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Copy / Duplicate Help Centre articles

Planned


Posted Mar 17, 2015

Please can you allow us to copy / duplicate a Help Centre article.

Currently the only way to do this is to create a new article, paste the source code across articles. Even this solution has its drawback as any attachments are lost in the process.  

This feature would also solve the issue of creating backups which we are also doing manually at present.

thanks

Craig


177

164

164 comments

Hi,

We've recently upgraded from Professional to Enterprise, and the multi-branding was part of that choice. We want to move some sections to the new brands. Such a disappointment to realize we can neither duplicate a Help Center nor move an article from a Help Center to another!

A lot of work if we have to do it manually:

  • Copy/Paste the source code from one article to another.
  • Re-upload the pictures: pictures are only stored in each specific article, if you don't re-upload them, they don't display and other readers see a cross instead.
  • Re-configure the article settings: permission view, labels, etc.

0


This is basic functionality and it's absence results in significant number of hours per month of additional effort. It significantly hamstrings our effort to fully leverage the Guide product.

2


An alternative / complimentary approach would be to provide a real article import option. The Google doc import is very limited and doesn't really work because formatting and images are not retained. We also need to be able to use other tools for authoring content, such MS Word or Adobe Robohelp. 

1


I was referred to this articles and community postings from here

 

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013332528?page=1#comment_360004728934

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@...

You mentioned 7 months ago that you were trying to get an update from the product team. Any luck?

2


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Nicole Saunders

Zendesk Community Manager

Hi Alejandro, they're working on some functionality related to creating content that can be reused in multiple places around the Help Center. The product team will provide an update in this thread when they have something substantial to share, such as an EAP. 

-1


Nicole - Community Manager

Thank you for responding.

But, I am not sure that is what this specific request is about. 

I would consider this request as a request to have the ability to duplicate an existing article and keep all of the information including attachments. 

4


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Nicole Saunders

Zendesk Community Manager

I'll have to let the product manager speak to that. 

0


I'm disappointed to see that after seven months or more of following this thread and receiving updates on it, what seems to be a clear and simple request in the original post (to duplicate content) seems to be either difficult to implement, or perhaps unclear in the impact and value it could have. 

Hoping this reaches a positive outcome soon!

1


Just seen this come through, maybe Zendesk is dealing with it in a different way? Or an additional solution: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360043990214-What-is-the-Content-Blocks-EAP-and-how-do-I-use-it-?

-2


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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Yes @Kalsey, I'm very happy to announce that we have opened a sign-up for Content Blocks EAP.

With this new feature, you’ll be able to capture things like common troubleshooting steps, rules and regulations, disclaimers, etc. as a reusable block, and then insert into multiple articles and across multiple help centers. 

I hope it will help you to streamline some of the most repetitive work. You can read more in the documentation for content blocks which is posted in the EAP discussion topic.

If you'd like to try out content blocks you follow below link: Sign up for the EAP here

0


Finally! Content Blocks could work!  So instead of the same article in multiple sections, it's multiple articles with the same content block in each article. Fair enough! Beggars (Zendesk users) can't be choosers!


I've signed up. Happy to hear this is coming. We've only been waiting five years. :/ 

1


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Ryan McGrew

Zendesk Product Manager

Hey @...

Thanks for the response. We agree that it's been a long road to get here but I hope it'll be worth it. I've posted in other threads that we had to re-architect the underlying components of the Help Center to make a lot of this work and things like article revisions, team publishing, article view and management permissions, flexible hierarchies, bulk actions, article verification etc. were roadmapped ahead of this in order to deliver customer value but also to start an architectural foundation that we could build something like this from. We started work on the underlying services and systems almost 9 months ago and research and design even longer ago. It's been a long road with a lot hard work from our teams.

So we understand that this feature is very important to lots of customers and we're excited it's in EAP and to start improving this over time.

I will point out to other followers in this thread as well, Content Blocks is tailored to re-use of blocks of content in multiple articles. From our research we found that this was the more common use case. However, putting the same article in multiple places in a Help Center's hierarchy as well as across multiple Help Centers is still a necessary use case. We're beginning work on that functionality in the next few weeks as well. I don't yet have a timeline for that particular EAP but we will update this thread once we have a more firm delivery date. 

As always, we appreciate the feedback and we are listening, even if things can take longer than any of us would like.

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Thanks @... I signed up the day it was posted - looking forward to being part of it. 

@... Glad to hear that articles in multiple Help Centres is still on the cards as there is definitely still need for that too. When you say mulitple places in a HC hierarchy, do you mean in multiple sections for example? Because I certainly need that too. 

Thanks!

0


Thank you Katarzyna Karpinska. Yup - Signed up as well!

Not sure what to feel, but simply glad that the issue is being addressed. I hope it is not a diversion of the current thread/ topic and make us wait another 5 years....   It would be a tragedy if so   T_T

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Ryan McGrew

Zendesk Product Manager

@... Yes! That's exactly what I meant. 

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Hi everybody!

I came across this post looking for some information about publishing articles on more than one branded Help Center at a time (for the same Zendesk account). 

I think this is not possible for the moment (it would be great it could be! 😊), but duplicating articles in another Help Center would do also.

I see comments from 6 years ago about this functionality and last from 4 months ago. @Zendesk guys: can you please post an update about when are you planning this funcionality to be available?

Thanks!

1


We have 25+ Help Center brands within our Zendesk instance. We want to clone articles across Help Centers and slightly customize them once done. It's incredibly time consuming to recreate every article across every brand.

I realize this is a foundational architecture / structural issue that's being worked on.

I just wanted to chime in as an Avid Follower to this thread. Thanks in advance for the help!

0


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Nicole Saunders

Zendesk Community Manager

Hi @... - 

The functionality that is being built to solve for this problem is currently being Beta tested. Check out the Content Blocks EAP for more information or to sign up to be a tester. 

0


OMG, I was recommended by Zendesk support to check this PR as an option for my request to enable migrating documents between brands, but it's been open for 6 years??

Things are moving quickly in Zendesk ha?

2


Second that.  Would be helpful when we have over 30 brands

0


Hello All,

I can develop the app to copy/ duplicate articles.

Would you pay for it? 

0


We already pay for Zendesk, so you'd need to get them to pay you ;)

1


Does anyone have an update for this?

1


Is this still not availble?

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Business case: For those of us that maintain multiple versions of an application for our customers this would allow us to easily start to create the next version of the article if we decided to update that part of the application. 

Example: All customers are on version 1 of the application. Some companies do not force customers to upgrade at the same time. As version 2 is designed it would be useful to copy an article from version 1 that will be updated and a technical writer can start the version 2 article. 

0


Content blocks is great and I am using that, but I still need to be able to duplicate articles, seems like a really basic feature! However after reading through some of the comments you can paste the source code which seems to work easily enough for me

0


When is this planned on being launched?

Would be incredibly beneficial and time-saving.

Looking forward to hearing from you! 

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Katarzyna Karpinska

Zendesk Product Manager

Hi Nikolaj, we will be working on this feature this year but I don't have delivery timelines just yet. If you are interested in our roadmap, check out this post

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Great news everybody! The duplicate articles feature was implemented in our new Help Center Manager app. Now, in just few clicks, you can create copies of articles, sections, categories or entire help centers. A deep copy of each article is created, including all translations, attachments and images.

There are many other useful features included such as find and replace, link checker, media library.

The app is approved and available on App's Marketplace. Start your free 14-day trial to benefit of our early customer special offer at €20/month.

 

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