About article verification and how it works

Fastpath: Guide admin > Settings icon > Article verification

Verification is an article setting that lets you indicate whether an article is accurate and current, or whether it needs review and possible revision. Verifying articles is an important part of keeping your knowledge base healthy and up to date.

This article describes article verification strategies and the resulting experience for agents and admins, and provides answers to frequently asked questions about article verification.

This article includes the following sections:

• How article verification works
• About article verification emails
• Verifying articles for agents and admins
• Article verification FAQs

Related articles:

• Setting reminders to review and verify articles
• Verifying articles that need review
• Managing article verification rules

How article verification works

When you create an article, it is neither verified nor unverified. Articles in this state appear with a hyphen (-) symbol in the Unverified and Verified at columns of the All articles page in Guide admin. If an article is neither verified nor unverified, there is no way to determine when it was last reviewed or whether it is current.

To begin article verification, Guide admins can choose one of the following strategies:

• Manually unverify articles, prompting a review and verification by article owners.
• Automatically unverify articles by configuring article verification rules based on predefined filter and interval criteria.

Unverified articles appear in the Needs verification list in Guide admin and are included in bi-weekly emails to article owners reminding them to verify their articles. Article owners can click the email links to open the article editor and manually set the articles to verified, removing them from the Needs verification list and terminating the email notification for that article.

Important: Once articles are unverified, they remain in the Needs verification list and are listed in About article verification emails to article owners until they are verified, regardless of whether the rule that put them there is changed or deleted.

Performing a one-time verification using bulk actions

You can use article verification to initiate a one-time review of your knowledge base content. For example, you might be moving to a new brand name, in which case you would want to review and revise your articles to reflect the new brand.

To perform a one-time review, you can select the articles you want to unverify from the articles list, then use the bulk actions menu to set those articles to “unverified.” If there are any articles that you know are already current, you can use this same process to set those articles to “verified.”

View full size

Performing ongoing verification using rules

Guide admins can create article verification rules to send reminders when articles need to be reviewed and verified, based on defined criteria and frequency. This helps ensure that your content doesn’t become inaccurate or out of date. For example, every three months you might want to review articles that have a specific label, appear in a certain category, or haven’t been updated in a while. You can create up to 20 verification rules.

You can use the Article verification page in Guide admin to create article verification rules. When you add a new rule, you select the

• Frequency at which you want to verify articles (for example 2 weeks, 6 months, or 1 year).
• Filters that you want to apply when selecting articles for verification (for example, only articles within a specific brand or hierarchy).

When you save an article verification rule, the rule runs weekly, setting to unverified any articles that meet the defined filter criteria and were not verified within the frequency set by the rule. For example, if the frequency is set to verify articles every six months, the rule will look for articles that meet the filter criteria and have not been verified during the prior six-month period.

View full size

About article verification emails

On Mondays and Wednesdays at 00:00 UTC, Zendesk sends article verification reminder emails to article owners who have unverified articles on the Needs verification list. If the system cannot find a valid email for an article owner, it will not send the email, even if there are unverified articles still assigned to that owner. If the owner has left the company, you should change the owner to a valid agent.

This email lists all articles owned by the recipient that require verification and asks them to verify those articles. If you have a help center with more than one brand, this email contains all unverified articles that you own across all brands in your account.

Article owners can click an article link to go to the article settings for that article, where they can verify the article. Once the article is verified, it will no longer be listed in the next article verification email.

Article verification emails are sent until the article owner no longer owns articles that require verification. Even if the rule that generated the unverified article status no longer exists, the article remains in the unverified status and consequently appears on bi-weekly article verification emails until the article owner verifies it.

You cannot change the schedule for the verification emails, nor can you cancel them. To stop receiving the emails, you must verify the listed articles.

Note: When you downgrade article owners from agents to end users, you must also reassign their article ownership to a current Guide agent or admin. Failure to reassign article ownership means the agents who've been downgraded to end users will still receive article verification emails for those articles.

Verifying articles for agents and admins

The process for verifying articles is different for Guide admins and agents. If you are a Guide admin, you can verify articles, either individually or in bulk, from the Needs verification list.

If you are an agent, you must verify articles that you have permission to publish from within article settings. For more information, see Verifying articles that need review.

Article verification FAQs

Refer to the following frequently asked questions to understand how article verification works in various use cases.

What happens if the owner of an unverified article leaves the company?

If the article owner leaves the company and their email address is no longer valid, the article remains on the Needs verification list, but the reminder email will no longer be sent. To resolve this issue, you can change the owner of the article to a valid agent.

What happens to unverified articles when article verification rules are changed or deleted?

When article verification rules are changed or deleted, any articles that were previously unverified will remain so unless they are manually verified. This means that article owners will continue to receive reminder emails until they verify the article, even if the rule no longer applies.

What happens when I update the filters for an article verification rule?

Changing the article verification rule filter to include additional or fewer articles does not affect any articles currently in an unverified state. Unverified articles remain unverified until they are manually verified by article owners, agents with permission to publish, or Guide admins.

The next time the rule runs (rules run weekly), it will use the new filter to include or exclude articles for verification. All articles that meet the new criteria will be assessed against the verification frequency set by the rule, and if they require review, will be unverified at the appropriate time and added to the Needs verification list.

Do I have to use an article verification rule?

You do not need to use article verification rules to implement an article verification strategy. See Performing a one-time verification using bulk actions earlier in this article.

How do I stop receiving article verification emails?

If you are receiving article verification reminder emails, that means that one or more articles that you own require review and verification. One way to stop receiving these emails is to click the article link within the email and verify the article. If you no longer own these articles, you can also change the owner of the article to redirect the emails to the current owner.

If an article is translated, does every translation need to be verified?

No, article verifications apply only to the default article language. For example, if an unverified article with a default language of English is also translated into German and French translations, you can verify only the English version.

You can establish a process by which you manually track translations for each article, and then only verify the article once you ensure that all translations are current as well. However, this is a manual process and is not managed by the article verification process.