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Adding a notification banner to your Help Center v2
Posted Feb 08, 2016
Plan Requirement: Pro Plan and up (if on lower plan see this version)
Zendesk level: Intermediate
Knowledge: HTML, CSS, JS, API
Time Required: 15 minutes
Have you ever wanted an easy way to notify your end users of System Outages, Important Announcements, or Releases. If so, then the Notification Banner v2 is exaclty what you are looking for. In my previous versions we had to add a word like "Issue" in the title of your article in order for the notification to show. With the new version we are going to leverage the Zendesk API and use Article labels to display our alerts.
In order to shorten this article, you can find all the code and instructions on my GitHub Page.
Screenshot
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This post has been edited by the Zendesk Community Team to remove a "Live Demo" link that no longer works.
4
293 comments
Clay
Very cool Wes! Thanks for the post.
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Scott Patterson
After pasting the CSS code at the bottom of the CSS tab, Zendesk will not allow me to SAVE.
I had no trouble copy/paste/save with the HTML or JS
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ModeratorWes
@Scott - On your CSS tab just click anyway and hit your spacebar and then the SAVE button will be available.
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Scott Patterson
Never mind...missed a bracket.
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Scott Patterson
I believe copy and pasted correctly....but not working as your.
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ModeratorWes
@Scott - Did you copy the HTML to the top of the "header". From your screenshot it looks like its on top of the "Home Page.
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Scott Patterson
Yup...just figured it out...I put it in the 'Home Page'
Works great!! Thanks so much!
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OT
This looks amazing, adding it to my help centre 'to do' list!
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Brian Taniyama
Any way to just show the article name and not the content?
EDIT: Figured it in two seconds...should've looked at the code.
Just remove ' + item.body + ' from line 6 in the js file.
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ModeratorWes
@Brian - I put some Q&A at the bottom of my GitHub page. I figured someone would be asking your exact question.
https://github.com/moderatorwes/Notification-Banner#customizations
If you are just display the title you may want to play around with the CSS and center the title and icon but thats up to you. Thanks for using my solution.
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Liz
Hi Wes,
I am trying to add the notification banner, but we are not using the Pro plan. I am trying the alternate version, but I am missing something. I have taken the promoted articles out of the home page html, and added the other bits of code to the header and js sections and still don't get the alert. What am I missing? Thanks in advance for your help.
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ModeratorWes
Hi Liz - With that version you can keep the promoted article section on your Home Page. Add that code back to your HomePage and make sure the JQuery is right below the $(.document.ready) function. Go to one of your articles and in the title add the word - Issue - Title
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Liz
Thanks Wes, I got that fixed, but I still can't get the alert to format. Sorry I am not versed in html and css, so I am sure I am just missing something obvious. This is what the notification looks like in our HC right now. I get the alert in the header but it is missing all the formatting, and isn't very noticeable.
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ModeratorWes
@Liz - I've updated the GitHub to include CSS styling. Please recopy ALL the code as I made changes to all of it.
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Liz
Thanks Wes!
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ModeratorWes
@Liz - Your welcome. Glad to hear everything worked out.
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Christopher Stock
Hey Wes, really useful thanks!
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ModeratorWes
@christopher - You're welcome. Enjoy
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Rim HAMDI
Hello Wes - This tip is very useful, many thanks for sharing!
One quick question: will the text always be displayed in your default language, even if you created language versions of the article containing the label?
I made a test with default content in English and created a version in French, but my Help center in French would still display the text in English.
Thanks!
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ModeratorWes
@Rim - I've never tested with different languages so I'm not sure how it reacts. Its pulling from the API but not probably from the locale. When I get some free time I'll see what I can figure out. If you resolve it yourself just let me know.
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Permanently deleted user
Very useful indeed, awesome! However it does not react to the different languages. If you create an article and add the translation for each language (like in my case ES/FR/DE/IT) the alert message only display source language. For our support team an issue/alert might be either of all the languages or for only one of them. In the latter case we would still need to ability to display an alert only for one language. So ideally if you have a language, where you don't have that issue, by don't adding the translation you don't display the alert. That would be really terrific!
Thanks
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Permanently deleted user
The other issue I have is that the alert message seems to be displayed only if I am logged in as an agent. The alert message is not displayed to final user without login. How can I make the alert message to be displayed also publicly?
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ModeratorWes
@Antonioaddeo - If you look at my test site the notification is showing without you being logged int. Looks like you may have something else going on there as the code I gave it doesn't matter if your logged in our not. Is your HC open for anonymous access. Make sure you don't have my code interlaced with some of your other custom JS code.
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OT
For our site it only shows after you log in - but that's because the section we have the article in is locked to logged in users only. Worked perfectly straight away for us :)
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ModeratorWes
@Ola - Great point as the article will follow the rules from the section.
@Antonioaddeo - Can you see if this is the case with your HC. Is the article in section that has been locked or only allow certain users to se.
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Permanently deleted user
Thank you for the answers! The section where the article has been places is available to "anyone" and our HC is open for anonymous access, yet the alert is displayed only after sign-in.
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Azusa Pacific University
Hi Wes. This is FANTASTIC! Thanks for doing this.
I just added the code to my Help Center sandbox and it isn't fully working. I double checked that I copied in the correct code from your instructions. The announcement bar is white and I can't seem to change it. Suggestions?
Thanks!
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Permanently deleted user
Since for our support this feature is vital, I have 2 comments:
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OT
@antonionaddeo - for the multiple languages could you use a different label for each language, and then display results for the appropriate label depending on the user's language?
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Permanently deleted user
I guess I could use a different label for each language, but how do I add the input about the alert label in different languages?
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