## Overview

The ConversaLabs Help Center is your account's public content site. Each **portal** holds
**categories** and **articles**, and every article exists in one language — translations of the same
article are linked to each other.

This article covers the writer's work: the **editor** (and the menu that opens when you type `/`),
the **draft changes** flow on an article that is already live, the screen that **compares** the
draft against the published version, and the tools in the admin lists — **search** and **drag
reordering**.

The key point is this: on a **published** article, what you type **does not go live right away**.
It is held as a draft until you publish the changes. On a **Draft** or **Archived** article every
edit saves straight into the record, because there is nothing published to protect.

## Prerequisites

- Access to the Help Center (Portals) in the account, with permission to create and edit articles.
- The article's author must be a user of the account itself. An invalid author is rejected on
  creation and simply ignored on edit.
- For the article to show on the public site it must be **Published**, have **public visibility**
  and sit in a **public category of the same portal and the same account**.
- A published article must have **content**: an empty body blocks publishing.
- Article body limit: **200,000 characters**.

## Step by step

### Create an article

1. Open the Help Center, pick the portal and the language, then click **New article**.
2. Type the **title**. The article is created when you leave the title field and starts as
   **Draft**, with **you as the author**, in the **category that was open** (or the first category
   of the language), and already publicly visible.
3. Write the body in the editor. Set the **author**, the **category** and the **article properties**
   (meta title, meta description and meta tags) in the controls below the title.
4. Click **Publish** once the text is ready. Use **Preview** to open the article the way a reader
   will see it.

### Write with the slash menu (`/`)

1. In the article body, type `/`. The formatting menu opens at the cursor.
2. Keep typing to filter the options by name.
3. Move with **arrow down** / **arrow up** (or `Ctrl+N` / `Ctrl+P`) and confirm with **Enter**. You
   can also click an option. **Esc** closes the menu.

Options available in the article editor: **Heading 1**, **Heading 2**, **Heading 3**, **Bold**,
**Italic**, **Strikethrough**, **Code**, **Bullet List**, **Ordered List**, **Table**, **Image**,
**Video** and **Divider**. Link, undo and redo are enabled as well.

- **Table** inserts a 3-column table with one header row and one data row.
- **Divider** inserts a horizontal rule and leaves the cursor right after it.
- **Image** opens your computer's file picker, which accepts **PNG, JPEG, JPG, GIF and WebP**.

### Insert a video

1. Type `/`, then choose **Video**.
2. Paste the link into the **Paste a video link** field and confirm with **Embed**. The button only
   becomes available once the link is recognised; **Cancel** or **Esc** close the box without
   inserting anything.
3. Supported links: **YouTube**, **Vimeo**, **Loom**, **Wistia**, **Arcade**, **Bunny**,
   **CodePen**, **GuideJar** and **.mp4** files. Anything outside that list is rejected with
   "That doesn't look like a supported video link".
4. The editor stores the address as a link in the text; the public portal is what turns that link
   into the embedded player.

### Edit an article that is already published

1. Open the article. The editor saves on its own **500 ms after your last keystroke** — the header
   shows "Saving..." and then "Saved".
2. Because the article is published, the text goes into a **draft** and the site keeps showing the
   previous version. The header now shows the **Pending changes** badge, and the article card in
   the list shows **Unpublished edits**.
3. Click the **Pending changes** badge to open the comparison panel. The badge is a button;
   hovering it shows the **View unpublished changes** hint.
4. To go live, click **Publish changes**. To throw the draft away and keep the text that is live,
   open the menu next to the button and choose **Discard changes**.

### Compare the draft against the live version

The **Unpublished changes** side panel only shows what changed — if only the body changed, the
title block does not even appear:

- The **title** is compared word by word; what left is struck through and what came in is
  highlighted.
- The **body** is compared block by block (paragraph, heading, list, code block). A block only shows
  as changed when the rendered result changes — reshuffling blank lines produces no difference.
- Fenced code blocks (three backticks or three tildes) and lists are treated as a single block, so
  they never appear cut in half.
- A block that came in carries a green marker; a block that left is struck through with a red one.
  The comparison decides on the **rendered HTML** in CommonMark — the same dialect the public portal
  uses — not on the raw text; that is why a spacing-only edit produces no difference.
- On very large texts (over 2,000 blocks or words on either side) the detailed comparison is
  dropped: everything live shows as removed and the whole draft shows as added.
- Tables are displayed with the column widths you set in the editor.

## Settings & options

### Article status

| Status | What it means | Where your typing goes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Draft | Does not appear on the public portal. | Straight into the article record. |
| Published | Appears on the public portal. | Into the draft changes, until you publish. |
| Archived | Leaves the portal; use it to mark obsolete content. | Straight into the article record. |

From **Published** the menu offers **Archive** and **Draft**. From **Archived**, **Draft**. From
**Draft**, **Archive**. The **Publish** button is disabled on an article that is already published
and has no pending changes.

### Changing status with pending changes

If you send a published article to **Draft** or **Archive** while draft changes exist — from the
editor menu **or** from the card menu in the list — the **Unpublished changes** confirmation
appears with two ways out:

- **Apply changes**: promotes the draft into the article text and applies the new status.
- **Discard changes**: throws the draft away and applies the new status.

While either action is in flight, the confirmation does not close on **Esc** or on a click outside.

### Article search

- The **Search articles...** field sits in the list header and fires **500 ms** after you stop
  typing.
- The term goes into the page address, so the result survives a reload and can be shared.
- Search runs on the server across **title**, **description** and **content**, weighted towards the
  title, and matches the start of a word.
- With no match, the list shows "No matching articles".

On the **categories** screen search behaves differently: it filters the categories already loaded
**by name**.

### Tabs, filters and pagination

The **All articles**, **Mine**, **Draft** and **Archived** tabs carry the count of each group.
**There is no "Published" tab**: to work with what is live, stay on **All articles** and use each
card's status label. There are also **category** and **language** filters, and the list pages
**25 at a time**.

### Drag reordering

The order you set here is the order in which articles appear in the portal category.

- Dragging is only available **inside a category**, with **more than one article** (or more than one
  page) and with **no active search** and no bulk selection.
- Press the card and drag. The destination shows as a dashed placeholder.
- To take an article to **another page**, drag to the left or right edge of the list and hold: after
  roughly **0.6 s** the page turns on its own and you keep dragging. While an edge is armed it
  lights up and shows an arrow — that is a cue that the turn is coming, not a button to click.
- Near the top and the bottom the list scrolls on its own while you hold the card.
- **Esc** during a drag cancels the operation and nothing is saved.
- The new position shows immediately and, if the server refuses it, the order reverts and the
  message "Unable to reorder articles. Please try again." appears.
- When the server accepts, the list adopts the positions it returned, so the next drag never starts
  from a stale number.

Categories can also be reordered by dragging on the categories screen, and dragging is disabled
while a search is active.

### Bulk actions

Select one or more cards to open the action bar: **Publish**, **Draft**, **Archive**, **Category**
(move), **Translate** and **Delete**.

- A bulk **Publish** also publishes each article's draft when it has pending changes.
- Bulk **Draft** and **Archive** **skip** articles with pending changes and tell you how many were
  skipped — open each one to publish or discard. If **every** selected article has unpublished
  edits, nothing is applied and "These articles have unpublished edits — open each to publish or
  discard." appears.
- The selection clears itself whenever the list changes (page, tab, filter or search), so check
  what is ticked before firing an action.
- **Delete** asks for confirmation and is permanent.
- **Translate** only appears on Enterprise installations with the **Captain Tasks**
  (`captain_tasks`) feature enabled for the account.
- Each card's own menu carries the same status changes and, when a draft is pending, **Discard
  changes** too.

## Use cases

- **Fix a live article without taking it offline**: edit freely, check the comparison panel and only
  then click **Publish changes**.
- **Four-eyes review**: the writer leaves the draft ready and says so; the reviewer opens the same
  article, uses the comparison panel and decides between publishing and discarding.
- **Reorganize a category**: enter the category, drag articles into the order the reader should meet
  them, and use the edge drag to move an article between pages.
- **Clean up old content**: on **All articles** (or inside a category), tick the expired articles by
  their status label and use a bulk **Archive**.
- **Find a specific passage**: use search — it also looks inside the article body, not only the
  title.

## Tips, limits & best practices

- Autosave sends **title and body together**, so editing one field never drops a recent edit to the
  other.
- A save that only touches the draft **does not change the article's update date**. That date only
  moves when something is written to the record — publishing the changes, or changing the category
  or the author.
- If the draft becomes identical to what is live, it is **cleared on its own** and the pending
  changes badge disappears — that is the case when you undo an edit or only touch spacing.
- If you send a published article to **Draft** and then edit it, the old draft is promoted and
  cleared, so a future publish cannot resurrect stale text.
- Leaving the editor with a pending save **does not lose the edit**: it is sent on the way out.
- **Discard changes** has no undo.
- Each image uploaded from the editor must be **under 4 MB**. Above that, "Image size should be
  less than 4MB" appears and the file is not uploaded.
- Inside a table cell the `/` menu hides headings, lists, image, table, divider and video: a
  markdown table cell only holds inline content, and the rest would be lost on save.
- The addresses `search`, `articles` and `categories` are reserved and cannot be used as an
  article's address.
- Two articles sharing the same position do not swap places between visits: the tiebreak is stable.

## Troubleshooting

- **The Publish button is disabled.** The article is already published and has no pending changes.
  Edit something, or use the menu beside it to change the status.
- **"Still saving your latest changes" appeared.** An autosave is in flight. Wait a moment and try
  again — publishing right then would push stale text live.
- **I published, but the article returns a not-found page on the portal.** Confirm that the
  article's **category** is public and belongs to the same portal and account. Legacy articles with
  no visibility set are also refused at publish time until a platform administrator classifies
  their provenance.
- **The pending changes badge disappeared after I saved.** The draft became identical to the live
  version — usually because the edit was undone or only touched spacing, which does not change the
  published result.
- **The bulk action said it skipped articles.** Those articles had unpublished edits. Open each one
  and choose between publishing and discarding before repeating the action.
- **I can't drag the cards.** Check that you are inside a category, that no search is active, that
  no article is selected, and that there is more than one article.
- **Options are missing from the `/` menu.** The cursor is most likely inside a table cell.
- **The video link was rejected.** The provider is not on the supported list. Host the video on one
  of the accepted services or use an `.mp4` file.
- **The article won't save.** Check that the body has not gone past 200,000 characters and that the
  article has content before trying to publish.

## See also

- [Help Center portal settings](/hc/ajuda/articles/administration-central-de-ajuda-portal-en)
- [Administration overview](/hc/ajuda/articles/administration-overview-en)
- [Whitelabel (your own brand)](/hc/ajuda/articles/administration-whitelabel-en)
- [Custom Scripts: inject JS/CSS into dashboard, portal and widget](/hc/ajuda/articles/administration-custom-scripts-en)
- [Dynamic variables](/hc/ajuda/articles/administration-variaveis-dinamicas-en)