Beginning December 2023 and extending through 2024, the Guide article editor is getting a makeover. This process will pave the way for future capabilities such as article multiplacement, collaboration tools, and generative AI capabilities within the editor.
The UI enhancements will be rolled out gradually throughout 2024. As changes are planned and released, we will update this article to walk you through the latest changes and show you how to navigate the new UI.
Note: Features marked as "coming soon" in this article not yet released, but are planned for release in 2024. Watch this page and Zendesk announcements for more news when the feature becomes available.
This article contains the following topics:
- Article multiplacement (coming soon)
- Unified knowledge management (coming soon)
- New article editor (coming soon)
- Released feature summary
- Frequently asked questions
Article multiplacement
Article multiplacement is designed to help knowledge teams work more efficiently by simplifying the management of articles placed across multiple sections and brands. When creating and managing articles, you’ll be able to add placements for each article.
Placements share the same title and body content, but have a unique article ID and placement configuration that tells your help center where the article should appear. As a result, when you update the content (body and title) of an article with multiple placements, the content within each of those placements is automatically updated. This makes it easy to create content once, then effortlessly share it between multiple sections and brands.
Unified knowledge management
With unified knowledge management, you’ll be able to oversee all of your content in one list, without having to jump between brands in Guide admin to manage your articles. With the arrival of article multiplacement, articles will have placements in various brands, therefore will not be tied to one specific brand. This new feature is designed to give you an efficient knowledge management experience, where you can configure unified lists and execute workflows across your entire knowledge base. Brand-level article management will remain available by using filters.
New article editor (coming soon)
The Early Access Program (EAP) for a new, modern article editor will bring you new ways to create content. By participating in the EAP, you'll get a sneak peek at features that will transform your current editor experience such as
- Greater control over editing tables
- Text wrapping around images
- Drag-and-drop tools for paragraphs and other components
- Alt-text for images.
In the new editor EAP you’ll also have access to HTML blocks, which allow you to edit complex HTML and add advanced scripts when editing article source code, The article source code will also get leaner and will no longer be sliced by inserting content blocks.
As a bonus, we’ll also introduce Article Summaries - new components that let you add a concise snapshot of the content at the top of the articles. Our Advanced AI customers will be able to auto generate these summaries with the help of AI.
Participants of this EAP will be among the first to benefit from the enhanced article editor with a more intuitive and enriched content creation experience, designed to streamline your content creation process and boost your audience engagement.
Released feature summary
Article editor UI enhancement releases began in December of 2023 and will continue to be rolled out gradually throughout 2024. See the following announcements for a description of released features:
- Announcing the new article settings layout
- Announcing enhancements to the article header bar
- Announcing the new article editor toolbar
- Announcing help center translations in the article context panel
- Announcing HTML blocks in content blocks
- Announcing expanded support for HTML tags in content blocks
- Announcing article editor UI enhancements: Action footer and collapsible article settings panel
Frequently asked questions
Can I switch back to the old experience?
No, it's not possible to revert to the previous article editor design. To share your feedback on the new design, please go to our Community page. For information about how to submit your feedback, see:
- Product feedback guidelines and how to write a good feedback post
- Product feedback and feature request post template
Will these changes also include API level access?
API integrations are not in scope of this work. We'll have a separate workstream for those in the future.