URL redirect article

What if the content you'd like to include in your knowledge base isn't IN your knowledge base? Maybe you'd like to reference the page of another site, or a press packet your PR department has put together.

You can set up both categories and articles as URL redirects. For articles, this means you can administer the article as an article (restrict it to groups, restrict editing to teams, use the article call-outs, assign related articles) but when someone clicks on the title of the article or navigates to the URL, they'll be redirected to the URL you set up, instead.

URL redirects can be great when used with:

• Links to external sites/files you don't want or can't move into KnowledgeOwl
• Links to files stored within KnowledgeOwl, where you want the file to open directly (See the KnowledgeOwl W-9 for an example of this type!)

You can create a new article as a URL redirect or convert an existing article to be a URL redirect. To do so:

1. In the URL Redirect section of the righthand menu of the article editor, check the box next to Redirect this article to a different URL.
   The URL Redirect section is located between Article Callouts and Inherited Restrictions
2. Once checked, this will add a section between the full article title and the editor where you can add the URL you'd like to redirect to:
   
3. Now, add the URL you'd like to redirect to.
   1. For external URLs, type or paste the URL you'd like to use into the Redirect URL field. Here, we're redirecting to the International Owl Center's Owl Glossary page:
      Sample external redirect URL
   2. To redirect to a file uploaded to KnowledgeOwl (or to directly upload a file to KnowledgeOwl to redirect to), click the Redirect to File button:
      Click the Redirect to File button
      1. This will open an Add file from Library pop-up where you can select the file you'd like to insert. Browse or search for the file. (Or click Upload New File to add a new one.) Click on it to select it, then click the Insert File button in the lower right.
         Select the file you'd like to redirect to and click Insert File
      2. The URL of the file will be added to the Redirect URL field:
         Redirect article with a KO file URL used
4. Set whether you'd like the redirect link to open in a new tab or in the same tab. (Open link in new tab is used by default.)
   
5. Save your article.

To switch an article from being a URL redirect to being a normal article, uncheck the "Redirect this article to a different URL" box. Once you save, the article will function normally and display whatever content is in the editor.

For example, if you're using a file stored within KnowledgeOwl, the content of that URL redirect file will not automatically be indexed for search. If you'd like it to be:

• For PDFs, you can insert the PDF into the body of the article using the Upload File option. When you save the article, we'll scrape the contents of the PDF for search.
• For non-PDF files, you can open the file, copy text in it, and paste that into the article body. You don't have to worry about how weirdly it's formatted, since it's not displayed, but having the text here will help it get indexed for search!