Understanding Article Statuses

Article statuses make it easy to understand whether visitors to your knowledge base can see your article 👀

Understanding Article Statuses

By default all articles will start off as a Draft. This means nobody can see it unless they're logged into the HelpDocs dashboard.

You can then upgrade them to either Private or Published depending on how you want to share them.

Status	Can my team within the HelpDocs dashboard see this?	Can public visitors see this?
Draft	✅ Yes	⛔️ No
Private	✅ Yes	🔗 Only by direct link
Published	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Archived	✅ Yes, read only	⛔️ No

If you've added a shared password or restricted to logged in users, you'll need to set your article status to Published to make them visible to people with access.

Changing an Article's Status

You can change an article's status in the article editor and from the content tab using Bulk tools.

From the Article Editor

Click the Status button in the top left
Select your new status
Hit Save Changes

From the Content View

Select the articles you'd like to update
Click Bulk Edit
Change the Status
Click Apply edits

A Note on Archived

Archived isn't a status you'll find under the Status button or in Bulk Edit. It's set by archiving an article, which takes it off your help center and freezes it, and cleared by unarchiving.

Unarchiving always returns an article as a Draft, whatever status it had when you archived it. Publish it again from there if it should go back on your help center.