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Back up your Help Center articles at the click of a button!
Posted May 10, 2016
Welcome
Let me introduce you to kBackup! This little app will allow you to back up your help centre content to your local hard drive at the click of a button.
Using this app makes backing up your help centre content a breeze.
Features
The app currently has several features and may be expanded to include additional features if demand arises.
- The app will back up your help centre content to a specified folder as HTML pages in the format of [ArticleId].html. The app will first verify that the user exists in the given Zendesk domain. This is included for security reasons, so only users who exist in the domain can back up the content.
- The app will also back up any images that are embedded in your article and save these in the same backup folder.
- The app will work for any Zendesk help centre, even if a custom domain is used.
- Using the app to back up your help centre content is completely safe and will not affect any existing data. It will simply take a copy of it, so there is no possibility of data loss during the process.
Requirements
There are some requirements for using this app that need to be met in order for it to function correctly. I've included these requirements below:
- Windows 7 or higher.
- Microsoft.Net Framework 4.6 or higher. This version of the .NET Framework can be downloaded here.
- SSO sign-in and 2FA are not supported. If these are used in your instance, please use the username and API token option instead of the username and password combination. For more info on generating an API token, see Zendesk's help article Generating a new API token.
- If you use a username and password combination, your user must have ‘Password Access’ to the API enabled in Zendesk. You can do this by going to Settings > Channels (Subsection) > API and enabling ‘Password Access’.
Getting Started
To get started with backing up your help centre content, ensure that you have met the requirements above, then go ahead and follow the steps below:
- Download the app here
- Extract the downloaded kBackup.zip file to your Desktop
- Right-click the app and select Run as administrator
- Enter your full Zendesk or custom domain into the Domain field (e.g. my-company.com, my-company.zendesk.com)
- Enter your Zendesk user email into the Email field
- Enter your Zendesk user password into the Password field. Alternatively, select the Use API Token checkbox to use an API token
- Select Connect
- Select the language you would like to back up from the Languages dropdown
- Select the Backup button
- Browse for a folder where you would like to back up your content and select Ok
After selecting a folder and clicking Ok, the backup process will begin, and you will receive a notification when the backup is complete.
If you want to back up multiple languages, select another language from the Languages dropdown and click Backup again.
Download kBackup here!
Release Notes
Release notes have been moved into ReleaseNotes.txt, which is now included in the download.
Giving Feedback & Reporting Bugs
For any feedback, feature and functionality requests or bugs you may have encountered, please leave a reply on this post or email me at felix.stubner(at)gmail(dot)com, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Leave a Review
If kBackup has helped you, please consider leaving a review on its Zendesk Marketplace Integration page. Additionally, feel free to click on the little up arrow on this post to upvote it. Thanks for your support!
Disclaimer
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
If kBackup has helped you, please consider up-voting this post by clicking the up arrow below. This will help other users to find the post more easily. Thank you!
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249 comments
Corrin Duque
@ Felix
Thanks for the information. Exciting to hear of of your current work on importing in bulk.
Unfortunately our Zendesk is a closed Zendesk so we would need to schedule another way to actually test.
What I can tell you is that for the vast majority of our Help Center resources I have been leveraging the drag and drop convenience of Skitch (screen capture from Evernote). So I haven't uploaded saved jpeg images. Although Skitch captures do create a jpg file. The images do appear as a jpg in the source code.
Yet the export file included only 1 screen print in the images folder.
Not sure if this helps but the image above was drag/dropped into this comment entry via Skitch.
Any thoughts?
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Eugene Tarasula
Awesome tool!!!!!
Sadly i am getting this when attempting to run it
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Felix Stubner
@Corrin - I've had a look at the images you included but unfortunately I would need to debug my application to see the exact URL structure and what the request returns but I would require a login to a user account that has access to the content. If that is something you could organize I can definitely look into that and try to find a solution. Looking forward to hearing from you. Please also feel free to email me at felix.stubner@gmail.com
@Eugene - Thanks again for giving kBackup a try. As mentioned in my email I will be investigating the issue that you had come across regarding the images. After debugging using the user credentials you provided I believe I have identified the issue. I will be sending you a test version during the day tomorrow to confirm the fix. Speak to you soon!
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Corrin Duque
@Felix
Thanks so much Felix! You’re a ROCKSTAR!
Tested the export and it is downloading images like lightning as I type.
Tremendously appreciated! I look forward to the future developments for importing!
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Jennifer Rowe
Agreed that Felix is a ROCKSTAR!
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Felix Stubner
@Corrin - You are very welcome, glad to hear that your issue is now resolved! :)
@Jennifer - Thanks you guys :3
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Chandra Mullineaux
Hi Felix,
I'm trying to download the latest version of the app and none of the links in the original post or subsequent comments are working for me. I get the error:
The dstats.net page isn’t working
dstats.net didn’t send any data.
Could you help?
Thanks,
Chandra
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Felix Stubner
@Chandra - Hey sorry to hear you are having some trouble with the download. I have just tested the links myself and there do not seem to be any issues. However if you are still having some troubles you can find a direct download link here. Let me know how you get on with that :)
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Michael Ogilvie
When trying to use this software, I am getting the following error:
It does seem to back up a few articles even with the error but only a few.
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Felix Stubner
@Michael - Thanks for giving the app a try, sorry to hear that you are having some troubles with it.
This particular error occurs when it's trying to download an image but can't understand the URL structure. Fixing this will require some code updates but I'd need to look at the structure of the URL. Could you email me at felix.stubner@gmail.com with the sub-domain of your Help Center and I can investigate the issue. Looking forward to hearing from you.
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Jenny Berger
Hi Felix -- Just wanted to pass on an issue I'm experiencing: After kbackup creates a backup of my Help Center content & images, the BackupLog.txt file that's created cannot be opened. When I try to open the file, I get this error message:
I'm not sure why I'm getting this error -- the backup log is right there in the backup folder & it has data in it (it's 14KB). Any idea why/how this might be happening?
Thanks for your help & all your hard work!
UPDATE: I think I figured this one out on my own -- it's a fault on my own computer, nothing to do with kbackup. Sorry for my confusion!!
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Felix Stubner
@Jenny - Thanks for getting in touch and including this info. Apologies that you ran into some troubles opening the backup file.
I am happy to hear that you were able to get the issue resolved. My suggestion would have been to try and select a different location for the backup like your Desktop.
Nonetheless thank you for giving kBackup a try and should you run into any other issues feel free to send me an email at felix.stubner@gmail.com
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Corrin Duque
@Felix,
Question for you. Is it possible to get some command line parameters so we can automate this? We are housing the backup on a network share.
Thanks!
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Felix Stubner
@Corrin - Automated backups is something I intend to look into in the future, will likely be December. It will not require command line though, it will be configurable through the UI ;)
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Felix Stubner
Thank you!
Hey everyone, kBackup just hit 200 downloads! I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has tried it and glad to see that so many have found a use for it.
As a little thank you I want to give you a preview of what you can expect to see in the next release. I also sprinkled in some screenshots!
Here are some more ideas that I have already noted to put on the roadmap:
Meet Cloudy! :D
Cloudy is someone you may run into if the data could not be synced. But don't worry, he will kindly provide a Refresh link so you can try to sync your data again.
As always you guys here are an absolute pleasure to work with and do let me know if you have any feedback or other functionality you want to see in kBackup.
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Joni Sariola
Hi Felix,
Tool works fine, thank you.
For some reason it seems to backup only english artcles at the moment.
I have also Finnish translations of almost every article, but any of those are not being exported.
This isn´t really any problem, most important thing is to have base materials backed up and it´s easy to translate again if needed.
I just noticed another thing that should be noticed. I was able to also download all the articles restricted to Agents and Managers when I used End-user account. This can be issue if some customer would find this tool and have access to all data.
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Felix Stubner
@Joni - Thanks for getting in touch and trying out kBackup. Multiple localizations of the same content is something that slipped my mind when I was writing the post above. However it is something I have though about and would require a bit of work. I'll note it down for a future release.
Regarding your ability to download content that should be locked. I have done some testing on this when I first created the app. The way that it works for Zendesk is that if you do not provide valid credentials to a user account when logging in through kBackup, you will still be able to retrieve all content that is visible publicly by anyone. You should not be seeing content that the user should not have access too. If this was the case then it would be an issue with the Zendesk API that
If you have any additional questions or if there's anything else I can do for you please don't hesitate to get back to me.
Kindest regards,
Felix S.
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Jenny Berger
Migration & restoring backups would be amazing! My company is going through a rebranding effort & these features would make rebranding our Help Center content infinitely easier. Any estimate on when the next release might occur?
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Felix Stubner
@Jenny - Yep it does seem to be a widely requested feature ^.^ The deadline I have give myself is mid to late December so I hope to have this functionality available by then. Hope this helps.
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Jenny Berger
That might be a little late for my deadline, but just knowing it's forthcoming is huge. My company likes to rebrand often, so I'm sure I will have more chances to make use of it!
Thanks for all your hard work!!
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Felix Stubner
I'm sorry to hear that Jenny, well hopefully it will be something you can leverage in the future.
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Corrin Duque
Thank you Felix! Exciting news on the refinements on the horizon. Question for you on the automatic backups. Anyway to we can utilize some command line parameters to have the auto-backup on a network share instead of just locally on the PC?
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Kim R Robinson
When doing a backup, I'm getting the following message: The general exception was hit: Invalid URI: The URistring is too long.
I click OK then it says backup completed to path: ...date_time
- and only one article is backed up.
Backup log has one line: article_206417067: https://riseinc.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/232057588-How-to-fix-PDF-files-not-opening-with-Adobe-Acrobat-Reader
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Felix Stubner
@Corrin - You will be able to select any drive that your PC has access to, however I still need to do some testing whether or not there are any implications when backing up to network drives specifically.
@Kim - Sorry to hear you are running into some trouble there, could you email me your Zendesk domain name to felix.stubner@gmail.com and I can look into this for you.
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Corrin Duque
@Felix
Thanks for the update! I will look forward to hearing more to see if we can backup direct to our FTP location.
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Duke Oliver
Heya! I love this tool, but am having an issue. Only about half of our articles get backed up (I'm using v0.6). The ones not getting backed up seem to be random, though I wonder if it's related to this message:
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Felix Stubner
@Duke - Hey, thanks so much for giving kBackup a try. Sorry to hear that you are having an issue here. It appears that the way that images are backed up varies very widely from user to user. This is like a way images are stored which I did not account for.
I will need to investigate what exactly gets returned and what the URL string is, could you email me at felix.stubner@gmail.com with your Zendesk sub-domain.
Speak to you soon!
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Kamlesh N G
Hello Felix,
I tried taking a backup of my help center but it did not work and got the attached error message.
"The general exception was hit: 115000531245 is not a valid value for Int32."
I am using Windows10
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Neal Barnett
Felix - Is it technically feasible to perform a backup of a Custom Help Center theme? If so, it would be a great addition to your tool.
Currently, the process is painstaking, where you need to copy HTML from each of your 14 custom files, put the code into backup files locally, then do the same with CSS, JS, then backup all assets.
It currently takes about a half-hour to do a backup. Instead, if a Zip file could be created with all of that info, it would take less than 1 minute for each backup.
Zendesk has been dragging their feet in creating a tool for a couple years now (see https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/203452656-Save-a-copy-of-your-Custom-Theme-in-Help-Center).
Anyway, just thought I'd ask.
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Felix Stubner
@Neal - Thanks for checking out the tool. I am it 100% sure if this information is available through the api. If it is then I don't think it would be difficult to do. I will add it to my list but there are some other features I'd like I get completed first. Thanks again for getting in touch! :)
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