The Knowledge Base (KB) is a self-serve online library of information that enables your customers to access solution articles for addressing various product or service-related queries. You can create articles related to your product or service and group them under custom sections for ease of access. 

Knowledge Base Tips:

1. When you sign-up for Zoho Desk, a default category that goes by the name of your portal will be added to the KB. You can rename this category later.
2. When you create a new department, its associated category will be added to the KB. You can choose to hide this category from being displayed to your customers in the help center.
3. You can add a custom category without adding a new department.
4. A category can be further divided into sections and sub-sections. A maximum of three hierarchy levels is supported for a category. That is, a category can be structured like:
   
5.             /Category
6.                   /Section
7.                          /Sub-section
8.                                /Sub-subsection
   
9. In the absence of a section, an article will be directly added underneath a category.
10. When you have created a sub-section, you cannot add or have articles beneath the section.
11.  By default, the agent or support administrator who creates an article will be its owner. Article owners will be notified of the feedback received from the customers.

Note:

1. By default, the support administrator can perform the view, create, update, delete, or update/delete all functions in the knowledge base module.
2. Agents with the Knowledge Base module permission can only add, edit, clone, unpublish or delete KB articles.

To add a Knowledge Base article

1. Click the Knowledge Base module.
2. In the Articles Homepage, click Add article icon (  ) from the top panel.
   
   
   
   
3. On the Add Article page, perform the following actions:
1. Enter article Title (mandatory)
2. Type the desired content or solution in the editor window (mandatory).
   
3. Format the content using the built-in editor. Read more about the formatting options in the Formatting Knowledge Base Articles Using WYSIWYG Editor article.
   
4. Attach files that are related to the article. You can use one of the following methods to upload files:
   
1. Drag files from your desktop and drop them on your editor window.
2. Click Browse to upload the file(s) from your system 
3. Click Gallery to upload a file from your KB media gallery.
4. Click Cloud to upload the file(s) from your cloud storage.
   
5. Click Insert to insert and remove a link, Embed video, insert and remove HTML, insert Table, insert Horizontal rule, insert Code, insert Accordion, and insert Tab.
   
5. Select the category, section, and sub-section from the drop-down. (only if you've created any)
6. Set the display permission. You can choose to display the article to Agents, All users, or Registered users in the help center
7. Enter relevant tags to display suggested articles for your customers in the help center. Tags will pull up relevant solutions when your agents respond to tickets
8. Set an expiry date for the article. This way, you can automatically remove the article when it loses its relevance
9. Specify the Title, Meta description, and Meta keywords for the article. These will decide what pages from your help desk should be found in the various search engines
10. Select the Noindex and Nofollow checkboxes if you don't want the article indexed by search engines.
    
4. Click Publish.
   
    

Note:

1. If you intend to send the article for review, simply enable the review option and click Send for Review. Your help desk administrators or the KB owners will receive an email notification requesting them to review and publish the article. This option will be available only when your KBase is enabled for review. Learn more
2.  When you have organized your category into sections and sub-sections, navigate to the relevant section and click the Add icon (   ) from the right panel. This will add the article directly to the current section. 
   
3. You can expand or collapse the detail page in the agent's view that displays the list of articles present in the folder. Clicking the Hide/Show list option from the top panle

Edit Articles

Edit the articles that were added to the knowledge base. You can perform an edit from the list view or the article's detail view. 

1. Navigate to the Knowledge Base module.
2. On the Article home page, hover over the desired article to edit. 
3. Click the Edit icon (   ) on the right side of the Article.
   
   
   
   
4. In the Edit Article page, update the article as required.
5. Click Publish.
   
   
   

For unpublished articles, click either Send for Review or Save as Draft to save the changes. Alternatively, you can edit an article from its list view, by clicking the Edit icon. 

Using Quick Edit in Articles

The Quick Edit icon ( ) is displayed right next to the Edit option. The option is available only for articles that are Published under the My Articles view.

Note: The changes made using Quick Edit can only be published immediately and cannot be saved as a draft. 

Note: 

1. If two agents update the same text in both the edit and quick edit mode, those changes will not be highlighted in the comparison mode. 
   
2. If two agents are adding content in edit mode and saving the article as a draft, the saved changes can be viewed by both agents when they revisit it.
   

Clone Articles

When you want to reuse the content or the format of an existing article, one way of doing so is to copy the existing content and edit the new article. However, there's a quicker way to do this: clone an existing article and create a draft version that can be edited with further changes. 

Note

1. Once cloned, a draft of the article will be created in the selected category. 
   
2. The cloned article will retain the title, content, SEO properties, tags, attachments, permalink, and folder structure of the parent article. You can edit the permalink if needed.
   
3. Users are currently able to clone an article five consecutive times.

1. Navigate to the Knowledge Base module.
   
2. Select the Department from departments dropdown.
   
3. In the Articles list view page, click on the required Article. 
4. Click the Clone icon (  ).
   
   Alternatively, from the Articles list view, hover on the article title and click the More icon, then select Clone. ().
   
5. In the Article Cloning Options, select Clone in same category or Clone in different category/section. Mark the required radio button.
   
6. For Clone in different category/section:
   
1. Select the required category from the first drop-down.
   
2. Select the subsections.
   
7. Click Clone.

Unpublish Articles

If you no longer want your article to be available in your help center, you can unpublish it. You can still access and update unpublished articles from the Agent Interface, but they won't be accessible to end users or crawled by search engines. You can also republish the article using the same permalink or a different one at any time. If users try to visit your unpublished article, they'll see a message that the page doesn't exist.

Key points to remember while unpublishing articles

1. When an article is unpublished, the article status will be updated as Unpublished.
2. Unpublishing an article without a draft is not considered a revision and will not create a new version.
3. Unpublishing an article having a saved draft will create a minor version of the unpublished content. Additionally, the article will be unlisted from the Drafts view.
4. If the unpublished article is edited, it will be listed under the Drafts view in addition to the Unpublished view, and both will display the same content.

1. Navigate to the Knowledge Base module.
2. On the Article home page, hover over the desired article to unpublish. 
3. Click the Unpublish icon (  ) from the More option.
   
   
   
   
4. Click Continue to confirm unpublish.
   The article will be unpublished and listed under the Unpublished view.
   
   
   

Note:

1. My Unpublished and All Unpublished views are available only when at least one unpublished article is present.
2. Articles cannot be unpublished in bulk.

Delete Articles

Deleting an article removes it from your knowledge base. You can delete an article from the list view or from the article's detail view.

1. Navigate to the Knowledge Base module.
   
2. On the Article home page, hover over the desired article to delete. 
3.  Click the Delete icon (   ) from the More option. 
   
   
   
   
4. Click Delete to confirm the deletion.
   The article will be moved to the Recycle Bin folder available within your knowledge base.