Publish to Zendesk Help Center

Adobe RoboHelp extends the capabilities of its publishing feature, giving you the option to publish Knowledge Base output, directly to Zendesk Help Center.

To create a connection with Zendesk Help Center, you must set up your account to get started. For more details, see Getting Started with Zendesk.

In addition, ensure that the option Enable API authentication using an agent's email address and password is enabled in the Settings tab in Zendesk API on Zendesk side.

Set up the workflow

Following are the steps to configure Zendesk Help Center prior to publishing your output.

• Create and configure an output preset.
• Configure a publish profile
  
• Configure the TOC structure to use categories and sections.
  

Create an output preset

To create an output preset in RoboHelp, follow these steps:

Configure a Zendesk output preset

You can use the following settings to configure the Knowledge Base output preset:

General

Title: Specify the title for the generated output.

Output Path: Specify a location for the output.

Ensure that the output path is NOT located inside the project folder. If the output path is inside the project folder, the output generation fails. Also the folder you select should NOT have any content that you need. RoboHelp deletes the contents of the folder before generating the output.

Save output path as relative to project: If enabled and you browse to the output path., the path to the output will now be a relative instead of absolute.

Language: Use the drop-down list to select the language for the output.

Note: The language in Zendesk must match the language that you will select in RoboHelp. For example, if you have selected French (France) in RoboHelp, then you must select French (France) in Zendesk, not French, or not French (Canada), but strictly French(France). The language in both the places must match, or else, there will be errors in publishing.

Encoding: From the drop-down list, select the encoding to be used for the output. Specify the type of character encoding format to be used for your content.

Post Generation Script: To run your custom script after output generation, select the script file from the drop-down list.

General

Use the following options to specify basic output settings, such as title, target, output path, encoding, and more:

Title Specify the title for the generated output.

You can use variables in the title. To do so, type Ctrl+1 and select a variable from the drop-down list, and then press Enter. Note that if you have provided a variable set in the Content tab > Variable Set field, during output generation, the value of the selected variable is picked from the variable set.

Target Use the drop-down to specify the target to generate the selected output in Knowledge Base preset.

Output Path Specify a location for the output. To select a location, click  . 

Ensure that the output path is NOT located inside the project folder. If the output path is inside the project folder, the output generation fails. Also the folder you select should NOT have any content that you need. RoboHelp deletes the contents of the folder before generating the output.

Save output path as relative to project: If enabled and you browse to the output path., the path to the output will now be a relative instead of absolute.  

Encoding Use the drop-down list to specify the type of character encoding format to be used for your content.

Post Generation Script To run your custom script after output generation, select the script .js file from the drop-down list.

Content

Use the following options to specify content-related output settings, such as the settings for Table of Contents, condition expression, variable set, and including expanding and drop-down text.

Table Of Contents Use the drop-down list to select a Table of Contents to be included in the output. This drop-down list displays the Tables of Contents available in your project. The first Table of Contents in this drop-down list is selected by default.

The set of files and their references present in the selected Table of Contents appear in the generated output.

Condition Expression Use the drop-down list to specify the condition expression for your output. This setting allows you to easily include or exclude content depending on the desired type of output or user base. Click  to edit the selected condition expression. You can also select None in the drop-down list to not specify any condition expression.

Variable Set Use the drop-down list to specify the variable set to use in this output. In the drop-down list, you can select <Default Variable Set> to use the project's default variable set. Variable sets allow you to implement output-specific use of variables. For example, you can have different variable sets for generating output for customers and internal users.

Include Expanding Text Select this option to include Expanding Text in your Knowledge Base output; otherwise, only the Expanding Title goes into the output. However, the Expanding Text will be shown in the expanded form in the output.

Include Drop-down Text Select this option to include Drop-down Text in your Knowledge Base output; otherwise, only the Drop-down Title goes into the output. However, the Drop-down text will be displayed in the output.

Layout

Use the option to configure the appearance of your output.

Zendesk

Use the following options to specify Zendesk publish settings, such as Publish Profile, Visible to, Managed by, and more:

Publish Profile Use the drop-down to select among your Zendesk connection profile. To learn how to create publish profile, see Configure a publish profile.

Visible to Click the drop-down to select a group of users to control the visibility settings of your published content. The view permissions are set on the Zendesk server depending on your Zendesk account.

Managed by Click the drop-down arrow and then select management permissions to determine who can have editing and publishing rights. These management permissions are pre-generated on the Zendesk server depending on your Zendesk account. 

Publish all articles in the same category Select this option to publish all the topics of the TOC to a single category and section on Zendesk site. For more details about categories and sections, visit Organizing knowledge base content in categories and sections.

Convert all styles to inline styles Select this option to ensure that your styling used in RoboHelp is maintained when you publish your output to Zendesk.

Upload images Select this option if you want any images in topics to be included in the published output.

Upload linked documents Select this option if you want documents like PPT, PPTX, DOC, DOCX, and PDF linked in topics to be included in the published output. 

Include Javascript Select this option to include JavaScript in your output to show expanding text, drop-down text, pop-ups, and thumbnails. If unselected, the content will appear as a plain text if published to the site.

Configure a publish profile

You must create and configure a publish profile before publishing your output to Zendesk. To create and configure a profile:

Configure the TOC structure for Zendesk Help Center

The last step prior to publishing is to check that your TOC is organized to publish your content into categories and sections, keeping the following guidelines in mind:

• The top-level of the TOC is converted to categories and second-level to sections; therefore, it is recommended to create a two-level TOC.
  
• Published articles that do not fall in this structure are rearranged into categories and sections.

Publish to Zendesk Help Center

You can configure Knowledge Base output preset to link to Zendesk, and then publish your content to Zendesk Help Center.