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Easily Make Your Zendesk Help Center Dropdown Fields Searchable
Posted Jul 24, 2024
Hello Zendesk Community!
I'm excited to share a solution I've developed for a long-standing issue many of us have faced: making dropdown fields searchable in the Zendesk Help Center.
This lightweight, efficient utility provides a seamless searching experience for dropdowns and offers additional customization options and better UI.
Request Thread here:
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Here's how you can add this to your help center
1. Add the CDN to your Help Center Open your document_head.hbs
file and add the following line.
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/zenselect@0.1.5/dist/zenselect.min.js"></script>
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2. Add the script to your new_request_page.hbs
file:
<script>
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
zenSelect('4520048004116',{"placeholder":"Select or Type","emptyMessage":"No Results"});
zenSelect('field_id');
zenSelect('4514796809492',{"placeholder":"Choose who you are"});
});
</script>
-
Replace
'4520048004116'
,'field_id'
, and'4520371651476'
with your actual dropdown field IDs.
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That's it! Your dropdown fields should now be searchable. ✌️
(In fact, Utility takes care of all complex manipulations)
Additional Customization:
This solution also allows for easy customization:
1. Custom Placeholder for dropdown
zenSelect('4520048004116', {"placeholder":"Select or Type"});
2. Custom No Results Message:
zenSelect('4520048004116', {"emptyMessage":"No Results"});
You can combine both options as shown in the initial script.
This solution replaces the old-style dropdown with a more user-friendly, searchable version. It's lightweight, efficient, and easy to add to your help center.
I hope this helps solve a problem many of us have been facing for years. If you find this useful, please consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee ☕ | https://www.buymeacoffee.com/phoenixer
Feel free to ask any questions or share your feedback in the comments below!
Note: Zendesk has already planned to implement this feature, though the rollout date is uncertain. In the meantime, delight your end-users with a seamless selection experience.
Nested dropdowns are not supported at this moment. However, based on feedback and demand, this feature will be included in a future version.
5
10 comments
Daniel Silvestro
Awesome! Is there any way to get it to search through the levels of the field.. i.e if my field value is Level1::Category2::Answer, and I want to search for “Answer” when I type that, it pulls the result.
Currently, I can only see it finding the top layer.
0
Sushant A
Daniel Silvestro
I'm currently working on adding support for multi-level/nested dropdown fields, which I expect to be available in next release by early October.
2
Daniel Silvestro
Apologies, I read the line about Nested Fields after I hit submit!! I was a little excited. Absolutely following this.. thanks!
0
Melody Josey
has anyone had success with this? when trying to implement this is only removing the field from our form? any help would be great!
1
Melody Josey
we are trying to implement this on a conditional field. do you know if this is a restriction to only be used on non-conditional fields, meaning only on 1 form type? TYIA for the help
0
Daniel Silvestro
Melody Josey Yes, it works perfectly for me - I didn't try this on a conditional field however.
0
Sushant A
Hi Melody Josey
Yes, currently it does not work correctly for the conditional field however if you have a non-conditional field then It should work on any number of forms.
0
Hannah Lucid
Sushant A - Is there an update on making this applicable for nested field values?
1
Gustavo Augusto Vieira Magalhães de Oliveira
Olá,
Já está disponível a nova versão para campos com condicionais?
0
Elaine
Hi Gustavo,
Could you please clarify what new version of conditional fields you are referring to?
0