Can the articles we're editing be automatically saved?

Looking forward to this answer 👀

Hi @racheal​, amazing news!

Thanks so much :)

OMG! What a great piece of news! 😍

Thank you for the attention and support

This feature not only salved my work, but also saved me (from myself 😂)

Hi @Racheal , 

Is the autosave still there? 
I accidentally just closed my tab, after reopening nothing saved.
Been in that article for more than an hour. 

Please advise

Medium has a nice like “Changes Saved” line at that top of the page that periodically disappears when content saved, and generally comes right back. If something goes wrong, a red “Problem saving content” message appears there (or words to that effect.)

Something like that would be nice. I’ve not seen any indication that content is saved at all--and, I, have have navigated to a new tab only to find that my changes were gone when I came back, because I neglected to ‘Save as Draft”.

Of course, I’m fairly new. It’s also possible that there was a “go to the draft” operation that I should have taken. In that case, I nice big, in-your-face message that “a draft version is available” would ne nice.
:__)

Hey @nick,

The autosave feature for articles in the knowledge base is automatically enabled and should still be active in all workspaces. I just tested this in my own test workspace and the article did in-fact autosave as expected.
The autosave feature ensures you don't lose your work, as it saves automatically every 30 seconds.

However I am sorry to hear you lost your work :( I hope recreating your article doesn’t take too long!

​​Hey ​​​​​@ericMB! 

I love these ideas! And I agree, some feedback would be very nice to have. I am happy to forward these onto our product team 😁

For again, we have a new Product Wishlist you can submit feature ideas to which ideas can be upvoted and then eventually reviewed by our product team!

You can find the Wishlist here → https://community.intercom.com/ideas

Thank you for your input!

Great to hear the ideas have made it into the pipeline for discussion.
:__)

An interesting wrinkle occurred where I thought I had lost work, but hadn’t really.

The issue was with an unpublished article. I closed the tab accidentally, and when I looked for it in the KB folder, it wasn’t there. I was very afraid that it was gone, given the amount of work I had done.

Thinking the article might have been created in a different folder by accident, I went to the top-level Content folder and searched for it. It was there, all right, and in the right folder. 

(I suspect that was an auto-saved version of the article. I publish nearly everything, because that’s the only way to find it when attempting to link to it.)

The selector at the top of the folder page says “All Types”, and I have no filters defined, so its not clear to me why the draft-article wasn’t listed. (I assume that drafts are typically listed, so Auto-save makes the most sense here.)

Hopefully, there is some grist for the UI mill here. Or for the support team, to help others who have “lost" material. 

Here’s a sequence in which Auto-Save failed:

1. Open an article and make changes.
2. While there, change the category it is displayed in.
3. In another tab, drag the article to the folder that matches the category.
4. The changes are lost.

I now realize that after scrolling down the right-hand column to change the category,
I should have scrolled down to the bottom to change the KB folder.

For sanity, I keep folders and categories matched, until I find a reason to do something different.
I obviously used the wrong mechanism to make the change. But if the system is going to throw
away my edits, it should either give a warning or prevent the move.

Fortunately, I didn’t lose much, so I took the time to send this note...

And another one. I just lost work again. (Where is this auto-save feature I’ve been hearing about? Am I down rev?)

I was typing edits into an article. My fat fingers hit some combination of keys (and know not which), and the message “preparing article for display” message (or its equivalent) flashed on the screen.

I was then looking at the original article, minus my edits. (Perhaps I hit ctrl-R or some such and refreshed the page?)

I tried the Back button, to know avail., I tried opening the article in another tab. No go.
If my changes were saved somewhere, where did they go???

What gives? I reported a serious bug on this thread yesterday afternoon--and the workaround, iirc. I still don’t see it. Is it stuck in moderation?

Note:
I had an early post stuck in moderation. I think it’s a forum bug. Here’s the sequence that may have precipitated it:

1. Create a post and send it.
   It’s on it’s way to moderation, but you can  see it on your screen.
2. Realize there is a typo or poor wording.
3. Being a writer, you are compelled to change it.
   So edit the post and make the change.

At this point there are two versions of the post. I suspect the first one gets approved, but the second is more recent. It sits in moderation, but isn’t shown to the moderator(s) because “it has already been posted”.

That’s just a guess, but it would explain why some posts I’ve made have never been seen!
(As King of the Afterthought, I do that sequence a lot… :__)

Damn it! Work lost again! This happens ALL too frequently:

1. I’m editing an article.
2. I want to check a different folder to see what I’ve written on article there.
3. Without thinking, and without publishing or saving a draft, I click on that folder, 
4. Realizing I may just have lost work, I hit the browser back button.
5. Sure enough, the work is lost.

Where the hell is this auto-save I keep hearing about???
Is there some special place I have to go??

For God’s sake, IF CLICKING IN THE NAV BAR IS GOING TO COST ME WORK,
                 THEN DON”T DISPLAY THE NAV BAR WHEN I”M EDITING

or disable it
or give me an auto-save that actually automatically saves
or tell me where to go to find same
or SOMETHING...

Yet another alternative:

• With unsaved changes in an article window, open Nav Bar selections in a new tab

For the second time, I presented a detailed sequence in which work was lost. 
For the second time, I have yet to see that post appear in this forum.
The post above, however, (an addendum to that one), appeared in a heart beat.

Is moderation working reliably?? Or are bug reports being filtered out?

Clearly, I am unable to report detailed cases where auto-save fails.
But at this juncture I would like state for the record, you do not have an auto-save feature.
(I think it worked for me once, iirc. But there have been 3 or 4 failures.
So “Auto-saves sometimes” is the best I can say.

Trying once more, with a short message.
Maybe longer ones are getting trapped by a spam filter.)

1. Open an article. Make changes.
2. Click in the nav bar.
3. Realize you shouldn’t have. Click browser Back button
4. Work is lost

So close!

1. I clicked the nav bar again to see if I the article I need to reference exists, or if I need to create it.
2. Immediately after, I realize “oh no, I’m about to lose work again.”
3. Instead of clicking the browser back button--a sure-fire way to lose work--I click in the nav bar and select the article I was working on.
4. Huzzah! The changes are there! And the Edit button is there, instead of Publish.
5. And there is a yellow warning saying the article is being ingested. Great!
6. But the warning doesn’t go away. I click refresh, and the changes are gone again.

After refreshing, there is no Open Draft button. Maybe it was there before. Not sure. (I suspect it may have been.)

One of the disconcerting things about the interface is that when you revisit an article, you see the published version, rather than the draft version. That is unlike any editing experience ever, in a decades-long career of editing stuff!

So it just msy be that I missed the final step in the Auto-Save Recovery Incantation.
But it seems pretty clear that the magical incantation needs to be thoroughly documented!

USAGE TIP:

I have finally begun training myself to:

1. Keep one tab open at left for the navigation column
2. Always open an article for editing in a new tab
3. Before closing that tab, make sure the [Edit] button is showing.
4. Never ever use the navigation column in an article-editing tab.
   It’s tempting you use it after finishing edits on an article, but once it’s a habit
   it’s a small step to using it while you’re editing, and losing work in the process.

So far, the policy of never using the navigation bar unless I’m in the leftmost tab is keeping from losing work.

Note:
The procedure above works when editing an existing article.
For a new article:

1. In the nav column (ideally in the leftmost tab), find the destination folder 
2. Right-click on that folder and open it in a new tab
3. Go to that tab and click [New Content]

It’s a few extra clicks, but I am no longer losing any work!

I just lost work again. I cannot begin to tell you how annoying that is.

Even with the procedure I established above, I managed to click the nav bar in the window of the article I was editing. After working in that window for a while,. the changes that in were previously in progress were lost.

Please tell me how auto-save prevents that problem?
Am I doing something wrong when I try to recover my work?

Yet another way to lose data. (Are we having fun yet?):

1. Edit an article
2. Switch to the application window to explore a bit and/or verify UI labels
3. Switch back to the article-editing window

However:

1. With many windows open, only a little bit of the editing window is visible, 
2. I could see the upper left corner, so I clicked there.
3. Somehow (not sure how) the click winds up in the Navigation pane (I think)
   (What exactly happened, I do not know. I would have sworn I was above the nav pane,
    and when the window came up, I was in the right folder, looking at the right article)
4. But even though I am looking at the right article, it seems that it has been refreshed,
   and my changes are lost.
5. Clicking the browser back button gets me to the original version of the article as well.
6. If there is some option that will let me get to “auto-saved” version, I have yet to discover it.
7. The work was simply lost.

SO CLOSE:

1. Out of habit, clicked in the Nav bar once again. (Drat!)
2. This time, instead of hitting the Back button, I went back to the folder I was in and clicked on the article.
3. Yay! I was so pleased to see my edits, right there. 
4. But then I clicked [Edit]. Big mistake. My changes were now lost once again.

It would be really nice if someone were to respond with some useful insight for recovering the version I can see right there on my screen.

In the meantime, the current recovery procedure seems to be:

1. Do not click the browser [Back] button. 
2. Instead, re-visit the article you were editing.
3. While there your recent edits are visible. Copy them.
4. Now [Edit] the article, and paste in our changes.

If there is a better recovery procedure, I’d love to hear it.
Right now, this is the best I’ve got.

And again. 

(This is getting repetitive, I know. But I’m working to create a definitive list of the many ways it is possible to lose your work--gleaned, unfortunately, from hard-won experience.

If nothing else, maybe we can put an end to the “we have auto-save” response that is turning to out to be--in this writer’s eyes, at least--an absolute falsehood. Then, with a clear understanding of the problem, perhaps we can progress to a solution.)

This time:

1. I was working on an article.
2. I wanted to change the name of the folder it was in.
3. The first time, I was successful.
4. The second time, I was careless. A mouse slip caused me to click on the name of the folder instead of the dots icon at the end of the line.
5. I was now in the same folder, looking at the same article. But my changes were lost.