Migrating Madcap Flare Snippets to Zendesk | Community
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Migrating Madcap Flare Snippets to Zendesk

  • June 4, 2021
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Steve40

We are in the process of migrating an existing knowledgebase (originally developed in Madcap Flare, containing about 600 articles) into Zendesk Guide.

The content blocks feature was recommended to us as a direct replacement for the "snippets" single-sourcing option in Flare. However, the current implementation of content blocks falls somewhat short of what Flare provided.

To get the kind of functionality we need, here's our content block wishlist.

Content blocks:

  • need to be able to contain anything that a regular article contains, including images and tables
  • need to have the same source code edit feature as regular articles (being able to apply CSS classes doesn't go far enough)
  • need to come in two flavors: block and inline. The "block" version would display the content block in a new paragraph between any existing blocks of text or other content blocks. The "inline" version would simply appear as part of an existing paragraph. This would allow short pieces of text to be inserted (without paragraph breaks) into existing text blocks.
  • need to be nestable (that is, a content block should be able to contain another content block, possibly to a limited number of levels)
  • need to be global by default (changes to the content of any content block should affect every displayed instance), but if a content block is switched off in a specific article, the content of the block becomes part of that article and any changes to it will not affect the original content block. 

Content block management:

  • needs to allow content blocks to be grouped into some sort of folder system. This would allow content blocks that have some sort of implicit relationship to be stored together rather than in one enormous list.
  • need to be searchable by block name or by content. As there is potential for dozens if not hundreds of content blocks in a guide, they need to be as easy to find as possible.
  • need to show article usage. When displaying a content block in the block manager, it should be clear which article (if any) a block is used in so that it's clear which articles might be affected by an change to the block (or if the block can be deleted without any impact).

      1 reply

      Katarzyna13

      Hi @Steve Moss,

      Thank you so much for your feedback. Content Blocks are still in EAP and even after the GA, we'll be working on improving this feature to make it a really powerful tool. I'll try to summarize below what we are thinking about 

      Content blocks:

      • We'll be working on adding images and tables support in CBs for the remainder of this year, we know how important it is for our customers.
      • need to have the same source code edit feature as regular articles - for now, at least it won't be possible to access the source code of CBs, this is due to the technical choices we had to make to make sure the reusability works well, but wouldn't rule out revisiting this problem in the future
      • we are thinking about developing some form of "placeholder" feature at some point that would allow to quickly change, replace and reuse small snippets of text, e.g. brand name so thank you for sharing your feedback.
      • need to be nestable (that is, a content block should be able to contain another content block, possibly to a limited number of levels) - it's the first time I hear about this kind of need, would you mind sharing an example of how would you use this functionality to let me understand it better?
      • need to be global by default (changes to the content of any content block should affect every displayed instance), but if a content block is switched off in a specific article, the content of the block becomes part of that article and any changes to it will not affect the original content block. - this functionality already exists. Content blocks are "global" by default, the changes you apply to one block are visible in all the instances of the block after republishing the articles. It's also possible to unlink a content block from within an article and make changes to its body that don't affect any of the other blocks.

      Content block management - we are planning to enable it to our EAP customers very soon. The first version will allow the Admins to see a list of all the content blocks and the articles where they are being used as well as edit them and delete them. The following iteration will add among others a search bar. Can you tell me a little bit more about your grouping into folders need? 

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