Collections
The collection tree: nesting, ordering, visibility and standalone collections.
A collection is a container for articles, and collections nest, so your help
centre is a shallow tree rather than one flat list. Knowledge → Collections
(/help-centre/collections) is where that tree is managed.
Sort the tree out before you write very much. Articles are easy to move; the tree is what your customers navigate, and a structure invented one article at a time tends to end up with six collections holding one article each.
The tree
Every container in the help centre, indented by depth, each row carrying:
| On the row | What it says |
|---|---|
| Icon | The chosen mark, an uploaded image, or a quiet dot where there is none. |
| Name and description | The description is the second line, truncated with the full text on hover. |
| Kind | Collection for anything created here. An imported row keeps its source's word — category, section, folder — because that is what you still see in the system you imported from. |
| Standalone | Present only on standalone collections. See below. |
| Visibility | Public, hidden from visitors, or internal. |
| Article count | Articles filed here directly, and — in the hover text — the count including sub-collections. |
The indent is capped at four levels. Past that the eye has stopped counting, and the row's hover text carries the full path instead.
Ordering
Reordering is Up and Down buttons on each row, not drag and drop. Two visible words that work by keyboard and reach every row at any depth, on a tree that can run hundreds of rows and twelve levels deep.
A move swaps the two siblings' positions and then re-reads the tree from the server. The order you see after a move is the stored order, never a local shuffle — including after a failed move, where the first of the two writes may have landed and the screen owes you the truth rather than what you attempted.
Creating and editing a collection
Create asks for an icon, a title, a description, what to nest it under, and whether it is standalone. It does not ask for a slug: the server derives one from the name, and a second box would only be a second chance to disagree with it.
Edit offers the same fields plus visibility, and — for collections created here — delete.
Imported collections cannot be deleted
A collection that came in from Zendesk, Freshdesk or Intercom shows where it came from instead of a delete button. Deleting a row that the next re-import would resurrect is a promise the product cannot keep, so it is not offered.
A failed save keeps everything you typed and paints the reason underneath the form.
Standalone collections
A standalone collection is left off the help centre home page and is reachable only at its own address. Use it for a set of articles that has to exist and be linkable, but should not be one of the tiles a visitor lands on.
Where collections show up elsewhere
- On the Content list, as a filter and as a column. The tree itself is not drawn there: a twelve-deep tree beside a fifty-row table is two navigations competing for one screen.
- In the bulk Move action on the Content list, which asks you to pick a destination collection and then confirms the destination and the count before anything moves.
- On an article's details rail in the editor.
Collections gate their articles
An article is only live if its own visibility allows it and every collection above it does. A row that reads Published on a site that does not have it is usually a container problem, not an article problem.