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# 8.Help Centre

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Ellen . Lee

Last updated on Sep 27, 2026

Help Centre

| Item | Details |

|—|—|

| Who it is for | Administrators configure it; anyone with permission can author in the back office |

| Menu location | Left sidebar Help Centre |

| Plan dependency | Requires Help Center. Portal count and published article count count against quota |

Help Centre is the public knowledge site for customers: categories + articles, optional custom domain, with Chatips live chat and analytics pixels on the pages.

The default back-office URL looks like: https://workspace.chatips.com/hc/your-portal-slug. After a custom domain is live, customers use your address (for example https://help.yourcompany.com).

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1. Structure

| Object | Description |

|—|—|

| Portal | One knowledge site. Has name, slug, brand colour, languages, domain |

| Locale | One portal can hold Chinese, English, and more; set a default language and draft languages |

| Category | Article groups; can be nested and cross-linked |

| Article | Draft / Published / Archived |

Create the portal first, then locales and categories, then articles.

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2. Creating a portal

  1. Open Help Centre. If there is no portal yet, follow the prompts.

  2. Enter name, slug (URL path, for example help), and default language.

  3. Upload logo, brand colour, home title, etc. (Settings → General).

  4. Grant authoring rights to colleagues (administrators can manage by default; knowledge permissions depend on custom roles).

Portal count is limited by the portals quota. Archive or delete unused portals so they do not consume quota (confirm no live custom domain still depends on them).

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3. Categories and articles

3.1 Categories

– Create categories for the current language under Categories.

– Slugs must be unique within the same portal and language.

– You can set parent categories, sort order and related categories for browsing.

3.2 Articles

  1. Articles → New.

  2. Choose language, category and author.

  3. Write the body (common rich text is supported).

  4. Status:

– Draft: back office only; unfinished locales can be marked as draft languages.

– Published: customers can search and open it. Counts toward published_articles quota.

– Archived: removed from the public site but kept in the back office.

  1. SEO: keep title, meta description and slug stable; changing the slug changes the public URL.

When quota is exhausted you cannot publish more; archive old articles or upgrade.

3.3 Multiple languages

– Add locales on the Languages page.

– Default language is used on first visit and when the browser language does not match.

– Remove unused locales from the allow-list carefully if articles already exist.

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4. Portal settings

Settings usually cover: General, Configuration (domain), Appearance, Integrations.

4.1 Custom domain (Chatips Cloud)

When customers should use docs.yourdomain.com instead of the Chatips default:

  1. The domain must include a subdomain (for example help.acme.com). Apex acme.com is not supported.

  2. Enter the custom domain in settings and save.

  3. At your DNS provider add:

– CNAME: hostname → the target Chatips shows (typically a help-centre host such as help.chatips.com)

– TXT: ownership verification (hostname and value shown in the UI)

  1. After saving DNS, verification and go-live usually complete within about 10 minutes. Status must be Live before it is public.

  2. If it stays pending: check CNAME/TXT match exactly, then click Refresh. The system retries a limited number of times; if it still fails, read the status message and refresh again.

  3. Before verification finishes, opening that domain shows a “coming soon” style page, not a 404.

  4. Use “Send instructions” to email DNS steps to a colleague.

Do not put Chatips’ own help.chatips.com or workspace.chatips.com in “custom domain”. Those are platform hosts, not your customer domain.

4.2 Integrations

| Item | Purpose |

|—|—|

| Use Chatips live chat | Pick a website widget inbox; public help pages embed the same chat |

| GTM / GA4 / Hotjar / Plausible / Amplitude / Clarity / Meta Pixel | Paste IDs (administrators only). Scripts inject on public pages; back-office article previews are not counted |

These are analytics pixels, not WhatsApp channels. Channels stay under Settings → Inboxes.

Enabling both GTM and GA4 can double-count; keep one.

Plausible uses the official plausible.io script; self-hosted Plausible cannot change the script URL.

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5. How customers visit

– No custom domain: /hc/{slug}/…

– Live custom domain: root path is the portal

– Search, category browse, language switch, light/dark (theme-dependent)

– Sitemap can be generated for search engines

Put links in the site footer, the widget “Help” entry, and email signatures.

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6. Working with Captain and the widget

– The widget can offer an “Open Help Centre” style entry (per inbox settings).

– Captain can retrieve published articles if vector search is enabled. Even without it, keeping the same FAQ set in Captain keeps auto-reply wording aligned.

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7. Frequently asked questions

Publish button greyed out / quota error? Published articles or portals are at the limit.

Domain stuck on “waiting for verification”? DNS not live, A record used instead of CNAME, TXT name missing a prefix, or apex domain entered. Fix, then refresh.

Chat widget missing? No website inbox selected under Integrations, or the portal is using a preview-only layout.

Brand colour changed but customers still see the old one? Browser cache; on a custom domain also check CDN cache.

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Related articles

– Channels and inboxes

– Captain assistant

– Billing and usage