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I'm maybe in a good place to add here and I'll try to remove any bias. I used to sell Zendesk (but not anymore) and I know am a onboarding specialist for Paligo.
I think Zendesk is excellent for delivery, but only if you can live with the 3 levels of Category/Section/Article. If you need more levels, then ZD is not for you. It depends on your content architecture (or what you are willing to compromise). They have a web widget that's easy to implement for CSH if it will work well for you. I have a method to add another Category level if that helps. I like the term Tier 0 for self-service and there's lots of advantages of putting the content into the support platform (I can expand if you want to).
The other area Zendesk falls is the authoring experience. You have to remember Zendesk is primarily a support platform with a help center they have invested in. But it's not going to be a HAT, CCMS or anything of the sort.
Paligo has a Zendesk integration, as Robert mentioned, and that works for a lot of companies. You can have a professional authoring CCMS environment for managing your content and then click a button to push it into Zendesk. So you then have the authoring you need and the delivery in Zendesk (if it fits for you). You could also make HTML5 and PDFs. For example, there are a number of Paligo companies who have multiple versions of their output for different situations.
I've tried to be objective here. But if someone wants more details on Paligo, please let me know.
Best regards,
Steve Wiseman
Isr +972-522-341-957
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+swiseman=contextengage -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+swiseman=contextengage -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Sarah Lee Hauslinger
Sent: Friday, February 9, 2018 6:02 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Online help with Zendesk
Itâs not really purpose-built for product help, and although it can be made to work, the workflow would be painful (to put it diplomatically) and context-sensitivity is not supported. We looked into it a year ago and ruled it out pretty quickly.
On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 6:06 PM Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com>
wrote:
> I'm publishing into Zendesk from Paligo (not for use as online help,
> just for the convenience of customers searching Zendesk).
>
> Zendesk's built-in tools are rudimentary.
>
> One particularly awful limitation: no bulk operations. If you have a
> hundred topics to publish or delete, you have to do the same series of
> actions a hundred times.
>
> On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 1:18 PM, Suzette Leeming
> <suzette -dot- leeming -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> > Thanks to those who responded to my question about using Wordpress
> > for online help
> >
> > Is anyone using Zendesk? I know Slack uses it, but I'm wondering if
> > it's capable of complex user documentation. Anyone?
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Sarah Lee Hauslinger
510-318-2735
slhauslinger -at- gmail -dot- com
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