Python script for zendesk helpcenter translations.
- Python 3.+
- WebTranslateIt APIKey
- Zendesk Account
- wti command line tool from WebTranslateIt
pip install zendesk-help-cms
Type zendesk-help-cms -h and zendesk-help-cms [command] -h to see help message in the console.
In the directory you want to have your Zendesk articles type zendesk-help-cms config. You will be ask for information required by the script. the information will be saved in zendesk-help-cms.config file. If you need to override some values just run zendesk-help-cms config again. If the file exists it will offer existing values as defaults. You can also manually create/override values in the file if you wish to do so but make sure the syntax is correct.
The current working directory is used as the root for the script. This means the categories will be created at that level.
There are two ways to authenticate with Zendesk. Either with user/password or with user/token.
For user/password the configuration is straightforward. Just provide the values in the configuration file.
For user/token the configuration is similar but the user email has to end with /token. The password is the Zendesk token.
If you already have some articles in Zendesk you can import them with zendesk-help-cms import command.
It is possible to create the initial setup by hand but we recommend creating a sample article in Zendesk (if there are no articles there yet) and using the import command
This will create a directory structure similar to the one below:
category/
__group__.json
.group.meta
section/
__group__.json
.group.meta
en-us/
title.md
title.json
.article_title.meta
Since we have the articles in Markdown in the main language we can now upload them to WebTranslateIt for translation. You can either use wti command line tool provided by WebTranslateIt or simply run:
zendesk-help-cms translate
It will upload the articles to WebTranslateIt. From this point the interaction with WebTranslateIt should be done through wti. This includes downloading translated content, uploading new content, updating existing content and so on.
When the translations are ready run:
wti pull
This will download all translations to the local folder with existing articles. To upload everything to Zendesk run
zendesk-help-cms export
This will upload the entire structure to Zendesk updating whatever is already there if it changed (this is checked by comparing md5 hashes of the title and body/description)
**Important: **
*For uploading images use . The IMAGE_ROOT will be replaced by image_cdn from the configuration.
To disable comments in article you need to edit the meta file .article-[article_name].meta and edit comments_disabled filed.
Going back to our sample folder structure:
category/
__group__.json
.group.meta
section/
__group__.json
.group.meta
en-us/
title.md
title.json
.article_title.meta
There are 3 kinds of objects: categories, sections and articles.
A category is a top level group, it holds sections. Each category had a __group__.json file containing it's name and description. It is strongly recommended the name reflects the folder name for the default language unless there is some kind of encoding problem or something similar.
{
"description": "testing category",
"name": "test category"
}
This file will be translated giving you variants like __group__.fr.json for different languages. To change category name or description simply edit this file.
The file needs to be created when you add a new category, either by hand or by running zendesk-help-cms doctor.
Once a category is in Zendesk help centre it will also have .group.meta file containing the information from Zendesk. This file should not be edited and is for internal use only.
A sections is very similar to category except it holds articles. Everything else is the same.
Each article has a separate Markdown file with the name being the article's name in the help centre (!!! this needs to change as names must be translated !!!). The content of the markdown file is the body of the article.
Once an article is in Zendesk it will also have a meta file. This file stores information from Zendesk and is for internal use by the script.
zendesk-help-cms add "path/to/article.md"
It will create any necessary files. It won't upload the content anywhere. If you want to upload the content to Zendesk use export task. If you want to upload the content to WebTranslateIt use wti
zendesk-help-cms remove "path/to/article.md"
zendesk-help-cms remove "category"
It will remove files locally and from Zendesk and WebTranslateIt. It will not remove categories/sections together with articles even if they are empty, it has to be done separately from removing articles. Removing category/section will remove everything in it.
If you want you can create categories/sections/articles by hand. Instead of creating all necessary files you can create folders for categories/sections and the markdown file for the article. To create missing files run zendesk-help-cms doctor. It will create files with default names (directory/)