Hey @brett e 👋 thanks so much for submitting this feature wishlist. I'll tag in our @Product Wishlist group to record this for inclusion in the feedback report I submit to our product team on a monthly basis.
I do have some follow-up questions for you, specifically around "Log in directly to the help centre to "authenticate" users, without having to load Intercom in your app first". How would you distinguish this from the existing setting which allows you to hide articles for logged-in users?
Hi @eric f11, thanks for getting back to me and appreciate the wishlist inclusion.
Re your question, yep, I didn't explain that well. For context, we currently make use of public articles, private articles for users, and even private articles for certain users (e.g. internal only).
For our direct customers, they log in to our app which then loads the Intercom chat bubble. From there they can access our help centre and because they have logged in and loaded Intercom, are able to access any articles restricted to users. If they do not log in to our app first then they cannot access those restricted articles. The UX in this scenario is not the best.
Additionally, we often need to have non-customers access restricted articles. One example is developers that are building integrations on behalf of our customers. Ideally, we want to be able to provide them with a username/password combo that they can use to access those articles, without having to set them up in our app. We use Auth0 as our authentication provider and so, as a workaround, we have a dedicated login site that Intercom links to which authenticates users and loads the Intercom widget, then redirects back to the help centre. It works, but is again not a great UX, requires maintenance of yet another site, and is prone to timing issues (redirect before widget fully loaded).
It could be that we have tackled this the wrong way and perhaps you have a better suggestion, however, this is where it would be great if the help centre would allow direct login, using an external authentication provider. Supporting OAuth2 for this scenario would be a great first step and would cover many scenarios.
Hope this helps,
Brett
Is there an update on:
- Customisation of the "You can try sending us a message or logging in at <x>" message.
This is really frustrating as people send me constantly "the link you sent me is broken" and I have to explain "well you need to login first"...
+1 on
- Syntax highlighting in code blocks.
- More options in the editor, such as better tables, markdown support, images from links, and generally more formatting options.
The formatting defaults are also quite poor, for example the spacing under a heading is far larger than the spacing above a heading, so I have to manually add a new line above every heading just to make the spacing match above and below.
Hi folks
We use Articles as our help centre, and for the most part, it does the job. It also has the benefit of being useable in Messenger etc. We do however keep running into shortcomings and hoping that either there is a roadmap we can refer, or someone may know the likelihood of the following feature requests:
- Customise look at feel of help centre with CSS
- Log in directly to the help centre to "authenticate" users, without having to load Intercom in your app first.
- More options in the editor, such as better tables, markdown support, images from links, and generally more formatting options for Winter Park tint.
- Security for an entire collection, not just article by article.
- Syntax highlighting in code blocks.
- Customisation of the "You can try sending us a message or logging in at <x>" message.
I have more in mind, but this is a good start. We are trying to work out if Intercom is going invest in Articles and bring it up to scratch with the other products, or whether we need to look elsewhere.
Thanks in advance
Cheers,
Brett
Intercom Articles handles basic help center needs, but many features like custom CSS, direct login/authentication, richer editor options, collection-level security, syntax highlighting, and message customization are not currently supported. If these are essential, you may need to consider alternative help center platforms, as Intercom hasn’t confirmed plans to fully address these limitations.
