Sections

This guide covers how to create, edit, and manage Zendesk sections at GitLab. Administrators should review the Administrator tasks section.

Understanding sections

What are sections

As per Zendesk:

Sections contain related articles.

Essentially, they are items used to subdivide categories into related groups.

The knowledge center uses a three-level structure:

• Categories (top level) - Organize major topic areas, documented on categories page
• Sections (middle level) - Subdivide categories into related groups, documented on this page
• Articles (content level) - Individual help articles, documented on articles page

How we manage sections

We currently manage all sections within Zendesk itself.

Note: Section management via sync repos (similar to categories) is planned for future implementation in FY27.

Current sections in use

• Zendesk Global
  • Under the About GitLab Support category:
    • Support Pages
  • Under the Knowledge articles category:
    • Administrative
    • Agile Planning
    • AI
    • CI/CD Pipeline & Runner
    • CoreDevOps
    • Errors
    • How-To
    • Infrastructure
    • Kubernetes
    • Licensing & Subscription
    • Migrations
    • Observability
    • Performance
    • R&D RPM
    • Security
    • Security and Compliance
    • Troubleshooting
    • Upgrades
    • Other Articles
    • Templates
• Zendesk US Government
  • Under the About GitLab Support
    • Support Pages
  • Under the Knowledge articles
    • Administrative
    • Agile Planning
    • AI
    • CI/CD Pipeline & Runner
    • CoreDevOps
    • Errors
    • How-To
    • Infrastructure
    • Kubernetes
    • Licensing & Subscription
    • Migrations
    • Observability
    • Performance
    • R&D RPM
    • Security
    • Security and Compliance
    • Troubleshooting
    • Upgrades
    • Other Articles
    • Templates

Creating a section as a non-admin

For the creation of a section, please create a Feature Request issue (as it will require manual intervention by the Customer Support Operations team).

Editing a section as a non-admin

For the modification of a section, please create a Feature Request issue (as it will require manual intervention by the Customer Support Operations team).

Deleting a section as a non-admin

To request the deactivation of a section, please create a Feature Request issue (as it will require manual intervention by the Customer Support Operations team).

Administrator tasks

Viewing sections in Zendesk

To see the current sections in Zendesk:

1. Navigate to the knowledge center dashboard for the Zendesk instance
   • For the primary brand:
     • Zendesk Global (production)
     • Zendesk Global (sandbox)
     • Zendesk US Government (production)
     • Zendesk US Government (sandbox)
   • For the internal brand:
     • Zendesk Global (production)
     • Zendesk Global (sandbox)
     • Zendesk US Government (production)
     • Zendesk US Government (sandbox)
2. Click the Arrange content icon on the left side
   • For the primary brand:
     • Zendesk Global (production)
     • Zendesk Global (sandbox)
     • Zendesk US Government (production)
     • Zendesk US Government (sandbox)
   • For the internal brand:
     • Zendesk Global (production)
     • Zendesk Global (sandbox)
     • Zendesk US Government (production)
     • Zendesk US Government (sandbox)
3. Click the name of the category the sections are within

Creating a section

For the creation of a section, you will need to create a MR in the sync repo. The exact changes being made will depend on the request itself. A starting template you can use would be:

---
---
name: 'Your section name here'
previous_name: 'Your section name here'
description: 'Your description here'
locale: 'en-us' # This should always be used
position: 0 # Integer representing section display order

After a peer reviews and approves your MR, you can merge the MR. When the next deployment occurs, it will be synced to Zendesk.

Editing a section

To edit a section, you will need to create a MR in the sync repo. The exact changes being made will depend on the request itself.

After a peer reviews and approves your MR, you can merge the MR. When the next deployment occurs, it will be synced to Zendesk.

Changing the name of a section

If you need to change the name of a section, copy the current value into the previous_name attribute and then change the name attribute. This allows the sync to still locate the section in question to update.

Moving sections to a new location

To move a section to a new caregory, you will need to create a MR in the sync repo. The change is simply moving the file from its current folder (i.e. the current category) to the new folder (i.e. its new category).

After a peer reviews and approves your MR, you can merge the MR. When the next deployment occurs, it will be synced to Zendesk.

Deleting a section

As the sync repos do not perform deletions, you will have to do 2 actions to delete a section.

First, you must delete the corresponding file from the sync repo. After a peer reviews and approves your MR, you can merge the MR.

After that is done, you then must delete it from Zendesk itself.

To delete a section from Zendesk:

1. Navigate to the sections view
2. Click the three vertical dots to the right of the section in question
3. Click Edit section
4. Click Delete section at the left-side of the page
5. Click OK to confirm the change

Performing an exception deployment

To perform an exception deployment for sections, navigate to the sections sync project in question, go to the scheduled pipelines page, and click the play button for the sync item. This will trigger a sync job for the sections.

Common issues and troubleshooting

Not seeing section changes after a merge

As sections follow the Standard deployment type, they would only be deployed during a normal deployment cycle (or when an exception deployment has been done)

View page source - Edit this page - please contribute.