Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

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yaakovsimon
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Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by yaakovsimon »

New Flare user, and I'm working on a PoC using the new Flare Zendesk module.

The problem that I have is when I update a topic in Flare and then re-publish it to Zendesk - instead of updating the Zendesk article, a new article in Zendesk is created. This creates lots of manual cleanup in Zendesk and breaks existing links.

Anyone successfully tested this functionality? Desperately looking for help and solutions!

Thanks!
ChoccieMuffin
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by ChoccieMuffin »

Welcome to Flare, and welcome to the forums.

If you're a new user you probably have some access to Tech Support, so if you don't get any useful responses on here (which you might not as it's a recent addition) I suggest you contact MadCap to see what they say.
Started as a newbie with Flare 6.1, now using Flare 2023.
Report bugs at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx.
Request features at https://www.madcapsoftware.com/feedback ... quest.aspx
Chris B
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by Chris B »

I was having the same problem. I determined that the "Require Sign in" option under Guide Admin Settings must be disabled, i.e. the public must be able to access the help guide at least while you are publishing content. Once you are finished publishing you can enable the feature again. This stopped the duplication for me in that particular situation.

Hope this resolves the problem for you.
Chris B
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by Chris B »

I've had another duplicating post issue crop up with the Zendesk connector but I haven't quite sorted out where/what is causing the problem.

In my situation I have two Zendesk sites: one for production, and one sandbox site for testing. I have one project with one target and two destinations. I can build my target and publish it to the sandbox site, and I can do that repeatedly. Then I build my same target and publish to the production site and can do that repeatedly. Then I build my target and publish to the sandbox site and everything will be duplicated.

So the "article mapping" that is manged by the Zendesk connector must only be able to support connecting to one help center. Am I running into problems because I am using the same target and just changing destinations or can the zendesk connector only connect to one help center per computer?
yaakovsimon
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by yaakovsimon »

Chris - Thanks for the heads-up!

I am getting ready to switch from publishing to the Sandbox, to now publishing to production - good to know that I should focus on only a single Destination.

What is your workflow for publishing to different Sections in the Zendesk Help Center?

As far as I can tell - I need to do a separate Flare publish for each section. Do you know of a better way?

Thanks!
j9lehr
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by j9lehr »

I'm finding this limitation frustrating, too. Zendesk Connect only supports one section associated with a topic right now. I have two large and complex file sets to import, organize, and move to Zendesk Guide. I really don't want to create one Flare project per section.

I'm going to raise this to our account exec and support and hope for resolution in an upcoming release. In the meantime, I have to make the best of it. :flare: :idea:
Chris B
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by Chris B »

OK so i"ve had somewhat better luck with publishing to Zendesk using the Flare connector as of late.

A good thing to know is that the mapping of Zendesk articles to Flare topics is linked to the publishing destination, so don't delete the publishing destination and don't rename it.

Make sure that your TOC is setup properly. It needs to be a top-level book (without any topics), followed by another book (without any topics), and then your topics.

Top level books need to be named exactly the same as your categories in Zendesk
Second level books need to be named exactly the same as your sections in Zendesk


The trick to publishing into more than one section at a time is to have the Categories and Sections in Zendesk match the first and second levels of your TOC. The actual text must be identical between Zendesk and Flare. Meanwhile, the default category and default section are just used as fail safe areas where all topics that don't have a matching section or category will be placed.
Aviya Z
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by Aviya Z »

Chris B advised not to delete Categories and Sections from Zendesk. Unfortunately too late for me.

Now Categories and Sections are created, but articles are not published.

Any advice on what to do next would be gratefully received.
Chris B
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by Chris B »

@Aviya Z If you have the latest version of Flare and the Zendesk Connector your experience should be much more pleasant these days. If you have all the categories and sections already created you should just be able to publish again and all of the articles should publish. Do any of your articles publish? Are they publishing to a different category or section than expected? Check the default category and section as your articles may end up there if Flare can't find the category or section in Zendesk that matches.
Aviya Z
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by Aviya Z »

@Chris B Thanks. It’s somewhat more pleasant, but not working as I would expect. Some articles publish and my first port of call when they don’t appear where I expect is the default category and section.

My main problem now is that when I publish a new category, the articles in the previously added category automatically archive, but the category and sections remain. I am using different TOCs for each category and the same Target.

I don’t even know where to begin to troubleshoot this. Should I have one Flare TOC for all categories in Zendesk? There is no overlap of articles between the TOCs/categories that I am publishing.
Chris B
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by Chris B »

@aviya z if you are using multiple TOCs to publish to zendesk then you’ll also want to have multiple publishing destinations, one for each TOC, otherwise you’ll end up losing content. There is also an option in the publishing destination to remove outdated published files. I would make sure that is disabled.

Does that help any?
krcann
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by krcann »

Hi,

I'm struggling to understand the logic of when Flare creates a new Zendesk article and when it overwrites an existing article.

I need to publish one article at a time to Zendesk, to gradually replace existing content. Flare publishes any directly linked topics, some of which might be in the same category and section and some not.

How do the TOC, Destination, and Target interact to either create a new article or overwrite an existing article? I have cleared the "Remove Outdated Published Articles" option in my Destination.
Chris B
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Re: Bugs Publishing to Zendesk - Flare 2019

Post by Chris B »

@krcann the thing is, the only thing that really matters is the destination actually. Or perhaps the destination and the target together. But basically what is happening is that there is a madcap server out there that when you publish to zendesk, the Zendesk plugin actually reaches out to the madcap server and says "hey I want to publish some things on this zendesk site, do you know anything about this zendesk site?" and if your destination has published to zendesk before the zendesk server will say "oh yes I've published things there before, here's this map of topics and where I've published them"

Do take note that there is only one map per destination and it only remembers what it published the last time that it was used.

So if you want to publish one article at a time and have it remember where each article is, then I believe you'd have to create a whole lot of destinations, essentially one for each topic.

However, you may want to experiment with using the same destination/target/toc combo but condition out topics each time you publish. I have a hunch that it may remember where things are under those circumstances.

I believe that each destination gets one mapping file only and everytime you publish to that destination the mapping file is overwritten with the current location of things. If you publish to that one destination with multiple tocs, each time it will create entirely new articles because it doesn't remember anything more than last time it published things.

and it is very much keyed to the file name of the destination, so careful changing that in the future.

We really need an interface that allows us to map topics to zendesk articles, the way it works now is just a black box that we have no control over and no clear guidance on how it works.

Just remember the destination gets one mapping file on the server and it only remembers the last time it published something and that should make things a bit smoother for you.
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