Adding Help Center

Help Center byZendesk Guideprovides your customers with a web-based, self-service knowledge base. You can use the Support SDK to show localized content in your Help Center, filter its contents to be more helpful, and use it as a jumping off point for creating a ticket.

TheHelpCenterActivityadds Help Center to your Android app.

If you need to build your own UIs, the SDK also has an API provider that gives you access to your organization's Help Center. SeeHelpCenterProviderin the Support SDK Javadocs.

Topics covered in this section:

• Prerequisites
• UI overview
• Show Help Center
• Filter articles by category
• Filter articles by section
• Filter articles by label
• Show a single article
• Configure the ticket form
• Disable ticket creation
• Disable article voting
• Using Support SDK with Answer Bot SDK
• Overriding device locale

Prerequisites

• A Zendesk admin has activated Help Center in Zendesk Support. SeeActivating Help Centerin the Support Help Center

• One or more articles have been published in the knowledge base

• A Zendesk admin has enabledEnable Guidefor your Android app in Zendesk Support. SeeConfiguring the SDK in Zendesk Supportin the Support Help Center

• You have a theme in your Android app which inherits fromTheme.MaterialComponents. If inheriting fromTheme.AppCompat, some of the UI elements inHelpCenterActivitywill display incorrectly. See定制的外观for more information.

UI overview

The default UI of theHelpCenterActivitylooks as follows:

To change the look and feel of the UI, see定制的外观. The UI doesn't inherit any styling from the web-based version of your Help Center.

The UI is localized in 33 languages and selects the appropriate language based on the device locale. The locale must exist in your Help Center and in your Support account localization settings. The articles in your Help Center must be localized to view them in another language.

Tapping an article in the list shows the article content:

If the user can't find an answer in Help Center, they have the option of tapping a Plus (+) button to open a ticket form:

To configure the activity's ticket form, seeConfigure the ticket form of other SDK activities.

You can disable the ticket form if you don't want it, or if you preferadding a separate ticket form.

Show Help Center

Use theshow()method of theHelpCenterActivitybuilder. Example:

             

              
HelpCenterActivity.builder().show(MyActivity.this);
             

SeeshowinHelpCenterActivity builder.

Note: Above a certain number of articles, the SDK starts to limit how many are fetched and displayed out of performance reasons. If this occurs, the recommended approach is to use the various filters on categories, sections, or labels that we provide to limit and control the amount of results.
SeeKnown issues.

Filter articles by category

Use thewithArticlesForCategoryIds()method of theHelpCenterActivitybuilder. Example:

             

              
HelpCenterActivity.builder().withArticlesForCategoryIds(112233L,223344L).show(this);
             

SeewithArticlesForCategoryIdsinHelpCenterActivity builder.

Filter articles by section

Use thewithArticlesForSectionIds()method of theHelpCenterActivitybuilder. Example:

             

              
HelpCenterActivity.builder().withArticlesForSectionIds(112233L,223344L).show(this);
             

SeewithArticlesForSectionIdsinHelpCenterActivity builder.

Filter articles by label

Use thewithLabelNames()method of theHelpCenterActivitybuilder. Example:

             

              
HelpCenterActivity.builder().withLabelNames("android","android_o").show(this);
             

SeewithLabelNamesinHelpCenterActivity builder.

Show a single article

To open a specific article, get the article's id, then start theViewArticleActivitywith its builder.

             

              
ViewArticleActivity.builder(123L).show(this);
             

SeeViewArticleActivity builder.

Configure the ticket form

You can configure the ticket form of theHelpCenterActivityso that each new ticket has a common subject, common tags, or common file attachments. You can also set common values for one or more custom ticket fields, or set the custom ticket form to use agent interface in the Zendesk Support.

First, configure the ticket form with theconfig()method of theRequestActivitybuilder. Seeconfigin the RequestActivity reference. Theconfig()method returns aConfigurationobject.

Second, pass theConfigurationobject to theshowmethod of theHelpCenterActivitybuilder.

Example:

             

              
Configuration requestActivityConfig=RequestActivity.builder().withRequestSubject("Android ticket").withTags("android","mobile").config();HelpCenterActivity.builder().show(MyActivity.this,requestActivityConfig);
             

SeeconfiginRequestActivity builder.

Disable ticket creation

The Help Center has floating action buttons that the user can tap to open a UI to create a ticket. The button is visible by default in both the Help Center article list view and article view. You can hide the button in one or both places.

Disable ticket creation in the article list view

Use thewithContactUsButtonVisible()and thewithShowConversationsMenuButtonEnabled()methods of theHelpCenterActivitybuilder. Example:

             

              
HelpCenterActivity.builder().withContactUsButtonVisible(false).withShowConversationsMenuButton(false).show(this);
             

SeewithContactUsButtonVisibleinHelpCenterActivity builder.

Disable ticket creation in the article view

Create a config object, then pass it toHelpCenterActivity.

             

              
Configuration articleConfig=ViewArticleActivity.builder().withContactUsButtonVisible(false).config();HelpCenterActivity.builder().show(this,articleConfig);
             

SeewithContactUsButtonVisibleandconfiginViewArticleActivity builder.

Disable ticket creation in both views

Combine thewithContactUsButtonVisible()method with aConfigurationobject from theViewArticleActivity:

             

              
Configuration articleConfig=ViewArticleActivity.builder().withContactUsButtonVisible(false).config();HelpCenterActivity.builder().withContactUsButtonVisible(false).show(this,articleConfig);
             

SeewithContactUsButtonVisibleandconfiginViewArticleActivity builder.

Disable article voting

The Help Center article voting feature in the Support SDK can be enabled and disabled by a Zendesk admin in Zendesk Support. It is enabled by default. SeeConfiguring the SDK in Zendesk Supportin the Support Help Center.

This article voting is entirely separate to resolutions and rejections inAnswer Bot.

Using Support SDK with Answer Bot SDK

Note:Zendesk has renamed our bot capabilities. Answer Bot is now Zendesk bots. For more information on this change, seethis announcement.

Answer Botby Zendesk provides a powerful mechanism for deflecting tickets before they reach your agents. The mobile SDK for Answer Bot is currently in an Early Access Program.

If you haveAnswer Bot 1.0.0and Support SDK 2.3.0 (or above) present in your app, then by default the contact button inHelpCenterActivityandViewArticleActivityopens Answer Bot. You can disable this behavior in both activities and direct the user straight to ticket creation.

To disable the deflection to Answer Bot in the Help Center article list view:

             

              
HelpCenterActivity.builder().withDeflectionEnabled(false).config();
             

To disable it in the Help Center article view:

             

              
ViewArticleActivity.builder().withDeflectionEnabled(false).config()
             

If you want to disable it in both screens, provide both configurations when starting the SDK.

Overriding device locale

If you want to manually specify what language to use when fetching Help Center content, you can do so as follows:

             

              
支持.INSTANCE.setHelpCenterLocaleOverride(locale);
             

This applies to all Help Center content fetched with the UI and providers, meaning that only the articles, sections, and categories from this locale are fetched. This does not update the mobile UI elements. The override ignores the device locale and the languages configured in the Zendesk Guide admin console. Overriding with an unsupportedLocaleor no content for that locale results in a "Unable to connect" banner.