What can be trashed?

You can move the following items to Trash:

• Knowledge base articles
• Community topics (questions, ideas, problems, discussions)
• Categories (along with all nested content)

How to move an item to Trash

• Use the Trash action from the dropdown menu of an article, post, or category
• Use bulk actions in list views to move multiple items at once

Note: Only Admins or Owners can move items to Trash if required by your permission settings.

Accessing the Trash folder

• Navigate to the article or topic list
• Use the filter at the top to switch to the Trash view
• From there, you can:
  • Restore selected items
  • Permanently delete selected items (Admins & Owners only)

Auto-deletion

Items in the Trash folder are automatically and permanently deleted after 30 days.

Permissions

• Agents can move items to Trash if permissions allow
• Only Admins and Owners can permanently delete or restore trashed content

Example use case

A team member deletes an important article by mistake. Instead of recreating it, an Admin restores the item from Trash within the 30-day retention window.

This feature provides a safety net for support teams and helps avoid permanent loss of important content.

As of May 25, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is requiring every company that holds personal information about an individual (this includes your users, customers and staff members) to give these individuals more control over their data.

We have updated our policies, and are compliant with the EU Data Protection Directive & GDPR and offer DPA as part of our Terms of Service.

Requesting user consent

If you enable Request User Consent, Helprace will start showing a message to users in your support portal requesting they accept your policy.

To enable this, go to the  Settings > SECURITY > Privacy page.

By default, this points to our Privacy Policy, but you can enter a URL to your policy instead.

Your support portal will be requesting user consent in these cases:

• When users sign up, they'll see a message saying that by registering they agree to the policy.
• When users have signed up but haven't agreed to the policy, they'll keep seeing a green message in the portal header until they give their consent.
  This also applies to users who signed up before you enabled this option, as well as users whose accounts have been created automatically, e.g. by invitation or when Helprace receives their email and converts it to a ticket.
• When posting tickets or topics anonymously, they'll see a message saying that by hitting Send, they agree to the policy.
• During Single Sign On logins. Helprace assumes that you take care of the user consent on your signup page.

Once users give their consent to have their personal data processed they will stop seeing the consent messages.

Withdrawing consent

User can withdraw their consent at any time by going to their profile page and unchecking that they agree to the policy.

Deleting user data

Users can delete personal data from their profiles:

Deleting your profile as a user

Agents have a different way to delete or amend user details as well as their own details:

Deleting a user as an agent

You can also give users the ability to delete data they added to your Helprace account. You can do that on the  Settings > SECURITY > Privacy page by enabling the following:

• Users Can Delete Tickets
• Users Can Delete Topics
• Users Can Delete Comments (for topic comments and replies)

Once these options are enabled, your users will be able to delete their data:

• Deleting your tickets
• Deleting your topics, replies and comments

Exporting user data

User data can be exported via API. See Introduction to Helprace REST API  for more details.

Editing user data

Agents can edit anyone's details from the Admin Panel:

Editing user details

Users and Agents can edit their details from their Profile page:

Managing your user profile and account settings

Other settings

Disabling the Contact Cloud app

Changing your data hosting region

This feature is available in the Complete plan only.

By changing the data hosting region, you can specify where you'd like the data submitted to Helprace to be hosted, stored and processed.

The Complete plan has the Contact Cloud app enabled by default. If you wish to disable it, go to Apps in the Settings section of your Admin Panel. Click on the Contact Cloud app, then click Uninstall.

To delete your account click on the "delete your Helprace account" link and confirm your intention.

Any deletion of your account will result in the deactivation of your account and the removal of all content in your account. This information can be restored by request of the Account Owner during a 14-day period. Deleted accounts cannot be recovered or restored by Stuffix following this 14-day period.

However, you may want to narrow down on certain data, set desired content and UI behaivor.

Moderation:

Activity:

Both Activity and Moderation pages share the same filters and options listed below:

Filters

The top menu bar allows you to select:

• Date range - pick presets or a set a custom range
• Space - show content from a particular space or all spaces at once
• User type - show content created by users or agents only
• Approval state - shown if moderation is enabled. "Pending Approval" is most useful for moderation. "Any Status" is best suited for all activity.

The lower menu bar allows you to select:

• All Events - shows full activity, including all sorts of events logged by Helprace
• Posts - shows community topics, knowledge base articles, replies and comments only
• Updates, Articles, Questions, Ideas, Problems, Praise tabs - show new posts from these channels
• Replies, Comments - shows replies and comments
• Votes - shows positive and negative votes, as well as votes canceled by users
• Follows - shows what topics users started following by pro-actively clicking the Follow button (this is also done automatically by voting or commenting a topic)
• Users Created - users added to the system by all means. They might have signed up, or added automatically: from incoming email, via SSO, API, etc.

Options

Three buttons on the upper right allow you to change the behavior of the user interface.

• Real-time update - when enabled, new and updated records are shown immediately. If disabled - the list stays static unless you refresh it.
• On click event - determines how items are opened when clicked:
  • Open Preview - in a preview window on the same page.
  • Open in New Tab - in a new browser tab.
  • Open Normally - navigates to the relevant page (e.g. topic or user).
• Sort by event date - records are sorted by date of event occurrence. This also changes the sorting direction between ascending and descending.

Click on the desired invoice to open it up. You can print it or "Save As PDF" to save it to file.

At the same time, you can fill out your company information, VAT number and other data the way you would like it to appear on your invoices.

Click Change Company Details or go to Settings > Company Details. 

Moderation is set to post-moderation by default. This means that when topics or comments are posted by users, they go live immediately, but you can review them on the Moderation page.

You can change moderation configuration by going to  Settings > COMMUNITY > Settings.

Available moderation options:

• Disabled - No moderation required
• Pre-moderation - Posts will be held for moderation review before being published
• Post-moderation - Posts will be published but marked for moderation review

Moderation can be enabled for:

• Topics posted (Questions, Ideas, Problems and Praise)
• Replies and comments posted (responses to community topics and knowledge base articles)

Click Save to apply new settings.

Moderating posts and comments

When moderation is enabled, you'll see it appear in the sidebar of your Community / Knowledge Base page.

Please note that the Moderation menu is hidden if there is nothing to moderate. If you wish to give it a test, we suggest you login as a user and add a topic or comment (content added by agents is automatically approved). If you're not seeing the Moderation menu still, try refreshing the browser page.

To approve, decline or mark certain post as spam click on a desired button on the right.

You can also select multiple posts for bulk actions.

Badge counter

It's easy to see posts requiring your attention.

The number of posts that require moderation are visible in the favicon, browser tab, menu button and beside the Moderation tab.

If you also have Ticket counters enabled, the number on your favicon badge will be summed up.

Moderation filters and options

Please see Activity and moderation filters and options

Point to the   Wrench and select Tags. You can:

• Create new tags
• Edit tag name
• Change tag color
• Merge multiple tags into one
• Search for topics by tag(s)
• Delete tags
• Sort tags

There are two sets of tags: Ticket Tags and Community Tags (Knowledge Base tags are shown here, too). They are not related. Even if your ticket and community/KB tags have identical names, editing/merging/deleting one tag will not affect the other. This is because ticket tags are strictly internal and would never be shown to your customers, while tags for community and knowledge base can be public or internal depending on your user portal settings. If you're interested in working with ticket tags, check this article instead: Manage ticket tags

Create new tags

Click + to add a new tag. Give it a name, select a desired color and click save.

Add tags to community and knowledge base topics

It's not necessary to head to the tags management page every time you want to create a tag. You can easily create them when creating or updating a topic.

Simply type a desired tag in the Tags field, separated by commas.

Edit tag name or change its color

To edit a tag:

1. Select a tag.
2. Click on the Edit button.
3. Change tag name or color.
4. Click Save.

You can only edit one tag at a time.

Merge tags

1. Click on tags that you wish to merge.
2. Click on the Merge button.
3. Type a desired name and color of the resulting merged tag.

As a result of the merge, all topics that had at least one of the selected tags will be assigned a new tag name and color.

Search for topics by tag(s)

1. Select one or multiple tags.
2. Click Search by Tags (bulleted list) button.
3. You'll see a clickable list of topics that have at least one of the selected tags (OR logic).

Note. You can also search topics by tags in the   Community /   Knowledge Base page base by typing tag:tagname in the search field. This in the admin panel as well as in the user portal. See Helprace search guide for more information.

You can also click on a tag when viewing a topic. This will open a list of topics that have that tag.

Delete tags

1. Select tags you wish to delete
2. Click Delete button.

Please note that deleted tags will be removed from all topics they were assigned to. This action is irreversible.

Sorting

Tags are sorted by usage by default. Tags that are assigned to most number of topics are shown at the beginning. Click on the sorting option on the right to sort by name or change the order of sorting.

Accidentally locked yourself out of the admin panel?

Log in at this page in case of emergency (replace "account" with your Helprace account subdomain):  https://account.helprace.com/backup-login. There is no link to this page from the user portal.

You'll find a reference of all login options below. At least one authentication option must be enabled at all times:

Anonymous Access

Disable this option, if you would like users to access your site only after login or registration.

If this is the only selected option and thus there are no actual authentication options provided to the user, the Login button would be hidden. Agents can still login by navigating to /admin or /backup-login pages.

Helprace Login

Allow users to sign in with their Helprace accounts.

• Allow new user registration - untick this option to remove the registration form from the user portal

Social Authentication

Allow your users to sign in using their favorite social account.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Single sign-on is a mechanism that allows you to authenticate users in your system and subsequently log them in to your Helprace portal. Single sign-on is based on JWT, a widely adopted open standard.

Learn more: Setting up Single Sign-On (SSO)

SSL is enabled at all times in Helprace for the greater security. When you're adding your own domain alias we're generating an SSL certificate for it using Let's Encrypt service and apply it instantly. In most cases is works smoothly. However, if you received an error when adding an alias, this indicates that your domain's DNS records do not authorize Let's Encrypt to generate SSL certificates for it.

The solution is simple - you need to add a DNS CAA record in your domain control panel:

help.acme.com.    IN      CAA     0       issue "letsencrypt.org"

where help.acme.com must be replaced with your domain alias for your Helprace portal.

What is a CAA record?

A Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) record is used to specify which certificate authorities (CAs) are allowed to issue certificates for a domain.

The purpose of the CAA record is to allow domain owners to declare which certificate authorities are allowed to issue a certificate for a domain.

To change the language throughout your Helprace, go to the  Settings > GENERAL > Localization page, select the desired language and click Save. Your page will reload and you'll see the admin panel and User Portal translated into your new language.

Language changes trigger re-indexing of your account. Re-indexing takes some time (usually a few minutes) and you may experience search glitches until it is done. Reindexing is performed to provide better search results for the selected language.

Translating the UI

If your language is not available for selection, you may want to participate in the translation process to speed up its approval. Check our Translating Helprace to your language article to learn how to get started.

Not everything translates automatically

After you've changed the language of your Helprace you may notice that not everything is translated:

• Ticket filters
• Instant rules
• Time based rules
• SLA rules

Here is how you can reset them - they will be re-created in the new language.

Ticket filters

Be careful! If you created your own ticket filters or made any changes to the existing ones, they will be deleted and/or changes discarded.

Go to the Tickets page, click on the ⋮ button next to FILTERS and select Restore to Default.

Instant rules

Be careful! If you created your own triggers or made any changes to the existing ones, they will be deleted and/or changes discarded.

Go to  Settings > TICKETS > Rules & Notifications, select Instant and click the ↺ button.

Time based rules

Be careful! If you created your own automations or made any changes to the existing ones, they will be deleted and/or changes discarded.

Go to  Settings > TICKETS > Rules & Notifications, select Time Based and click the ↺ button.

SLA rules

Be careful! If you created your own automations or made any changes to the existing ones, they will be deleted and/or changes discarded.

Go to  Settings > TICKETS > SLA and click the ↺ button.

Topics covered in this article.

• Changing the UI language
• Translating the UI
• Checking, Voting and Proofreading
  
  • Vote for the best translation
  • Proofreading

Changing the UI language

To change the language throughout your Helprace, go to the Settings > GENERAL > Localization page, select the desired language and click Save. Your page will reload and you'll see the admin panel and User Portal translated into your new language.

If you don't see your language here, please let us know and we'll happily add it.

Note: You will only see approved translations in the drop list.

Note: Language changes trigger re-indexing of your account. Re-indexing takes some time (usually a few minutes) and you may experience search glitches until it is done.

Translating the UI

If you wish to improve an existing translation you can do that on the Translation Portal.

You don't need to download or upload any files to translate (though you can, if you'd prefer to work in a different tool, like poEdit). The portal is open to everyone but moderated by our staff, who approve all translations. We are notified of any edits or new translations and push them as soon as possible.

Visit the Helprace Translation Portal to get started. If it's your first visit, you'll need to create an account.

You'll see many languages at various translation stages. Follow these steps:

1. Click on a desired language. If you don't see your language you can always suggest it.

2. Click on Helprace.pot on the next page. The blue bar represents non-approved translations and the green bar is what's been approved.

3. Click on the cog in the top-right corner.

Enable "Fuzzy" matches with 60% similarity match. This will display suggestions with similar strings or older versions of the same string if they were modified in the source language (English), greatly speeding up your translation efforts.

4. Familiarize yourself with the translation interface:

5. Now you're ready to go!

Click on a string you would like to translate, type in your translation and click Save to move on to the next string. Clicking on a suggested translation copies it to the input field - a huge time-saver for relatively simple translations.

Note: Translated strings will not appear in your Helprace automatically. Our staff and language moderators must approve all translations for the language to go live. This is done to maintain a high level of translations for all our customers.

We are using the Crowdin platform to manage our translations. For more information visit their Getting Started page.

Happy translating!

Checking, Voting and Proofreading

Vote for the best translation

Since everyone can suggest their own translation, you'll often see multiple suggestions for one string. You can vote on most appropriate translations to help our staff and language moderators in making the best decision:

Proofreading Translations

While everyone can vote for suggested translations, you can also apply to be a proofreader. Proofreaders can approve and disapprove suggested translations. This will let you ensure the best quality of translation to your language.

Proofreading can be done via translation interface. Proofreader can select one of the suggestions by clicking the checkbox.

It might be even more convenient to use the proofreading mode instead. For that select "Open in Proofreading Mode" from the [...] menu on the language page.

Proofread mode enables Proofreader to see original string and translation side-by-side and approve multiple languages at a time.

Please, let us know if you feel that you could be a good Proofreader. Being a native speaker and having suggested translations makes you a perfect candidate!

We are using the Crowdin platform to manage our translations. For more information about proofreading visit their Proofreading page. 

Here's where you can use placeholders:

• Instant rules. Learn more
• Time based rules. Learn more
• Macros (canned replies). Learn more
• Custom static app. Learn more
• When replying or leaving an internal note to a ticket

Tickets

{$ticket.title}

{$ticket.tags}

{$ticket.description}

{$ticket.admin_url}

{$ticket.user_url}

{$ticket.id}

{$ticket.via}

{$ticket.status}

{$ticket.priority}

{$ticket.ticket_type}

{$ticket.comments}

Ticket info

Allows you to display additional ticket information to your agents, including: priority, user group, custom fields, & a link to ticket in the admin panel:

{$ticket.info}

Ticket time

Time will be returned in UTC:

{$ticket.created_at}

{$ticket.created_at_with_timestamp}

{$ticket.updated_at}

{$ticket.updated_at_with_timestamp}

Ticket fields

{$ticket.fields}

{$ticket.fields.ID.name}

{$ticket.fields.ID.value} 

Ticket teams, groups, organizations

{$ticket.team}

{$ticket.requester.organization}

{$ticket.requester.groups}

{$ticket.requester.teams}

{$ticket.assignee.teams}

{$current_user.organization}

{$current_user.groups}

{$current_user.teams}

Satisfaction ratings

{$ticket.satisfaction.offered}

{$ticket.satisfaction.rating_section}

{$ticket.satisfaction.current_rating}

{$ticket.satisfaction.current_comment}

{$ticket.satisfaction.positive_rating_url}

{$ticket.satisfaction.negative_rating_url}

{$ticket.satisfaction.rating_url}

Ticket users

{$ticket.account}

{$ticket.assignee.name}

{$ticket.assignee.first_name}

{$ticket.assignee.last_name}

{$ticket.requester.name}

{$ticket.requester.first_name}

{$ticket.requester.last_name}

{$ticket.requester.email}

{$ticket.submitter}

{$ticket.ccs}

{$ticket.cc_names}

{$ticket.cc_emails}

{$current_user.name}

{$current_user.first_name}

{$current_user.last_name}

{$current_user.role}

{$current_user.extended_role}

{$current_user.id}

{$current_user.email}

Ticket comments

Ticket messages are added to tickets as a separate object. This is used in email replies.

All comments

Note: Internal notes will be sent if requester is an Agent.

Last message, no formatting:

{$ticket.description}

All messages, normal text, latest first:

{$ticket.comments}

All messages, formatted, latest first:

{$ticket.comments_formatted}

Last message, normal text:

{$ticket.latest_comment}

Last message, formatted text:

{$ticket.latest_comment_formatted}

All messages except latest message, normal text, latest first:

{$ticket.history}

All messages except latest message, formatted text, latest first:

{$ticket.history_formatted}

All public comments

Note: Internal notes will not be sent

All messages, normal text, latest first:

{$ticket.public_comments}

All messages, formatted, latest first:

{$ticket.public_comment_formatted}

Last message, normal text:

{$ticket.latest_public_comment}

Last message, formatted text:

{$ticket.latest_public_comment_formatted}

Message after latest message, normal text:

{$ticket.previous_public_comment}

Message after latest message, formatted text:

{$ticket.previous_public_comment_formatted}

Helprace search supports stemming and word forms. This means that you'll find a topic containing "dog" when you're searching for "dogs" (and vise versa), Similarly, you'll see "driving", "driver", and "drive" if you're searching for "driver". As a result, you don't need to use these modifiers unless the words you're searching are some sort of abbreviations or do not share the same root. 

We will cover the following topics in this guide:

  Searching in Tickets

Use the search helper to set common fields quickly. Click on the desired field to set it or hover for a sample query. The table below shows the complete list of fields for searching tickets. Ticket searches can be saved in filters (views) for future reference. Learn more

Michael

assigned:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

assignee:me

assignee:25
assignee:"James Smith"
assignee:j.smith@acme.com
assignee:James
assignee:Acme
assignee:acme.com
assignee:+19380801008

attachment:file

company:acme

created:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

custom_fields:(Product AND "Widget 1")

group:"VIP Customers"
group:5

has:attachment
has:reminder

id:25

note:attachment

organization:acme
organization:5

priority:urgent

received_at:billing@mcc.com

reminder_date:[NOW TO NOW+7DAYS]

reply:refund

requester:me

requester:25
requester:"James Smith"
requester:j.smith@acme.com
requester:James
requester:Acme
requester:acme.com
requester:+19380801005

satisfaction:(bad AND commented)

satisfaction_comment:service

solved:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

spam:yes

status:on-hold

subject:"urgent matter"

submitter:me

submitter:25
submitter:"James Smith"
submitter:j.smith@acme.com
submitter:James
submitter:Acme
submitter:acme.com
submitter:+19380801005

tag:(shipping OR ship)

team:billing
team:5

text:refund

type:question

updated:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

via:api

  Searching in Community and Docs

Fields for knowledge base articles, questions, ideas, problems or praise topics:

shipping & delivery

id:2

title:"Getting Started"

body:"creating ticket"

tag:(shipping AND ship)

status:no_status

channel:(questions AND problems)

category:"Great Ideas"

spam:no

created:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

edited:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

last_action_date:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

creator:"Michael Kalman"

editor:me

votes:2

votes_positive:[1 TO 2]

votes_negative:2

voters:3

voters_positive:5

voters_negative:1

voter:michael

replier:michael

replies:3

repliers:1

staff_replies:0

best_reply:n

  Searching in People

Searching in Users

Fields for searching in People section.

Michael

address:"Main St"

city:"New York"

company:acme

country:"US"
country:"USA"
country:"United States"

email:john@acmeshop.com
email:acmeshop.com

external_id:342

group:"VIP Customer"
group:5

id:20

im:mike334

is:invited 

job_title:"customer service"

joined:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

last_action_date:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

name:smith

note:"VIP customer"

organization:"ACME Inc"
organization:5

phone:4920993

postcode:34900

region:"New South Wales"

registered:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

role:user

social:facebook.com/jack123
social:jack123
social:facebook

state:oregon

team:billing
team:5

updated:[NOW-24DAYS TO NOW]

website:google
website:google.com

zip:34902

Searching in Organizations

Acme

created:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

domain:acme.com
domain:acme

id:120

name:acme

description:"computer parts"

updated:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

  Advanced Searching

Searching dates

Helprace supports math expression in search queries, which gives you the flexibility to specify time relative to a fixed moment in time. Current time can be represented with value "NOW", especially when used with 24HOURS, DAY/DAYS, MONTH/MONTHS, YEAR/YEARS.

Tickets modified within 10 minutes

updated:[NOW-10MINUTES TO NOW]

Tickets modified one day ago

updated:[NOW-1DAY]

Tickets modified within the last 24 hours

updated:[NOW-24HOURS TO NOW]

Tickets modified within six months and three days ago, rounds the time to the beginning of that day

updated:[NOW-6MONTHS-3DAYS/DAY TO NOW]

Tickets modified 2 days into the future of a specific date, rounds the time to the beginning of that day

updated:[2014-11-01T00:00:00Z+2DAYS/DAY]

Recently Solved tickets within a latest date range, (between 4 days ago and 2 days ago)

updated:[NOW-96HOURS TO NOW-24HOURS] status:solved

Recently Solved tickets after a date

updated:[2016-12-01T00:00:00Z TO NOW] status:solved

You can search for users in the People page as well

registered:[NOW-96HOURS TO NOW]

Searching with brackets

Helprace uses two types of brackets in its searches:

status:(new OR open)

text:(ship AND shipping)

updated:[NOW-24 HOURS TO NOW]

Searching using terms

Words or phrases typed into the search field can be supplemented with term modifiers. The following term modifiers are supported:

*

Multiple-character wildcard search, must be anywhere but first character. sh*p returns shop, ship

?

Single-character wildcard search, must be anywhere but first character. ship? returns ship, ships, shipping, shipper

~

Partial match search, must be at end only. ship~ returns snip, slip, ships, shin, ship

Searching using operators

status:new

"account number"

+account number

ship AND "account number"

ship && "account number"

ship OR "account number"

ship || "account number"

account -number

Operators are case sensitive. Operators such as AND, OR and NOT must be always written in capitals. 

Term boosters

A term booster is a caret character ( ^ ) followed by a boost factor (a numerical value) following the term or phrase. The higher boost factor, the more relevance will be given to the term or phrase in the search results.

By default, the boost factor is 1. Although this number must be positive, it can be less than one (such as 0.2) in order to lower the relevance of records containing that term.

The term ship will appear 20% less relevant than the term widget:

ship^0.2 OR widget

The term ship will appear 4 times less relevant than the term widget:

ship OR widget^4

Excluding characters

The following characters can be excluded in the query syntax:

 + - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

If you want to search for the characters above and want Helprace to ignore the operator, use the backslash ( \ ) before the character.

For query (1+1):2 use:

\(1+1\)\:2

For query !urgent! use:

\!urgent!

Using placeholders

Searching fields with no data

To search fields containing no data, use "none" as the value of the keyword, as in this example:

assignee:none

This will return all tickets that are unassigned.

Use "none" to search in fields requiring a text value except for subject, message, requester:

tag:none

Searching for yourself

You can search for yourself when otherwise referring to an individual:

assignee:me