JavaScript library: algoliasearchZendeskHC
This JavaScript library allows you to replace the default search of your Zendesk Help Center by Algolia. Algolia is a hosted full-text, numerical, and faceted search engine capable of delivering realtime results from the first keystroke.
Documentation
Synchronize Algolia with your Help Center
- Create an Algolia account.
- Follow the Get Started guide to connect your Zendesk Help Center with your Algolia account.
Indexing
When you install our Zendesk integration, it creates what we call a connector in your Algolia account. You can access it with the left sidebar in your dashboard.
This connector will every day take your public Help Center articles and put them inside an Algolia index. In most cases, this should be enough to have an up-to-date search.
However, if you'd rather have it updated right now, like when you add a lot of support articles, you can manually trigger a full reindex. On this page, just click the "Reindex" button in the bottom right corner. A few minutes later, your search index will be updated.
Updating your Help Center theme
Once your data has been extracted to Algolia, you need to update your Help Center theme in order to replace the search feature by Algolia.
- Open the Document Head template in the Theme Editor:
- Head to your Zendesk Help Center
- Click General > Customize the design in the top bar
- In the Theme section, click on Edit theme
- In the top left corner dropdown, select the Document Head template
- Copy the JavaScript snippet & Publish changes:
- Paste the code we provide you while connecting your Zendesk Help Center with Algolia at the end of the template.
- Click Save and ensure everything is working using the preview on the right
- Click Publish Changes
Available options
Here is a full breakdown of the available options for the JavaScript library:
<link
rel="stylesheet"
type="text/css"
href="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch.zendesk-hc/3/algoliasearch.zendesk-hc.min.css"
/>
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/algoliasearch.zendesk-hc/3/algoliasearch.zendesk-hc.min.js"
></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
algoliasearchZendeskHC({
applicationId: '<YOUR APPLICATION_ID>',
apiKey: '<YOUR SEARCH ONLY API KEY>',
subdomain: '<YOUR ZENDESK APPLICATION NAME>',
indexPrefix: 'zendesk_',
analytics: true,
baseUrl: '/hc/',
poweredBy: true,
clickAnalytics: true,
debug: false,
color: '#158EC2',
highlightColor: '#158EC2',
autocomplete: {
enabled: true,
inputSelector: '#query',
hitsPerPage: 5,
},
templates: {
autocomplete: {},
},
translations: {},
});
</script>
Supporting multiple languages
Description
This library supports out of the box Help Centers with multiple languages.
-
The results sent to the user are always limited to the ones in the currently selected locale.
-
Some constant strings like the ones used in the sentence "12 results found in 1ms" need to be translated. The library already supports these locales:
- ar: العربية / Arabic
- ar-eg: العربية (مصر) / Arabic (Egypt)
- bg: Български / Bulgarian
- cs: Čeština / Czech
- da: Dansk / Danish
- de: Deutsch / German
- de-at: Deutsch (Österreich) / German (Austria)
- de-ch: Deutsch (Schweiz) / German (Switzerland)
- el: Ελληνικά / Greek
- en-au: English (Australia)
- en-ca: English (Canada)
- en-gb: English (Great Britain)
- en-ie: English (Ireland)
- en-us: English (United States)
- en-150: English (Europe)
- es: Español / Spanish
- es-es: Español (España) / Spanish (Spain)
- es-mx: Español (Mexico) / Spanish (Mexico)
- es-419: Español (Latinoamérica) / Spanish (Latin America)
- fi: Suomi / Finnish
- fr: Français / French
- fr-be: Français (Belgique) / French (Belgium)
- fr-ca: Français (Canada) / French (Canada)
- fr-ch: Français (Suisse) / French (Switzerland)
- fr-fr: Français (France) / French (France)
- hu: Magyar / Hungarian
- id: Bahasa Indonesia / Indonesian
- it: Italiano / Italian
- ja: 日本語 / Japanese
- ko: 한국어 / Korean
- nl: Nederlands / Dutch
- nl-be: Nederlands (België) / Dutch (Belgium)
- no: Norsk / Norwegian
- pl: Polski / Polish
- pt: Português / Portuguese
- pt-br: Português do Brasil / Brazilian Portuguese
- ro: Română / Romanian
- ru: Русский / Russian
- sk: Slovenčina / Slovak
- sv: Svenska / Swedish
- th: ไทย / Thai
- tr: Türkçe / Turkish
- uk: Українська / Ukrainian
- vi: Tiếng Việt / Vietnamese
- zh-cn: 简体中文 / Simplified Chinese
- zh-tw: 繁體中文 / Traditional Chinese
If you want to support another locale, please help us by [opening an issue on GitHub][locale_issue].
[locale_issue]: https://github.com/algolia/algoliasearch-zendesk/issues/new?title=Missing%20locale%3A%20%5Ben-us%5D&body=%3C!%E2%88%92%E2%88%92%0A%20%20To%20improve%20the%20extension%2C%20we%20need%20your%20help!%0A%20%20We%20only%20need%20to%20know%20how%20to%20write%20a%20few%20sentences%20in%20the%20language%20you%20want%20us%20to%20add.%0A%20%20Can%20you%20help%20us%20translate%20them%3F%20%3A)%0A%E2%88%92%E2%88%92%3E%0A%0ATranslations%3A%0A%0A%60%60%60txt%0ASearch%20in%20our%20articles%3A%20%0ASearch%20by%20Algolia%3A%20%0ANo%20result%20found%20for%20%22xxx%22%3A%20%0A%22change%20your%20query%22%20or%20%22clear%20your%20filters%22%3A%20%0A1%20result%20found%20in%20XXXms%3A%20%0A2%2C000%20results%20found%20in%20XXXms%3A%20%0ACategories%3A%20%0ATags%20(in%20the%20%22Labels%22%20meaning)%3A%20%0AFilter%20results%3A%20%0A%60%60%60%0A%0AIs%20there%20more%20than%201%20plural%20form%3F%20%5BYes%2FNo%5D%0AHow%20do%20you%20write%20big%20numbers%3F%20%5B20%2C000%5D
Modifying translations
If some translations don't fit what you want, you can change them using this syntax:
translations: {
placeholder: {
de: 'In unseren Help Center suchen',
'en-us': 'Search in our Help Center',
fr: 'Recherchez dans notre Help Center'
}
}
For reference, here is the list of all the translations for the en-us
locale:
translations: {
nbResults: {
en: function (nb) {
return `${formatNumber(nb)} result${nb > 1 ? 's' : ''}`;
}
},
noResultsFor: {
en: function (query) {
return 'No result found for ' + this.quoted(query);
}
},
placeholder: {
en: 'Search in our articles'
},
searchByAlgolia: {
en: function (algolia) { return 'Search by ' + algolia; }
},
}
Localized tags
You can index localized tags based on locales prefix (e.g. en-us
or en
). If we detect a locale, we'll only index localized tags for this translation. For instance, an article with those tags:
[
'Wow',
'en:Awesome',
'en-gb:Good',
'fr:Incroyable'
]
For fr
and fr-*
locales, we'll index { "label_names": ["Incroyable"] }
. For en-au
, en-ca
and en-us
locales, we'll index { "label_names": ["Awesome"] }
. For the en-gb
locale, we'll index { "label_names": ["Good"] }
. For all the other locales, we'll index { "label_names": ["Wow"] }
.
We do not index community forums for now. If you're using them, you'll probably want to disable instantsearch
by setting enabled: false
and just use the auto-complete feature.
Indexing private articles
Since we're providing a front-end search, and we can't securely know which access a user has in Zendesk's templates, we have to limit our indexing to public articles only. A public article is not a draft and is visible to Everybody. If you're in such a scenario, we recommend you to disable instantsearch
by setting enabled: false
and just use the auto-complete feature.
Removing specific articles from the search results
You can let our script know that you'd want for an article not to be indexed. For this, all you need to do is to add an algolia-ignore
tag on your article. After the next reindex, the article should not be searchable anymore.
Excluding portions of article from indexing
To prevent certain specific portion of your article to be indexed to Algolia, you can wrap the html source code of these portion between <!-- algolia-ignore --> <!-- /algolia-ignore -->
tags. This way, these portions of text won't be searchable.
Example:
<h1>This is a test article</h1>
<p>This paragraph won't be indexed to Algolia.</p>
<p>This paragraph will be indexed to Algolia.</p>
Whitelisting our IPs
In case you're using Zendesk's IP restrictions feature, you'll need to whitelist our IPs for our indexing to work. Here are those IPs:
3.221.200.5
52.204.20.39
52.22.248.248
Development
The package.json
holds multiple scripts:
clean
: Removes dist/
and node_modules/
build
: Compiles the JS & CSS files to dist/algoliasearch.zendesk-hc.{css,js}
dev
: Launches parcel
, and watches the files to rebuild them if neededlint
: Lints the JS filesformat
: Runs prettier
Contributing
We're considering any contribution and PR, please go ahead!
License
This project is under the MIT License.