Introduction 

Help Center (HC) is a customizable website that hosts all the content you publish. You can publish technical documentation or announce essential details about your company.

So how will the documentation appear on the Help Center?

Well, you must first write and publish your content from the Articles module. This is the backend where you create the articles and configure the HC.

Coming back to this article, let us learn about the appearance of the Help Center and how to customize it. 

Interested? Read on...

Feature Availability

Look and Feel of the Help Center

Before we jump into the technicalities of the Help Center, we would like to draw your attention to the appearance of the HC and the actions you can perform on it. Once you are familiar with the Help Center, you can easily customize it according to your interests.

By the way, you are currently reading this article on Vtiger’s Help Center called Knowledge Base. You can explore and check out the appearance and categorization of our articles.

Homepage

As soon as you land on the Help Center, you will see the homepage. The homepage is an introductory page of your Help Center. It consists of a lot of elements, all customizable. 

• Header - The header contains four different elements. They are:
  • Name of the website - Displays the name of the HC.
  • Logo - Displays the logo.
    • Note: You can use your company’s name and logo on the HC. Skip to this section to learn more. 
  • Submit a request - Allows the readers to ask for enhancements, report a bug, or share their queries.
  • Sign In - Allows your employees and contacts to sign in with the portal credentials to the Help Center.
• Search Bar - Allows you to search the entire documentation by entering keywords.
• Categories - Displays the different categories of documentation along with the description below the search bar.
• Recent articles - Displays the list of articles that were visited recently.
• Top articles - Displays the list of highly visited articles.
• Footer - The footer contains promotional links to your social media accounts and other websites. You can also insert your copyright messages here.

Subcategories

 Once you click on a Category on the Homepage, you will land on a detailed list of all the subcategories (defined in the Settings) and the articles under them.

Categories and subcategories are used for grouping. For example, you can have a category called Countries; States can be a subcategory. Under the States, you can have different articles named after cities.

You can search for your articles by writing the article name in the search bar present on the page’s top right side. 

Article

Once you click on an article on the Subcategories page, the article will open. 

Here is a list of things that you can see in the article:

• Articles in this Category - Displays the other articles listed in the current category.
• Search Bar - You can enter your queries or search for articles.
• Title - Displays the title of the article.
• Description - Displays a brief description of the article.
• Author Name - Displays the name of the author.
• Last Modified - Displays the time and date when the author last modified the article.
• Related articles -  Displays other articles related to the current article.

Apart from just reading an article, you can also do the following: 

• Share - You can share the article.
• Print - You can print the article in PDF format.
• Table of Contents - This is the list of all headings (H1s, H2s, and H3s) in the article. Clicking on these links will take you to the relevant sections in the article. 
• Upvote or Downvote - You have the option to like or dislike an article.
• Comment - If your readers are signed in using the portal credentials, they can provide their opinions on the article by commenting. 
• Up arrow - When you click on the Up arrow on the bottom right corner of the page, you are taken back to the Table of Contents.

Sending portal credentials to your readers

Your readers need portal credentials to sign in to the Help Center. Once they sign in, they can comment on your articles. With comments, the readers can express their opinions on an article or report a bug.

Using portal credentials, you can make sure that anonymous marketing comments will not spam the article.

Follow these steps to give access to the HC to your contact:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the Main Menu.
3. Go to Essentials.
4. Select Contacts.
5. Select and open a contact record for which the help center must be enabled.
6. Click Deep Dive.
7. Look for the Portal User field and enable it. 
8. Enter a valid Support Start Date and Support End Date. 
   • Note: Customers will not be able to log in to the HC beyond the support end date.
9. Click Save.

Your contacts will receive an email containing the credentials. They can use the credentials and login to the HC.

To know more about portal credentials, click here.

Customizing the Help Center

By now, you are aware that you can customize the Help Center according to your interests. In this section, we will tell you how. 

Accessing the Settings screen

To customize your HC, you must first go to the Help Center Settings in the Articles module. Read on to do the same…

Follow these steps to access the Help Center Settings:

1. Log in to your CRM account.
2. Click the Main Menu.
3. Go to Help Desk.
4. Select Articles.
5. Click the Settings button on the top right of the screen.

The Help Center Settings page will appear.

This is where you can play around and customize your Help Center. All the changes you do here appear on the Help Center.

Here you will see three tabs:

1. Basic
2. Category
3. Rebranding

In the coming sections, you will read a detailed explanation of all the fields in the tabs and possible actions.

Configuring the Basic details

The first tab contains all the basic information. If you wish to edit the fields here, click the Edit button. The table below explains all the fields present in the Basic tab.

After you make all the edits, click the Save button to save and apply the changes.
If you wish to discard the changes, click Cancel.

Once you save the changes, go to your Help Center, refresh it (press CTRL+R), and see all the changes.
 

Adding Categories and Subcategories

The second tab will allow you to add categories and subcategories. This will majorly help in organizing your documentation.

Adding a Category

Firstly, you must add a category. This is the first level of segregation. For example, you can have categories like Announcements, Articles, FAQs, etc. The categories and their descriptions will appear on the homepage.

Follow these steps to add a category:

1. Click the Add Category button.
2. Enter the following fields:
   1. Category - Enter the name of the category.
   2. Description - Enter a description for the category.
   3. Category Image - Provide an image for the category. You can either select an image from your system or the server.
   4. Hide in Portal - Enable this checkbox if you wish to hide the category on the Help Center.
3. Click Add.

The category will be added to the list. It will show the category name, description, and the number of subcategories under it.

To enter the subcategory page, click on the category that you created previously.

Adding a Subcategory

Secondly, you must add a subcategory under a category. This is the second level of segregation. For example, under the Announcements category, you can have subcategories like Awards, Recognitions, Updates, Webinars, etc. This will appear on the subcategories page in the Help Center. 

Follow these steps to add a subcategory:

1. Click the Add Subcategory button.
2. Enter the following fields:
   1. Subcategory - Enter the name of the subcategory.
   2. Description - Enter a description for the subcategory.
   3. Hide in Portal - Enable this checkbox to hide the subcategory from the Help Center.
3. Click Add.

The subcategory will be added to the list. It will show the subcategory name, description, and the number of articles under it.

When you click on any subcategory, you can see the list of articles published under it.

Rebranding the Help Center website

The third tab will allow you to customize the colors and icons on the website. If you wish to edit the fields here, click the Edit button. The table below explains all the fields present in the Rebranding tab.

After you make all the edits, click the Save button to save and apply the changes.
If you wish to discard the changes, click Cancel.

Once you save the changes, go to your Help Center and refresh the page (press CTRL+R) to see all the changes.