Back up your Help Center articles at the click of a button!

Hey @Andrew Rowan

Thanks for giving kBackup a try. 

There is no limit of any sort. However, kBackup can currently only back up articles that are available publicly. So any that have an auth wall will not be backed up.

Hello Felix,

I downloaded kBackup and want to use it for our Help Center (aka Knowledge Base) backup.

I entered Domain, email, and password as instructed. Just that it keeps saying the username and password are incorrect. Yet, I can use the same username and password to login to my Zendesk Guide and Support. BTW, my OS is Windows. 

Any ideas as to what could be the cause? 

P.S. The exe is dated 2018. Version 0.9.2.

@Sabrina Kwok thanks for reaching out.

Are you using an SSO account or a Zendesk local account? 

Please note that SSO accounts aren't supported at this time so this may be why you are receiving such an error.

Hi 512155956,

I see 504 published articles in our help center but after using kBackup it's only showing 131 items in my backup folder. What might be the issue? Thanks.

Hi @Rune Jherd Matas,

Thanks for reaching out.

kBackup only takes a backup of publicly available KBs. This may be why you are seeing a difference in the number of published vs. the number of backed-up KBs.

I just want to back up a category in our help center. Any way to specify that?

Thank you.

@Rune Jherd Matas

There's no way to specify only a specific category. kBackup doesn't support granularity in that regard.

Just wanted to add my thanks for a great tool. We have SSO and so Felix pointed out that I'd have to have a non-SSO login. Once I got that kBackup worked like a charm. We have (for now) a pretty simple configuration, so I just needed to get "Help Center" and not worry about anything else. But over 800 articles and 8200+ images all on my desktop now (well in a "Backup..." folder) so I can cull articles and images.

Thanks!

Donna

@Donna Jadis thanks for your feedback, glad kBackup could help!

Hi Felix,

I just used this tool for the first time, and it has positively made my day! An image folder! YAY! Thank you so much!

@JACQUELINE LEHR that's great to hear. I am glad that kBackup could help you :)

Hi @Felix Stubner this looks like a great concept I have two questions:

1) do you have a Mac version yet?

2) about the security check for the user being in the Zendesk domain: does this allow only admin-level users to create a backup, or would it also be possible for an end user with a login to do it?

@Marci Thanks for reaching out.

1) Not at this time. I am considering building a cross-platform version on a different tech stack though, but nothing concrete at this time. If Mac is your only option, there are some free software available that will let you run Windows programs such as Wine.

2) The app simply checks whether a user account exists within the Zendesk domain. If it does, it will pull any articles that the account has access to. 

Hope that helps to answer your questions. Let me know if there's anything else.

@Felix Stubner I had a trouble with the download but it's solved by using sub-domain as you suggested. Thank you very much for your quick and kind support! 

@Taro Koike No problem at all, glad I could help!

@Felix Stubner: Can you tell me how the file names that I get running kBackup are derived?

The article files often have "..." so I'm guessing that you're chopping the name at some point. What can you tell me about the image files? They can have ridiculously long names and do not seem to cut off the names like is done with the .HTML files.

How do these names relate to what Zendesk is actually storing?

Thanks,

Donna

Hey, @Donna Jadis thanks for reaching out.

Regarding the "..." that is correct. I am chopping the names as in some cases I encountered issues that resulted in the file path of the saved file being too long for windows to do anything with.

For images, I saved them as is as that is their actual file name as presented in the URL. In a later rework, I intended to generate the HTML output files to include the images. So it's primarily to retain the original file name. Articles don't technically have a file name so I could generate one during the backup.

So the HTML files use the Article's ID. That is the bolded part in this URL https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203690806-Using-views-to-manage-ticket-workflow.

For images, these are stored in an images subdirectory in the format of <article_id>_<filename_of_the_file_in_url>. I chose this format to relate the images to a particular article so that it's easier to understand which images belong to which article.

I hope that sheds some light on your queries.

Hi @Felix Stubner,

This is exactly what I need :) and hoping you can help with an issue at the sign-in window.

I am an Admin in Zendesk.

When I try to login it complains about the password.

I'm presuming it's because our passwords are managed on a third-party system which we used to sign in i.e. Google.  

Hi 380295042333,

Thanks for reaching out. I have received reports from other users of similar issues. It is likely due to external authentication being used.

I am working on a patch at the moment that would allow users to use an API Token instead but am running into some trouble with Windows SmartScreen. It's blocking my app as I haven't typically signed it with a code-signing certificate. I am still trying to find a solution to this as code-signing certificates can be quite costly. Please feel free to email me directly at felix.stubner(at)gmail(dot)com and I can send you the preview build.

@Felix Stubner This tool literally saved me so much time. You really deserve tacos for life!

@Samantha Chavez very glad to hear that kBackup was able to help! :)

Hi@... Im having the same issue with the error saying the username or password is incorrect. Im the account owner, and we dont use any external party for authentication. Could you help please?

Hi, @david202 thanks for reaching out. I've gone ahead and responded to your email. Feel free to follow up with me on that.

Thanks very much for your help Felix - all sorted. Much appreciated.

 I'm having the same issue with the error saying the username or password is incorrect. I'm the account owner, and we don't use any external party for authentication. Could you help please?