Our default Editor and Writer roles have permission to use the Broken links checker. If you're using a custom author role, that role must have the Tools custom author role permission to Run broken link reports.
To run the Broken links checker and generate a Broken Links Report:
- Go to Tools > Broken link checker.
- If you'd like to include draft or archived article statuses or article versions, check the appropriate boxes in the Additional content options section. Refer to Additional content options for more information on what these options do.
- If you'd like to ignore specific status codes (or include 301 and 302 response codes), check the appropriate boxes in the Exclude codes section. Refer to Exclude codes for more information on what these options do.
- Once you've finished making selections, select Generate Report.
- The checker displays a detailed progress bar as it's running, letting you know as it checks content. Refer to Which content is checked for a complete list of which fields are checked; refer to Which content isn't checked for the limitations or exceptions.
- Once the checker has completed, a success message displays and a Download option appears next to Generate Report. The timestamp for the "Last report ran on..." statement also updates.
- Select Download to download the Broken Links Report in CSV format.
Review the report and update content as seems appropriate. Refer to How to read the Broken Links Report for more information on working with the report.
Once the report has been generated, it remains available in Tools > Broken link checker until you generate a new one, so you can also start this report, go do other things, and then come back and download it later.
The checker will only allow one report per knowledge base to be generated at a time, so if you have multiple authors and one person starts it, everyone else will be prevented from running a new report until that report has finished generating.
