unauthenticated users

Authentication is based on messaging authentication with JWT.

If the end user is authenticated with messaging JSON Web Token (JWT), we will check if they can access the article based on the article permission rules and the user segment they’re part of. If the end user has access, the article preview is shown. Only the placeholder preview is shown if the end user is not part of the user segment.

If the end user is anonymous or authenticated through SSO or Zendesk authentication, the link to the restricted article is displayed in the bot message, but the title and preview are not displayed.

When the end user clicks the link to the restricted article, they are redirected to Guide where they must log in. An end user must have an account on your help system and the correct guide user permissions to view the restricted article.

Note: If the article permission is updated from public to restricted or from restricted to public, there is a short delay before the permission change is reflected to the end user.

Showing the title of restricted help center articles

By default, restricted help center article titles and previews are not shown to users not authenticated with messaging JWT. Only the link is shown.

You can, however, configure your bot to show the title and preview of restricted help center articles to all users, regardless of which authentication method is used or whether they are anonymous.

To always show the title for restricted help center articles

1. In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Bots and automations > Bots.
2. Hover over the bot you want to work with and click Settings.
3. Select Always show the title and preview for restricted help center articles. This option is visible only if you have an active help center. Only agents with guide admin permissions can set this option. This option is disabled by default.

Searching for restricted help center articles

The Show help center articles step recommends specific articles to your customers that may help them self-solve their questions. It presents up to six help center articles to the customer during a conversation.

You must have an active help center to use this step.

If you have view access to a restricted article, you can add that article in bot builder and see the article preview. The article does not appear in the bot builder search results if you do not have view access. If, for example, a guide admin adds a restricted article and you do not have view access for that article, it appears as a restricted article in bot builder for you.