Import content

If you or one of your teams has already been using Confluence as a knowledge base solution, you may have a lot of content there you'd like to move over to KnowledgeOwl. You can import that content from a Confluence space directly into your KnowledgeOwl knowledge base with a few clicks.

Before you start

You'll need to generate an HTML export of your Confluence space. Refer to Confluence's instructions for your setup:

• Confluence Cloud: Follow the instructions to Export a space. Be sure you export as HTML.
• Confluence Server: Follow the instructions to Export multiple pages to HTML or PDF section. Be sure you export as HTML.

Download the zipped archive file and have it ready.

Import your content from Confluence

1. In KnowledgeOwl, select Import from the left navigation.
   
2. Select Confluence Import.
   
3. Upload your Confluence HTML export zip file by dragging the file into the box or selecting the box, browsing to the file, and selecting it.
4. Once the file's name displays in the box, select Upload File.
   
5. A progress bar displays while the file uploads. Once it's uploaded, we show a confirmation message. Select Start Import in that confirmation message:
   Select Start Import once you see the Zip file uploaded successfully message.

The import will display a progress bar and confirm once it completes. If you're testing the import in a new knowledge base and want to make changes and try to re-import, you can delete this knowledge base and create a new knowledge base to re-test the import. Refer to Testing imports for more details.

How the Confluence import works

Confluence and KnowledgeOwl are formatted and architected differently, so the importer does some converting as it goes.

Architecturally, Confluence doesn't have the concept of categories versus articles, it just uses pages, which can be parent or child pages. When we import them, we convert parent pages to custom content categories. Child pages without any children are converted to articles.

We also perform these style/formatting cleaning steps, designed to get your content behaving like native KnowledgeOwl content as quickly as possible:

• Remove all element class names.
• Remove all inline styles (setting fonts, font sizes, colors, etc.).
• Remove <style> blocks from within articles to ensure articles get your knowledge base's default styles.
• Other than the article title, we migrate all h1s to h2s, h2s to h3s, and h3s to h4s, since we display the article title as the lone h1 on the page.
• For all image elements, we add our img-responsive class, which helps guarantee the image will resize based on different screen sizes.
• For all tables:
  • Add our "table-bordered" class, which we add to new tables by default.
  • Add style="width: 100%;" to the table to match our default.
  • Move <tbody><tr><th> rows into <tbody><thead> rows, so they get our table header styles.

Import failures

If your file fails to import, we'll warn you that there was an issue:

Sample import failed message

Please contact us and share the HTML zip file that caused the failure so we can troubleshoot what went wrong.

If you or one of your teams has already been using Zendesk as a knowledge base solution, you may have a lot of content there you'd like to move over to KnowledgeOwl. You can import that content from a Zendesk knowledge base/help center directly into your KnowledgeOwl knowledge base with a few clicks.

Before you start

Be sure you have admin access to your Zendesk account before you try to import, since you'll need access some options in Admin Center. Specifically, you'll need:

• your Zendesk subdomain
• a Zendesk user email with access to the Zendesk knowledge base you're importing content from
• a valid Zendesk API token. This may require you to enable API access in your Zendesk account. Refer to Managing access to the Zendesk API for instructions on both.
  

Import your content from Zendesk

1. Confirm you can get the required information from Zendesk. (Generally you can do all of this if you can access /admin/home in your Zendesk account.)
2. In KnowledgeOwl, go to Knowledge Base > Import.
3. Select Zendesk Import.
   
4. Enter a Zendesk Domain: this is your Zendesk subdomain name. For example, knowledgeowl is the domain we'd enter for a help center located at knowledgeowl.zendesk.com.

   Zendesk private domains
   If you're using a private domain with your Zendesk account, you'll still want to use your Zendesk subdomain here, not the full private domain.

5. Enter a Zendesk Username: this is the email address of an existing Zendesk user who has access to the Zendesk knowledge base. If you've accessed Zendesk to gather this information, you can generally use your own.
6. Enter a Zendesk API Key: Enter a valid Zendesk API token. Refer to Managing access to the Zendesk API for information on enabling API access and generating tokens. Here's what the import fields might look like importing from a knowledge base that's part of the knowledgeowl.zendesk.com account:
   
   Sample completed import fields
   
7. Once you've filled in each of the fields, select Start Import.

The import will display a progress bar and confirm once it completes. If you're testing the import in a new knowledge base and want to make changes and try to re-import, you can delete this knowledge base and create a new knowledge base to re-test the import. Refer to Testing imports for more details.

If you or one of your teams has already been using Freshdesk as a knowledge base solution, you may have a lot of content there you'd like to move over to KnowledgeOwl. You can import that content from a Freshdesk knowledge base/help center directly into your KnowledgeOwl knowledge base with a few clicks.

Before you start

You'll need a few things from the Freshdesk account to get started, specifically:

• your Freshdesk subdomain
• a valid Freshdesk API key. Refer to Freshdesk's How to find your API key documentation for more information.
  

Import your content from Freshdesk

1. Confirm you can get the required information from Freshdesk.
2. In KnowledgeOwl, go to Knowledge Base > Import.
3. Select Freshdesk Import.
   
4. Enter your Freshdesk Domain: this is your Freshdesk subdomain name. For example, knowledgeowl is the Freshdesk subdomain for knowledgeowl.freshdesk.com.
5. Enter a Freshdesk API Key: Enter your Freshdesk API key. Refer to the Freshdesk API documentation for instructions on finding your API key.
6. Once you've filled in each of the fields, select Start Import.

The import will display a progress bar and confirm once it completes. If you're testing the import in a new knowledge base and want to make changes and try to re-import, you can delete this knowledge base and create a new knowledge base to re-test the import. See Testing imports for more details.

You can use the KnowledgeOwl API to import content. The API is available on all plans, and you will need development resources to be able to use it. Visit our API documentation to learn more.

New or trial accounts 

If you have a new or trial account without much content or customizations, you can test imports without worry. If something goes wrong or you want to try again, you can delete the current knowledge base and create a new one.

To delete your knowledge base and start over:

1. Select the owl in the top left to go to your dashboard. 
2. Select the gear icon next to your knowledge base's name.
3. Select Delete.
   
   Select the gear cog icon and select Delete.
   
4.  A modal opens confirming you want to delete the knowledge base. Confirm the name displayed is the knowledge base you planned to delete. Select OK to complete the deletion.

If you only have one knowledge base, this will restart the setup process for a new knowledge base. If you have multiple knowledge base slots on your account, you can then select + New Knowledge Base to try again. 

Refer to Create an additional knowledge base for more information on adding a new knowledge base.

Existing accounts 

If you already have an account with a knowledge base set up, you might not want to test an import in your production knowledge base. Here are a few options for testing imports outside of production:

• If you have additional knowledge base slots in your subscription, you can create a new knowledge base to test the import. 
• If you do not have additional knowledge base slots, you can add more to your subscriptions under your profile icon/name > Billing. 
• If you want a temporary knowledge base for testing, contact us so we can set you up with a complimentary sandbox knowledge base.

People migrating from other knowledge base tools get really excited to import content because it will "save so much time." Then, once the import is done, they begin reviewing content and making a change here, a change there, a slight organizational tweak over here...and then suddenly they end up manually reviewing and updating every single piece of content in the entire knowledge base. The total amount of time may be significantly longer than if they'd manually moved content over from scratch and made changes and edits upfront.

So we recommend a three-step approach:

1. If KnowledgeOwl has a prebuilt import tool for your previous provider, test out the import and see how you like it. (Or, if you have developer resources and are working with a different source system, explore using our API to craft your own import.)
2. Try importing a few pages manually by hand.
3. Review the output of each process and how much you like it. Choose the path forward that makes the most sense for you.

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, sometimes manually migrating your content ends up being faster, since you can do content reorganization, cross-referencing, and fix formatting issues as you go and feel fully confident at how good that content looks.

Regardless of whether you're importing in bulk or manually importing content a la carte, we recommend that you:

• Review your existing knowledge base's organization and structure. Does it meet your readers' needs? Have you always wished it was different? Now could be a great time to make some changes.
• Review content for idiosyncrasies or tweaks that were necessary in your existing knowledge base platform, but unnecessary in KnowledgeOwl's. Some differences might be the way categories can be laid out, tables of contents, links, hyperlinks, Link to Article links in KnowledgeOwl, how images or files are referenced, etc.
• Review content to make sure it's up to date. Importing out-of-date content sometimes can cause more headache than just creating new content from scratch.
• Review your content's existing permissions and access. Do you need/want to segregate content by groups? Do you need or want to restrict editing of certain content to particular author teams? If so, setting those groups and teams up in advance of adding your content can allow you to create/import it assigned to the correct access restrictions.