Knowledge Base¶

Publish your own library of FAQs, how-tos, internal processes and more with the knowledge base.

This document describes how to configure the knowledge base. For details on how to use and edit it, please refer to the Zammad User Documentation.

See a live demo at https://support.zammad.com/help.¶

By default, only admin users are permitted to create, edit, and manage knowledge base articles. See Roles for details on how to grant write access to agents or other users.

Note

The knowledge base will not appear in the main menu until it has been enabled in the admin panel.

Features¶

🌍 Multi-language support
🙈 Visibility settings (draft, staff-only, or public)
🔍 Full text search
📅 Scheduled publishing
📎 File attachments
🔗 Wiki-style internal linking to both 💡 KB answers and 📋 tickets
🖼️ Rich text editor + embedded images

Setup¶

To enable the knowledge base, first select the languages/locales you wish to publish in:

You must choose at least one. (Don’t worry, you can always change them later!)¶

Read on for details about each section of the knowledge base configuration.

Theme¶

Customize the appearance of the knowledge base.¶

Icon & Link Color

Applies to all category & article entries in knowledge base menus, as well as hyperlinks in articles.

Header Color

Applies to the area surrounding the search bar.

Header Link Color

Defines the color of the header links to use. Make sure that this color has a proper contrast to Header Color.

Show Feed Icon

You can enable Zammad to provide RSS feed URLs in both internal and public knowledge base. With this option being active, Zammad will provide you up to two RSS links:

a general RSS feed of the whole knowledge base (top level)

a category specific RSS feed of the category you’re in (also applies to answers you’re viewing)

This setting by default is set to no.

Hint

Your agents will receive special RSS feed URLs with access tokens. Agents can always renew these. Keep in mind that sharing these URLs with third parties may provide access to internal answers!

Icon Set

Defines the selection of icons that may be used when creating/editing categories.

Each category in the knowledge base must be given an icon. Icons appear prominently in the main menu, like so:

Re-assigning icons on all of your categories is tedious work. It’s advisable to explore your options early to avoid having to change your mind down the road.

Languages¶

Add or remove locales, or reassign the default.¶

The knowledge base will automatically display the language matching each visitor’s locale. Visitors may always manually switch to another language via a dropdown menu in the footer.

The default locale is displayed when the visitor’s locale is not supported.

Articles that have not yet been translated into a given language will be hidden from that locale.

Public Menu¶

Use this section to unify the knowledge base with your own website’s main navigation. Entries added here will appear in the knowledge base like so:

Zammad will provide a list of the current set links per knowledge base language. If you’re missing a language, you’ll have to add the language up front.

You can adjust every URL on language level.

🧭 Customize the nav menu that appears in the header of the knowledge base.¶

Arranging URLs

By clicking on “Edit”, Zammad allows you to add, update, re-arrange or remove URLs from either your public header menu or public footer menu.

Title: This is the URL title that’s being displayed to your users.
URL: The actual URL the user is going to open upon clicking.
Target: Allows you to tell your users browser to open the URL in a new tab. By default your user would leave the knowledge base page if not set.
Delete: If you tick the delete field, the URL will be removed from the menu upon pressing on the “Submit” button.
Change URLs position: Use ☰ to drag & drop the URLs in question to the new desired position. Your changes will be saved with pressing the “Submit” button.

Re-arranging URL positions works for the header menu just as the footer menu¶

Custom URL¶

Note

This feature is only available on self-hosted instances.

Relocate the knowledge base to the URL of your choosing.¶

By default, the knowledge base will appear at the same domain as your Zammad instance, under /help.

If you wish to customize where it can be accessed, enter your desired URL here and configure your web server as described (instructions provided for Apache and NGINX only).

Delete¶

Permanently delete the knowledge base and all the articles within it.¶

Use this panel to delete the knowledge base. If you wish to unpublish it without deleting all of its content, simply disable it via the toggle button at the top of the window instead.

Permissions¶

The general access to the knowledge base is managed via knowledge_base.reader and knowledge_base.editor permissions. You can find more information about roles and permissions here.

If you want to grant more granular permissions than the global read/edit permissions (e.g. edit permissions only for specific parts of the knowledge base), you can do so by following the steps below:

First create the base structure of the knowledge base (if not already done)
Create or choose one or more roles which should have granular permissions
Grant the knowledge_base.reader permission to the desired role(s)
Edit the permissions of each (sub-)category of the knowledge base
Assign the role to one or more users who should be able to edit the knowledge base (partially)

Note

The permissions of a parent category are inherited to sub-categories.
The permission knowledge_base.reader can be widened or restricted in sub-categories.
The permission knowledge_base.editor can’t be adjusted in sub-categories.
Have a look at the knowledge base section in the user documentation where you can find more information about the usage.