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Intercom KB needs article search

Related products:Knowledge & Help Center
  • October 3, 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 46 views

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I have a small number of articles, but to change “characteristics” to “attributes”, I am going to have to open each of them and do a browser search for that word. That situation becomes rapidly untenable as the number of article grows.

As far as I can tell, the current KB search only examines the title and summary-descriptor. That’s fine for end users. Most of the time, that’s all they’ll need. But for the creators of the knowledge base, the KB must act more like a publication system--in this regard, at least.

(It does a fine job with link management, which is no small feat. Bit this functionality is important, too. You don’t need it all the time, but when you need it, you really need it.)

Perhaps there is an AI tool that can be employed to walk the article-tree and find relevant articles? 

For extra credit, I would recommend functionality I once implemented for a now-defunct documentation system:

  1. Allow replacement text to be specified
  2. Allow system-wide “replace all” but only after checking 27 times to be sure that’s what they really want to do
  3. Visit each article that contains the text, in edit mode
  4. Allow “replace all” within the article
  5. Allow a simple replace-and-go-to-next-instance (same article or next article) 
  6. Allow a revised-replacement
  7. Allow further revisions to the article, as long it’s already open for editing.
    - Sometimes, wording needs to be changed to accommodate the replacement text.
    - Sometimes, necessary revisions leap out at you while viewing the text. (It’s easier to do it in the moment, instead of having to take a note, remember to act on it later, find the article again, and then make the change.)

CORRECTION:
Intercom does have article search. (Thank God!). It wasn’t easy to find in the Help system, and I was oblivious to it in the KB pages, but it’s there. Right at the top of the folder listing, there is a “search for text” box. (Too cool! Searches within that folder, I think.) 

For a global search, go to the top-level container (Content), and do the search there. Yay! That at least makes it possible to find all occurrences. (You then visit each article in turn, click Edit, do a browser-search for the term in question, and type in a replacement. Not exactly convenient, but it is at least possible to get the job done.

(BTW: Thanks for listening! :__)

5 replies

Jennifer K
Intercom Team
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  • Intercom Team
  • October 8, 2024
Idea merged into:

All the votes from this idea have been transferred.

Jennifer K
Intercom Team
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  • Intercom Team
  • October 8, 2024
The following idea has been merged into this idea:

All the votes have been transferred into this idea.

Jennifer K
Intercom Team
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  • Intercom Team
  • October 8, 2024

Hi @ericMB 

Jennifer here from Intercom

Thanks for this feedback, I’ll pass this on to our Product Team 🚀

Whenever we do release new features, we announce them on the Product Changes page, so I would recommend keeping an eye there.


Jennifer K
Intercom Team
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  • Intercom Team
  • October 8, 2024
NewDiscussion ongoing

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  • Author
  • Active User
  • October 8, 2024

Whenever we do release new features, we announce them on the Product Changes page, so I would recommend keeping an eye there.

 

Thanks for passing on the idea, Jennifer.

But checking update pages for some 20 or 30 products I might be using at any given time isn’t my idea of a great way to spend an afternoon!

Is there a way to subscribe to a product-changes email? That would be friendlier.
:__) 

 


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Hi me too, I can’t wait for this. I have a huge number of articles. I have transferred them all over from Freshdesk. The internal search to edit and update language is crazy.

I am regularly having to update the language in multiple articles and the way the search in the internal Content management area only searches by title and tags. Surely the internal ie not public facing area should be the one with the detailed word search across all content for this purpose?

Search works exactly as I need it to in the public Help Centre but this is hard with limited access articles and having to use incognito windows and clear browsing data all the time to see full knowledge base. However the way the search functions in content makes it impossible to update language when say a product Plan name changes. I would have thought a find and replace feature would be a basic. Or at the very least a full text search. using “specific phrase”  would be the most useful. 

So I have to search in incognito in public help. identify the aricles then open them all again in Content and edit there. Not a good process. A more detailed search internally would really help. Thanks