Internal Comments on Guide Articles
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
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Official comment
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).
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+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.
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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.
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I agree this would be very useful!
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Yes, this would be very helpful!
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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.
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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.
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Really need this feature. What is the status of this Feature Request?
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Couldn't agree more!
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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!
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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!
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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.
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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?
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Hello, Zendesk PM.
What is the latest update on this Feature Request?
Thank you. -
Hi Ryan,
This Feature Request is 5 years old with 38 customers requesting it.
This limitation has a major business impact for us.
Can I please get an update on the status of this Feature Request?
In the meantime, is there a workaround?
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It would be great to get this on the roadmap and it's pretty frustrating that this hasn't already been added. The request has been out there for a number of years. Honestly, this seems like a basic thing a product like this should offer. There are many times you need to reference associated tickets, internal pages, internal bugs, etc.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Hi All,
I too would like to see this system change. Having a KB that has the ability to have both public AND private comments could help streamline our KB system, and provide us support agents with more information within a single article.
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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!
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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
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Thanks for the update Katarzyna Karpinska! Unfortunately for us and I'd guess most other organizations, Content Blocks don't really address the need here. I suppose it would be ok to use as a temporary workaround, but it doesn't really meet the need and would create a lot of clutter in the list of Content Blocks.
Many of us just need a way to put a piece of text in the article - either inline or preferably as a whole separate field that displays inline - that is an internal note or section. Our support engineers use articles as much as or more than even our customers do, and having the ability to have both internal and external content in the same article is so important.
Without having this ability, we have to create two separate articles for one issue.
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Another reason to not use content blocks for comments shared by agents is that the content we would share applies to only one article.
I understand that Content blocks were intended to share content among several articles (write once, use many times!). I dont think it was intended for recording agent (internal) comments on (public) articles.
Seems there should be a field within the article that is reserved for agent comments. Once an agent adds comments, they are appended like a footnote to a document (at the bottom) and dated. See screenshot.
Then, other agents can see these comments, but customers who view the article from the portal cannot. In past work at IBM, we allowed any agent to add a comment/date to any article. They accrue on that article but are not visible to any portal users.
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With our documentation in Guide, it is essential for us to have features common to writing software, like internal comments and collaboration within the editing view of an article. We often have just one or two questions about an article that we need someone to look at. It is inefficient to have to pull the article out of Zendesk to collaborate on it or to send a screenshot to someone. Many users in our organization are surprised that we can't collaborate within Zendesk. Ideally we should be able to highlight parts of the text and leave an internal comment on those and tag an internal user/agent in them to look at.
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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!
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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!
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3 years on since the original post, any updates on this one?
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This Feature Request is 5 years old with 42 customers requesting it.
This limitation has a major business impact for us.
Can I please get an update on the status of this Feature Request? Ryan McGrew stated that there would be an update available soon in 2018.
In the meantime, is there a workaround?
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Thank you for the update Katarzyna Karpinska
I would agree with John Streeter. Content blocks might be better than nothing. But it seems like a cumbersome workaround that may be difficult to manage long term.
What are the long term plans to have this as a full feature in the product? :
- A way to see agent only (secret) content on publicly available articles in Help Center
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