Introduction

As Zendesk admins, we know that Guide is key to a great customer experience, powering customer self-service, enabling bots to deliver answers, and helping agents work smarter.

But let’s be honest it’s also likely the first feature to be neglected from being kept up to date when things get busy

The good news is that publishing dozens of on-brand articles need not take as much time as you might think. That’s where Guide templates come in: a total game-changer in CS managers’ never-ending quest to ensure their Help Center reflects their live operations.

Article Templates help you create polished, professional articles without starting from zero every time. Once you’ve set up your template(s), you simply add your content in the pre-defined sections and you’re done!

In this article, I’ll show you how to use these templates to make article creation faster and more consistent across your Help Center. Let’s dive in!

Setting up your first guide template

Create your canvas

First off, head to Guide > Guide Admin or https:/YOURDOMAIN.zendesk.com/knowledge, hover your cursor over Add and then click Article.

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If you already have an article that you think would make a good template, feel free to open that one up instead, just make sure that you (manually) make a copy of it before turning it into a template.

Give your template a title that reflects the type of article template it’s going to be, something like "Product Page" “Troubleshooting articles”  or "FAQ" so it’s easy to find later.

Content and Structure

Next, think about the structure. When I set up template articles for clients, I break them into sections like Issue Description, Steps to Resolve, and Additional Resources. This keeps everything clear and consistent, whoever writes the subsequent articles, and makes it easier when we need to update or add new content.

Keep it simple: avoid adding images or attachments at this stage, as these will likely differ article by article. Instead, focus on implementing a repeatable structure that will save your editors time.

Here’s an example template for troubleshooting articles.

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Design

Once you’ve set up the structure, it’s time to hone in on making the template fully on-brand.

This means ensuring heading sizes and naming conventions are correct, as well as selecting any colours that best represent your brand. A lot of the other design work, such as selecting your font, should already be done via your Help Center’s theme, so don’t try to mess with that here!

Permissions and Attributes

Next, set up the permissions. Make sure you choose the right ‘Managed by’ and ‘Visible to’ settings. Agents can only use templates they have permission to manage, so it’s important to set these correctly from the start.

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Then, pick a Section for your template. When articles are created from it, they'll automatically go into the section you choose, unless an agent manually changes it.

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Keep the Author unchanged. When an agent creates an article from the template, they’ll automatically be set as the author.

The Most Important Step

The most important step of all is to ensure that Zendesk treats your draft article as a template for the future, otherwise you’ll have just made a single article that will never be seen again! Bizarrely, there isn’t a simple checkbox to do this, instead we need to use a label.

In the label field, add KCTemplate to ensure the article is recognized as a template. That label alone is the sole method by which Zendesk differentiates a normal article from a template article.

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Don’t worry, the label won’t be included in new articles created from your template.

Once you've hit Save, your template is all set (you don’t need to click Publish, which could make the template visible to your end-users)!

Creating Articles from Templates

With your template created, you might expect to be able to find and use it from the Guide Admin page, as that’s where we normally manage Guide from. However, this feature was initially built to make agents’ lives easier when wanting to capture knowledge from tickets, so the UI is only available in the Support interface.

Head over to your Support interface and open up a ticket or create a new one.

On the sidebar on the right, click the book icon to open the Knowledge panel. Then click on the + icon to create or request article.

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Now you’ll finally be able to see the template that you just created, along with a blank article which I recommend you don’t use!

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Go ahead and click on your template article. This will open up the template as a draft article that is ready to be filled out and saved - this time back in the Guide UI once more. It’s a bit of a rollercoasting, heading from Guide Admin, over to Support, and back to Guide Admin, but it’s worth it for the time-saving benefits of using our newly-created template.

As mentioned earlier, you’ll now see your headings, content structure, and even attributes such as Section pre-loaded for you, ready for you to use and amend as required.

The benefit of the article template being hosted in Support is that it encourages your agents to easily capture knowledge from tickets, even if they’re not actively working on updating your knowledge base.

Tips for Success

Before we wrap up, here are a few things I’ve learned while working with Guide templates:

• Make it fit your needs: Set up templates for common article types, like FAQs or troubleshooting guides, so they’re ready when you or your team need them.
• Test before rolling it out: Create a dummy article to see if the template works like you want it to.
• Keep them fresh: Every now and then, check your templates to see if they still make sense or if they need a little update.

Wrapping Up

Now that your Guide templates are set up, creating articles will feel like a breeze! No more getting stuck in formatting or repeating the same steps. You’ll have more time to focus on what really counts—creating helpful, valuable content for your agents and customers.

Give it a try! Once you get the hang of it, you’ll save a bunch of time and your CS manager or team lead will be incredibly grateful!