Forums/General/Announcements
Exporting to Zendesk Forums
Trevor DeVore
posted this on September 17, 2010 13:42
We just released an updated beta of ScreenSteps Desktop that exports your lessons to your Zendesk forums. If you have ever tried to create a knowledge base using an editor in a web browser then you know what a huge feature this is!
With Zendesk export support you can now use ScreenSteps to quickly generate forum posts that speak through pictures. ScreenSteps will upload all of the images and lesson text for you and your forum post will be ready to go. Just make sure to use the new "Zendesk" template included with the latest beta so that the formatting looks nice.
You can download the latest beta from our beta download page.
Here are some instructions for configuring and posting to Zendesk.
Open Preferences
Configure a New Web Export Account
From the Web Export tab (1), click on the + button (2).
After the new account is created give it a descriptive name such as "Zendesk".
Set the Web Export Account Type
From the Type drop-down menu select Zendesk.
Enter your URL and Credentials
1) For the server you can your Zendesk subdomain (e.g. http://mycompany.zendesk.com) or a host mapped url (e.g. http://support.mycompany.com).
2) For the User Name and Password fields enter the credentials of the user you want the forum posts to be authored by.
Test the Connection
After you have finished entering your credentials, click the Test Connection button. This will confirm that you have entered valid information.
You have now finished configuring the Web Export account and you can close the Preferences window.
Export a Lesson
Select a lesson in ScreenSteps and export to Blog/Web.
Choose Account and Template
In the export dialog, select the Zendesk account (1). You can select the forum you would like to post to (2) as well as the template you want to use (3).
Unless you have created your own custom template for use with Zendesk forums you should use the Zendesk template (4).
Click the Upload button to begin uploading your lesson (5).
All Done!
Once the lesson has finished uploading you will see this dialog. Click Visit to view the forum post in your browser.
The Result
Here you can see an example of a forum post created using ScreenSteps.
Comments
Sounds perfekt !!! But is this already working in the latest BETA ? I try it with 2.8.7 B14 an I can´t upload to our Zendesk Account. Also I can´t chouse any Forum (only yours like Screenstepslive, SQL Joga etc.) and after the upload I get an xml error....
Hi Marco,
Yes, this works in the 2.8.7 b14 Beta. It sounds like you are entering our zendesk account url rather than yours. When configuring the web export account make sure you change http://bluemango.zendesk.com to the url for your zendesk account.
Trevor Hi,
Of course I change the URL! Also I try the connection and it works fine. But if I try to export something I get the result who I describe above.
Hmm, not sure what is going on but it sounds like ScreenSteps is having trouble getting a list of your forums. Do you have public forums or are they all private?
I followed all the way through until I was waiting for the successfully uploaded message when I got:
Export to Blog/Web:
A problem occurred whilst uploading the session
xmlerr, can't find element
Any idea what could be happening? I'm on 2.8.7 build 15 (beta)
@ Trevor Howers
Yes I have exactly the same error message.
@ Trevor DeVore
We have both. Public and private Forms.
Any Ideas ?
The error is due to developer neglect. After making some changes to the Zendesk UI I neglected to properly update the list of forums so only our forums were listed. While this worked flawlessly in my tests it seems to cause problems when others try to use the feature :-)
A new beta has been uploaded:
http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/downloads/beta.html
Love the Zendesk export functionality :)
Is it possible to get a hint (anywhere here) or an auto Table Of Contents produced for the Lesson export to Zendesk ?
Regards
Kb
Kevin - I'm not sure I understand what you are looking for. ScreenSteps exports a single lesson to a forum post in Zendesk. Are you looking to create links to each step in that lesson or a table of contents for all lessons exported to Zendesk? AFAIK there is no way to generate a table of contents for forums posts.
Hi there Trevor
Yes If I could create a set of links to each of the Steps in a lesson that would suffice for my customers to quickly get to the lesson step they want.
Is it possible :)
Yes, you can add a list of steps in a lesson to an HTML template in ScreenSteps and the Zendesk template that you use to upload to Zendesk is just an HTML template.
If you aren't familiar with how templates work in ScreenSteps then take a look at the Customizing HTML Templates manual in our docs.
To add the lesson step navigation you would want to copy the Zendesk HTML template and add a NAVIGATION section to the template. The Anatomy of the Template File lesson look for the "The Navigation Section" section.
I'm attaching a modified Zendesk template to this comment that incorporates this. Unzip the folder and place it in your "./Templates/HTML/Blog" template folder. This lesson shows how to locate the template folder on your computer.
Wow that’s exactly what I was looking for :)
Thanks Trevor
Well done! It is as you say, this is a huge feature.
Only predicament is that the list of attachments at the bottom of the article is still shown. When the images are already shown in the article itself, it is not required to show the attachment list as well. It does not seem very professional to show the list at the bottom of the article. When manually adding inline images in Zendesk, it does not show the list of attachments.
My understanding is that this is a problem on Zendesk's side and not on ScreenSteps side, though. You have done an excellent job in using API facilities in Zendesk which are not well documented (or not documented at all) to get this working. I will get used to the list of attachments that are being shown :), rather than having to enter the articles by hand in zendesk. It is too painful to use the Zendesk online editor. Using Screensteps makes it much easier.
Thanks!
You're welcome. I'm glad you like the feature.
Thus far I haven't been able to find a way to hide the attachments like Zendesk does. Google Sites has the same problem. If you insert inline images using the web interface then the attachments are hidden, otherwise they are shown. We are in contact with Zendesk to see if there is a way to hide the attachments.
We have posted a new beta version that no longer lists images as attachments to a forum post. If you export a lesson that you already exported to a forum post, the forum post will be updated and the image attachments will no longer appear.
http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/downloads/beta.html
That’s great Trevor :)
Just to give you a snapshot of my now CSS3-ified exports to Zendesk , really using this a lot now for repeat support articles and user guides
That looks great Kevin!
Excellent Trevor. Very well done. Thanks!
Hi there folks
Oops that should be... (post above) I have a problem in 2.8.7. build 39 that after about a week the images published disappear.
See screenshot
Thanks
Yea Kevin the same thing happened to me. I wonder if Zendesk only keeps the images for a certain time period (approx a week) before it is removed from their servers? I had to re-export all the lessons again, but it is probably not very practical to export all the topics once a week :)
:) if that is the case if it cannot be changed in an expiry token then
why not have screensteps export all the images to say your own web host or s3 account (bucket) (very cheap) and the online article will always be linked to the images
And ..nice to have allow multiple export of lessons see screenshot to save time republishing a lesson one by one (screenshot enclosed)
We've contacted Zendesk to see what is happening. We'll let you know when we find something out.
Awesome Greg :)
Still waiting to hear back from Zendesk on this. I will let you know when we know something. In the meantime, we are preparing some copy to explain this new integration. What do you guys think of this?
Spend less time creating visual Zendesk knowledge base articles. ScreenSteps Desktop (Win/Mac) is a desktop tool for capturing images and authoring knowledge base articles. Once your article is finished, post it directly to Zendesk as a new knowledge base article or as a comment on an existing article. All images are automatically formatted and uploaded for you, saving you hours as you add to your knowledge base and respond to customer questions.
Any feedback or suggestions?
Greg
It sounds right to me. I can not think of anything that you have missed in the copy. It is a pity that in a single paragraph one can not do justice to how easy screensteps really makes the authoring of new articles. If zendesk users knew how much easier it is to author articles with screensteps, not many people would be using the zendesk online editor anymore :)
Agreed sounds great :) if you want me to rustle up a screencast . I am offering my services :D
Check how I have used ScreenSteps to prepare Reference Material for our site at http://StratSmart.com (we are currently in Beta): http://support.bluemangolearning.com/entries/264203-exporting-to-ze... . There are quite a bit that I can still add to the reference material, but ScreenSteps have saved me hours to prepare the documentation that we have in place currently. Any feedback for stratsmart.com would be greatly appreciated! :)
oops, my bad. I have posted the wrong link to the zendesk reference material that we have developed with ScreenSteps. Here is the correct link: http://stratsmart.zendesk.com/forums/58895-reference-guide
:) Pretty awesome what you can do very quickly in ScreenSteps.
I used to create screenshots and images in ScreenStep sand then by hand add thisinto Google Docs now I don't bother.
Great job there Willem
Thanks so much for the feedback guys.
@Kevin - A screencast would be fantastic. It would be great to see how you are using it as well.
@Willem - Looks great. Explaining the benefits of ScreenSteps has always been tough. Explaining it in a little paragraph is still something we are trying to get right. But, like you said, it really comes down to the time it saves you.
A little feedback on StartSmart. From reading your "What is StratSmart?" article, it seems that you are trying to address a pretty broad audience. We did this initially and had trouble getting traction. We found that the narrower we went with how we described the use of ScreenSteps the better traction we received. We decided to really focus on software documentation and customer support and it has worked pretty well for us. Your experience may be different but it might be something to think about.
Good luck with the new service. Launching a new product is exciting and exhausting :).
Thanks again for all of the kind feedback.
@Kevin Thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated.
@Greg Makes lots of sense what you say about narrowing the target audience. I will have to think long and hard which audience to target :)
A new beta has been posted that attaches images to forum posts again. There is currently no way to hide attachments without them being deleted by Zendesk. If Zendesk provides an API for hiding attachments in the future then we will update ScreenSteps to support this.
You can download the new beta here:
http://www.bluemangolearning.com/screensteps/downloads/beta.html
Awesome Trevor - just republishing now ;)
Although any chance we can multi-select lessons to publish :D or am I too late for Feature requests.
Regards
Kevin
We won't be adding any new features to this release. Being able to export multiple lessons to blob/wiki at once is something we will add at some point but I don't think it will be in 2.x.
The full release version of ScreenSteps 2.8.7 was released yesterday. You can get it by selecting Help > Check for Updates.
Thank you!!! I've been using ZenDesk for over a year now, and I have just started with ScreenSteps - love the integration capabilities!!
@Kevin - Just wanted to let you know that I went ahead and created a screencast. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZiavMO8Vdo
But if you would like to create one showing how you use ScreenSteps with Zendesk we would love to see it.
@Deborah - Glad you are enjoying it. If you are liking ScreenSteps and Zendesk it would be great if you could leave a comment on the Zendesk blog where they announced the integration:
http://www.zendesk.com/blog/see-things-more-clearly-with-screensteps-desktop-for-zendesk
@Greg LOL that’s funny I did not see the official release notes till this morning and have just encoded my short video too more froma user perspective and not really Sales :D
http://symfonip.tumblr.com/post/1488232671/zendesk-screensteps-marriage-made-with-zen
@Kevin - That is fantastic. Would it be OK if I linked to that from our blog? Might be cool if you added a link to it over at the Zendesk blog as well.
Sure no problemGreg , I have posted a comment on Zendesk too ;)