How to ask a question in the Zendesk Community

You have questions - and the community has answers - but only if we can understand what you're asking.

Here are some quick tips and best practices for writing an effective community question:

Give us the deets

There are a few things that help us answer you better. In your post, be sure to include:

Your plan type
What you're trying to accomplish/what your desired outcome is
What you've tried so far
Any code, screenshots, or other details that can help us tell what's going on

Before posting...

Search first

We get hundreds of posts in our Community every day, so there's a good chance another member has had a similar question. Doing a keyword search to find existing posts helps to prevent duplicate posts and makes answers easier to find!

You can even refine your search results to the Community, and then select the topic that's most relevant to your question. Here's how to filter your search in Zendesk's Help Center:

Make sure you're posting in the right topic

Posting in the right place will ensure that your question or idea is seen by the people who are most able to help! Product or technical questions should go into the relevant Q&A topic:

Zendesk Suite Q&A
Sell Q&A

If you have a tip on how to do something that you'd like to share with others, you should post it in one of the User Tips topics:

If you want to read about best practices shared from Zendesk team members, check out the best practices topics:

If you have a feature request or want to provide feedback on any of our products, post in the appropriate feedback topic:

You can find out about upcoming events and get announcements in the Announcements and events topic.

We also offer several discussion spaces just for developers:

As well as spaces where community members who speak languages other than English can connect:

These are all laid out on the community home page, just click on the "topics" tab. (And if you get it wrong, the Zendesk Community Team will move it to the right spot for you.)

Write a clear subject line

The search in Help Center pulls from post subject lines as well as post content, so make sure your subject contains relevant keywords.

Optimizing your post's subject line makes sure it shows up in related searches, and helps other members understand what your post is about, at a glance! We might even go ahead and tweak the subject for you, to make sure you get the attention you need. We'll always leave a note when we do!

What to expect

Most questions in our community receive a response within a few hours. However, this varies significantly depending on the complexity of the question, how many details are provided in the initial post, and whether anyone with subject matter expertise is online at the time that you post.

Our highest traffic in the community is during mid-week business hours in the United States. If you're posting at 2am on Saturday in Chicago, it may take a couple of days for someone to get back to you.

You get what you give

The Zendesk Community Team and our end-user Community Moderators keep an eye on things and jump in to help out, but the best answers come from you, our community members. Whenever you're posting, it's a good idea to look around and see if there are any other users' questions you can help answer as well. Or, if you've found a good solution, write up a community tip for other users.

Happy Zendesking!