Manage help articles and see who reads them (master admin)

Overview

Administration → Help Center is where a master admin looks after the Help Center: the list of articles with their status, views and Helpful votes, the editor with version history, and the Analytics tab (searches, searches that found nothing, feedback and suggestions).

Articles that carry a code badge are published from the product's source by every release. An edit made here goes live at once, but the next release replaces it, so use Export .md in the editor to keep it.

See who viewed an article

The Views column is more than a number. Each view records where it came from and, when the reader was signed in, who it was.

Quick look

1. Open Administration → Help Center, tab Articles.
2. Point at a number in the Views column (or move to it with the Tab key). A summary appears: total views, signed-in viewers and anonymous views, the channel mix, the top three viewers with their role, and when the article was last read.
3. The coloured dot next to the number is the article's top channel; the small person icon counts the distinct signed-in viewers.

Full details

1. Click the number (on a phone or tablet, tap it). A panel opens on the right.
2. Pick the period: 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or All time.
3. Read the daily bars (point at a bar for that day's count) and Where views came from.
4. The Viewers table lists each signed-in viewer with their role, main channel, number of views and last view. Use the search box to find a name, email or role. Views from people who were not signed in are grouped as Anonymous visitors.
5. Recent views lists the latest views with the channel and, where known, the page or site the reader came from. Choose Show more for older ones.
6. Press Esc or the × to close.

Example

The article Partial-period invoices shows 42 views with a blue dot. The summary says 9 signed-in viewers and 30 anonymous views, mostly In-app help (?). In the panel, Asha Rao (Landlord) has read it 6 times from the ? panel, and a cluster of anonymous views came from a search engine. The article is clearly found from the invoice page, so it is worth checking that its steps match the current screen.

Privacy

• Only a master admin can see viewer names. Readers of the public Help Center are never asked who they are.
• The page a reader came from is stored without any query string, and other sites are stored by host name only (for example www.google.com).
• A master admin who is impersonating a user is not counted as that user.

FAQs

Why are some views "Before attribution"? They were recorded before the Help Center captured the viewer and channel. They still count in the totals.

Why does the lifetime counter differ from the total in "All time"? The counter on the article counts every view ever made. The panel counts the individual view records, which can be slightly lower for very old articles.

Does a signed-in user reading the public Help Center count as signed in? Yes. The browser tells the Help Center who is reading when the user is signed in on the same device.

Troubleshooting

• The summary says "Could not load the view details": the server may be waking up. Point at the number again after a few seconds.
• A view shows as Other: the link that brought the reader carried a source the Help Center does not know. The view still counts.