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Back up your Help Center articles at the click of a button!

Felix Stubner
  • Editado

 

Welcome

Let me introduce you to kBackup! This little app will allow you to back up your help centre content at the click of a button to your local hard drive. 

Using this app makes backing up your help centre content a breeze. 

Features

The app currently has a number of features and may be expanded to include additional features if the demand is there.

  • The app will back up your help centres or web portals 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 work for any Zendesk help centre or web portal even if you chose to use the Host Mapping feature as the original Zendesk subdomain will still exist, regardless of what you have currently set as your hostname.
  • Using the app to back up your help centre or web portal content is completely safe and will not affect any existing data, it will simply take a copy of it so there is no possibility for 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:

  • This program is compatible with Windows only.
  • Please note that SSO sign-in and 2FA is not currently supported. A Zendesk account that was created and is managed within Zendesk is required. 
  • 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’.
  • The app requires Microsoft.Net Framework 4.6 or higher to be installed on the Windows PC or Laptop where it’s being run, this version of the .NET Framework can be downloaded here.
  • I recommend running the app as Administrator to avoid any permission issues backing up to your selected backup location. This can be done by right-clicking the kBackup.exe and selecting ‘Run as administrator’.

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:

  1. Download a copy of the app here
  2. Extract the downloaded kBackup.zip file to your Desktop
  3. Right click the app and select 'Run as administrator’
  4. Enter your Zendesk subdomain into the Domain field
  5. Enter your Zendesk users email into the Email field
  6. Enter your Zendesk users’ password into the Password field
  7. Select your Portal Type from the drop-down
  8. Select the Backup button
  9. Browse for a folder where you would like to back up your content and select Ok 



After you have selected a folder and clicked Ok the backup process will begin and you will receive a notification letting you know when the backup is complete.

Download kBackup here!

Release Notes 

Release notes have been moved into ReleaseNotes.txt which is now included in the download package.

Giving Feedback & Reporting Bugs

For any feedback, feature & functionality requests or bugs you may have come across please leave a reply here or email me at felix.stubner(at)gmail(dot)com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

If kBackup has helped you and you want to show your appreciation feel free to click on the little up arrow on this post to up vote 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!

223 Comentarios

  • Felix Stubner

    @Kamlesh - Thanks for checking out kBackup, sorry to hear that you are running into an error with it. It appears that a number of users have had a similar issue as a result of one of one of the integers that get's returned from the API is now int64 and no longer in32. 

    For the most part, this is a breaking change. As I am currently working on the next version of the app I will be looking to implement a fix for this.

    I will update this thread as soon as I have the new version available for everyone.

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  • Kris Scuteri

    Hi Felix.  I am having a similar error has Kamlesh.

    'The general exception was hit: 115001018047 is not a valid value for Int32'

    Thank you for your hard work.

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  • Doug Begle

    Hi Felix,

    I just discovered this tool but ran into the same error:

    I'm an admin

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Doug @Kris - Sorry to hear that you are both running into this issue too. It appears to be affecting pretty much everyone. I will try to create a fix for this version over the weekend. If you could email me at felix.stubner@gmail.com with these details that would be great. Once I have a version with a fix ready I can let you know.

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  • Doug Begle

    Hi Felix,

    Thanks for your swift response.  By details, do you mean the error string? Or is there anything else I can provide?

    url: voyagersearch.zendesk.com

    locale: en-us

    I'm an admin for our system

     

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Doug - thanks for getting back to me. I'll be getting back to you by email shortly.

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  • Nate Heller

    Hi Felix,

    Thank you for this app, it is amazing!  I just wanted to drop a quick note that I emailed you in regards to the error message:

    The general exception was hit: The URI prefix is not recognized.

    I see someone else posted this and you needed the sub domain, which I included in the email to you.  Was able to get a little less than half of our articles extracted and it looks great!  Would you be able to take a look so I might be able to pull the rest?  Thanks for all of your work, I was very happy to find this app.

    Regards,

    Nate

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Nate - Thanks for getting in touch and also trying out KBackup :) Thank you for sending me a message with the info. In a recent update to kBackup I actually added a really handy log file which you should be able to find in the backup folder that was created. The file should be called urllog.txt. If you could send this to my email felix.stubner@gmail.com I would really appreciate it. I will take a look later when I get home and look at adding a fix to kBackup for this type of URL. Looking forward to your mail, speak to you soon!

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  • Corrin Duque

    @Felix

    Question for you.  Have you included or explored the ability to export Community posts and comments?  Is this included in the Help Center backup?  And if so, is it possible to export only Community?  We recently launched Community and as Zendesk does not support private alias identities we may be offboarding to a new Community platform we would tie to our Help Center knowledge base via link on the home page..

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Corrin - Hey, thanks for stopping by again! :) At the moment it is not something that is included. But it is something that I am planning to include, I have been mostly updating the old version at the moment with fixes for issues but I hope to continue working on the new version again soon.  

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  • Sue Armstrong

    @ Felix, thanks for doing this as I have had to rely on one of our Devs to run something using the API and they don't do it very often. It'll be great to run this myself.

    I see there should be a log file, but I haven't got one, & I have set Windows 7 to see hidden files and folders.

    I sent you an email with further information, but thank you for doing this. It will be very useful. :)

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Sue - Thank you for checking out kBackup, I have received your email and have gotten back to you. Speak to you soon!

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  • Alex Sawicki

    Hello!

    I’m a developer with experience with C# and the Zendesk API.

    I’m wondering if there’s some way that I could use what you’ve already written to write code to do automated backups for all of our subdomains. Either through a code library, or something similar. I’m looking at it, and it looks like I might just be able to automate the use of the GUI… But, that’s clearly not ideal.

    Thanks!

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Alex - Hey there! Thanks for checking out kBackup. My code is not currently public but I definitely see the demand for such a feature and it's something that I am looking into. At the moment it's not something that could be easily edited as it would mean that credentials need to be saved locally and this is not something kBackup currently does. That being said, there will be a new version of kBackup with a lot more functionality and features which will allow you to remember credentials and in turn also complete automated backups. For more info on features that are already on the roadmap check out this post here. I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any other questions. 

     

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  • Alex Sawicki

    Thanks for the quick response!

    Trust me, I understand the dangers/challenge of making code publicly available; especially if it wasn’t designed to be public in the first place.

    Any idea on when those new features will be ready/released? I’m just trying to figure out if it’s worth it to try to implement something basic (either using GUI hacks to use your program, or implementing my own calls to Zendesk’s API) for automated backups.

    And yeah, having the code be publicly available would be fantastic!

    Thanks!

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Alex - No worries at all. Yep for sure, it can be a little tough. The new version is still very much a work-in-progress, but I spent some time last night enhancing the current version to allow you to run kBackup through CMD. This should then allow you to create a scheduled task and simply pass in your credentials via arguments. If you want to email me at felix.stubner@gmail.com I can send you a version to test once I have completed this functionality. I look forward to hearing from you. 

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  • Dave Rouleau

    Hi, Felix:

    My export stalls at 95 out of 158 articles.  I get this error: "The general exception was hit: The specified path, file name, or both are too long.  The fully qualified file name must be less than 260 characters, and the directory name must be less than 248 characters."

    corganic.zendesk.com

    Thanks,
    Dave

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  • Felix Stubner

    @David - Hey there. I've had a look at this issue and ran through it with my dev version. This issue appears as a result of the way kBackup saves files. It takes the title of an article and then uses that as the file name with certain characters removed (as they are not allowed in file names). However, in this case, a handful of the articles in corganic.zendesk.com have a very long title which is exceeding the character limit of file names/paths in Windows. I will need to look into this further as I would need to either truncate the names for those files or change the way files are being saved. 

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  • Dave Rouleau

    Felix:

    Yea, I thought it might be the long article titles.  If you come up with a solution, please let me know. 

    Thanks,
    Dave

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  • Felix Stubner

    @David - I hope you are keeping well! I am currently finishing up on some functionality that will, by default, shorten file names to a max character length. This should resolve the issue of files not being backed up as a result of file names that exceed the maximum number of characters allowed by Windows. If you want to email me at felix.stubner@gmail.com I will send you a version as soon as it's ready. Speak to you soon!

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  • Ryan Regala

    Hi Felix,

    I wanted to try your app, but the download link seems to be inactive now - http://dstats.net/download/http:/www.fail2reap.com/downloads/kbackup.zip 

    I'd appreciate any help you can provide.

    Thanks,

    Ryan

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Ryan - Thanks for letting me know, I am migrating to a new hosting provider at the moment so some links need rebuilding. I have updated the download links. Let me know if you run into any issues. Have a good weekend!

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  • Rim HAMDI

    Hello Felix - Hope you're doing well. 

    We might be migrating to Multibrand in the coming months, and I was wondering what would be the impact on your app. Will it be able to export the content from all brands guides? or not at all?

    Thanks!

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Rim - Thanks for stopping by to try out kBackup. I am not very familiar with Multibrand but from what I understand, each brand has its own subdomain. As such simply using the appropriate brands' subdomain when running the backup should allow you to download the content from each brand. I hope this helps to answer your question but if there is anything else, don't hesitate to reach out to me by email. Have a lovely weekend!

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  • Rim HAMDI

    Ok then Felix! As always, thanks for your prompt answer and have a nice one!

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  • Ravi Kant Verma

    Hit an error

    Any suggestions?

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Ravi - Thanks for getting in touch. To investigate this error could I ask you to send me an email at felix.stubner@gmail.com with your domain name and a username/password if access to it is not public. From there I'll be able to debug the issue and get to the bottom of it. Speak to you soon and have a good weekend!

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  • Cedric Dubois

    Hi Felix, thanks for teh APP which is very usefull. Therefore I cannot get backup of all my articles.

    It looks it backs up only articles which are both translated in FR and EN. Actually, I would like to get all of them (FR only, EN only & FR/EN ones). Is this possible? Worse to be able to select what we what to back up.

    Many tahnks for your help

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  • Felix Stubner

    @Cedric - Thanks for your email, I've gone ahead and responded. Speak to you soon!

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  • Permanently deleted user

    Looks like a great app! Any plans to release a Mac version?

    0

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