Recent searches


No recent searches

Internal Comments on Guide Articles



Posted Jun 08, 2017

Hello,

 

It would be very useful to have internal comments on KB articles and Topics that are only visible to agents and light agents. Often content that faces the customer may have related internal remarks or notes related when an article should be updated (eg; new features related to the content of the article) or when the article should be pulled due to the product going EOL.  It could also be used to give agents tips and tricks on explaining the content to a customer who still has a question or needs clarification. 

-Dk


72

57

57 comments

Official

image avatar

Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi All, 

Thank you so much for all your interest in this topic and your patience. As I read this thread I can see a couple of different needs:

  • A possibility to comment and collaborate while creating the content in Guide Admin.
  • A way to see agent only (secret) content on publicly available articles in Help Center
  • some way to share not published articles with important stakeholders for review (or similar reasons)

As for the first need on that list: in 2022 we are focusing a lot on improving the content editing experience. The first step in this direction is to rebuild our WYSIWIG editors (both for Content Blocks and for articles). As a result of this work, we'll be also able to add collaboration features, like commenting, @mentions, showing users who are currently viewing the article, and more.

As for the second item on the list above, you might have heard about one of our newly launched features called Content Blocks. In the feature, we are planning to add visibility permissions to the blocks so that you'll be able to place them in the articles and decide which of the readers can see them when they open an aritcle. I wonder if that will be helpful for the cases you are describing.

As for the third item we don't really have it on our radar just yet. But I'd be really interested more about how would you like to use this, or similar, functionality.

If you are interested in what features we are considering for development and what we are currently working on in Knowledge Management in Guide you can always check (post is no longer available).

3


image avatar

Jonathan March

Community Moderator

+100. All agent-configurable items that impact the customer (HC articles, triggers, automations, macros, etc) should have internal notes. Likewise for the article revision history. 

12


I agree this would be very useful! 

6


Yes, this would be very helpful! 

6


image avatar

Dan Ross

Community Moderator

Couldn't agree more! 

5


image avatar

Dan Cooper

Community Moderator

I recently implemented a solution that works for internal notes.  It works by hiding content on the page based on a keyword in the paragraph tag that includes internal information. 

I posted it as a tip on the Tips and Tricks topic (the post is still pending as I write this so give it a bit for someone from Zendesk to jump in and push it through) in case it might help you out for your use case.  

1


image avatar

Jennifer Rowe

Zendesk Documentation Team

I gotcha, Daniel. It's live now!

Thanks for sharing another great tip!

0


image avatar

Dan Cooper

Community Moderator

Thanks Jennifer!

0


Hi Jennifer,

As this seems a workaround, is ZD considering the addition of an internal comments field within each article?  These notes can share information such as: JIRAs, notes from tickets, article updates, enhancements, etc.  Is there a plan to formally address.

We are hesitant to add HTML editing. Would be best to have a field that tracks this information- type in the field and it records date/time & text as comments at the bottom of article.  All comments are INTERNAL only.

6


image avatar

Ryan McGrew

Zendesk Product Manager

Hey All,

We have considered this, and right now our only method for this is flagging articles via the KC App which isn't really serving your intended use case. We don't currently have this on our roadmap but will continue to use this feedback going into our quarterly planning cycles for new features.

Thanks!

-4


To expand on Dave's original comment, it is also necessary to have an expiration date field on each article so that this timeframe is set when the article is created & published.  Once the date is approaching an email notification should be sent to the author of the article to remind him/her that the article is approaching the expiration date.

At that time, the article can be reviewed for relevancy, accuracy, and made current and republished as needed. Or, it can be archived. 

Is this on the ZD radar for future enhancement?

4


image avatar

Ryan McGrew

Zendesk Product Manager

Hey Mary,

We are working on this exact feature. We currently have some designs done and we expect an early access program to be available this quarter.

Thanks!

2


Oh that is good news.  Please keep us posted!!!

0


image avatar

Heather Rommel

Zendesk LuminaryThe Product Manager Whisperer - 2021Community Moderator

I seem to recall something was released recently or mentioned that it will be? Why can I not find it? If you know, please share :)

0


image avatar

Ryan McGrew

Zendesk Product Manager

Hey Heather,

We're doing some early research in this direction but our only ability to do something like this right now is either flagging via the KC app or assignment in Team Publishing. Neither of which really fit the exact use case. We don't have it on our roadmap in the first half of 2019 but is something that we're exploring. I can provide a better update on something like this in about 3 months or so.

Thanks!

2


Thanks Ryan, for the most recent update. This is something my team and I would love to see as well! Right now we are recording notes in secondary systems, which is not ideal. We are also relying on notes added to KC app tickes once they're created. Thanks!

5


It would be super helpful to have a way to include internal notes that are only seen by the author or guide admins and not customers. It seems this is a basic feature in other authoring tools. It can be a deal breaker for those who write professionally. I'm now looking for alternative tools for publishing my KB articles.

7


Internal only notes would be EXTREMELY helpful for any workplace with more than one person working on the KB. Having NO internal notes is really not enterprise-friendly. Teams need to be able to flag important caveats ("this feature will no longer exist after we release mobile app 4.0") and lead each other to further documentation, such as jira bug tickets, feature requests, or even internal wiki articles. 

Heck, even I need internal notes for myself - I pulled an article from the KB because the feature was not working at the time. I have no notes as to what bug, why the article was pulled, under what conditions it should go back up... and honestly, I've forgotten almost everything except I think the feature was not working? Now the article sits in limbo.

Even consider KCS flow - an article might be externalized with one solution, but over time Support finds new solutions. They are not all immediately externalizable, as they need time to verify environment, efficacy, whether it is in addition to or instead of the original solution... And right now, we have to document all that in our Confluence wiki? This means my support team does NOT use the KB as source of truth.

For knowledge management, it's a major loss to have our KB completely cut off from all internal context.

11


3 years on since the original post, any updates on this one? 

3


Must have! 

I'm trying to go all in KCS but this is an obsticle. We need to be able to at least have a agent-only-article-field where we can link and connect to internal articles on how to solve the public one without being forced to either not publish or to display our internal routines for the end-users.

Now this forces us to keep a lot of articles unpublished because the end-user doesn't have the right privilegies to resolve their issue. The workaround is to publish articles with "contact help desk" as the solution but then we would have to connect the internal routine article with the public one by duplicate the public one.

5


This would be a game-changer for us! 

It would save content writers and managers so much time, would help agents find their answers quickly (without having to view the internal and external article)

This needs to happen!

 

 

3


This would be a game changer for us too! I brought this up on the Content Blocks EAP string and didn't realise someone had brought this up 3 years ago! Would be amazing to have this. We have so much duplicate work at the moment creating 2 articles - one for the customer and one for staff/agent. A general box for article commentary would be a start. Thanks!

5


I agree that this would be a game-changer! I'm a copy editor for my organization, and it would be so useful to mark up comments for our content creators. I currently have to put the content in a Word doc to mark up my feedback. I'd love to be able to streamline this workflow to just Zendesk.

5


Similar experience, Mary! I sometimes have to send my articles to our product managers to ensure the context and technical aspects are accurate. Since they don't use Zendesk (and don't have a login) I have to add the text to a Google Doc, then have her add comments, then add back to Zendesk Guide. 

Some sort of shareable link or preview of Guide would be helpful

3


It would be helpful to know if an internal-only field will someday be included on all knowledge articles so that our agents can share info between agents on public articles.  Is this being considered or not? and if so, when could it be available?

6


I agree with this feedback request. Currently, the only workaround I've recommended in our instance is to create two articles - one with the internal information and one with the external information. It would be better if there was a way to do this out of the box with one article.

I did make a related feedback request about incorporating internal data in the KC App for external facing articles. This way support staff could see the internal data but still link and send the public facing article to the end user. See feedback here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/1500000055381-Knowledge-Capture-App-Customizing-preview-what-data-is-displayed-. 

2


I use ZD Guide for a customer facing help center that needs to be periodically reviewed by different departments...if that sounds like your situation, I have the mother of all workarounds that doesn't involve re-coding your articles:

A couple months ago, I installed Kolibri to export the help center as a .pdf for our content archive (ZD doesn't allow you to export, so we needed the third party app and that one...had the least worst reviews).
I just exported a fresh .pdf and I'm having my team add comment on *that.* Once all the comments are resolved, I'll sift through the .pdf and update the help center by hand.

0


Hello, Zendesk PM.
What is the latest update on this Feature Request?
Thank you.

5


Really need this feature. What is the status of this Feature Request?

6


Dan Cooper

Hi Dan, 
Your suggestion above does not meet our use-case, as the 'hidden' information could still potentially viewed by the customer via the page source.
Since the object was to make truly internal information not accessible by the customer, we are unable to use this option.

So we still need a full solution to this problem, or a more functional work around.

4


Please sign in to leave a comment.

Didn't find what you're looking for?

New post