If your knowledge base has subscriptions enabled, readers can subscribe to categories to receive email notifications when:
- New articles are added to the category
- Existing articles in the category are updated
Subscription notification emails go out using your own SMTP server, so you can configure the "From" email address and name and guarantee that these emails are seen as coming from a non-spam source.
When and how often are subscription notification emails sent?
You can configure your knowledge base to send subscription notification emails on a weekly or daily schedule, at a time of your choice. All subscribed readers will receive notifications at the same time.
Notifications for multiple categories are bundled into a single email, so your readers don't have to worry about getting multiple notification emails every scheduled day.
Which articles are included in a subscription notification?
The power is in your hands. Articles are only included in subscription notifications if they have a New or Updated article callout:
So you can make as many small edits for typos, grammar, etc., without triggering a notification. Once you set the New/Updated callout and save the article, it will be included in the next scheduled notification.
Does a reader need to be logged in to subscribe?
By default, subscriptions are only enabled for logged-in readers. If you have a mixture of public content and restricted content that readers must log in to access, only logged-in readers will see the subscribe button. They'll see that option for all categories of content--public and restricted alike.
If you have a public knowledge base, or a mixture of public and restricted content and you want public readers to be able to subscribe to public categories, you can opt to enable public subscriptions. This will enable the Subscribe button for anyone who visits your knowledge base--logged in or not. If you want to use public subscriptions and you're using your own private domain (such as help.my-amazing-company.com rather than my-amazing-kb.knowledgeowl.com), you'll need to configure reCAPTCHA for these public subscriptions.
Who controls subscriptions?
Individual readers choose which categories to subscribe or unsubscribe from. Readers can unsubscribe at any time.
Knowledge base administrators choose the email schedule (weekly vs. daily) and time.
The SMTP settings determine the "From" email address and name.
How do readers subscribe to categories?
When subscriptions are enabled, category landing pages have a Subscribe button to the right of the category title. Readers can click that to subscribe to the category.
You can also opt to include subscribe buttons in your table of contents.
Subscribe buttons will not automatically show up in Custom Content categories. They'll need to be explicitly added.
What do subscription notification emails look like?
By default, the subject line will look like: [[Knowledge Base Name]] Update for [[date]]
So if you subscribe to our KnowledgeOwl Support knowledge base, you'll get email notifications that say: KnowledgeOwl Support Update for February 18th.
For each category with activity, you'll see a list of New articles, followed by a list of Updated articles. Links will take you directly to the articles:
Sample subscription notification email, with one New and one Updated article
When subscriptions are enabled, you can subscribe to receive email notifications when categories have new or updated articles.
To subscribe, go to the Category landing page.
Click the Subscribe button next to the Category title:
Depending on your site configuration, this will either open a pop-up for you to enter your email address into, or take you directly into your Manage Subscriptions screen.
If the Subscribe for Updates pop-up opens, enter the email address you'd like to subscribe and click the Subscribe button:
This will take you to the Manage Subscriptions page. You'll see a confirmation across the top showing which category you just subscribed to, as well as a list of all the categories in this knowledge base you're subscribed to.
You can click any of the category links or the Back button to return to the knowledge base content.
How often will I receive notifications for categories I'm subscribed to?
Depending on how your knowledge base is configured, you will either receive updates every day at a set time, or once a week at a set time. Check with your knowledge base administrator to confirm the schedule.
To stop receiving email notifications for a category, you unsubscribe from that category.
You can do this in two ways:
- From within the knowledge base, by clicking the Unsubscribe button next to the category's name.
- From any subscription email, click the link at the footer to manage your subscriptions.
Unsubscribe from within the knowledge base
You can click the Suscribe button next to any category landing page header to open the Manage Subscriptions page.
When the Manage Subscriptions page opens, you can either click Unsubscribe all to unsubscribe from all categories, or click the Unsubscribe button next to the category you don't want to be subscribed to any more. All subscription changes are instantly saved.
Unsubscribe from an email notification
At the bottom of each notification email, you'll see the sentence:
You can manage your subscriptions or unsubscribe from these emails here.
Click the hyperlinked here from any email to open your Manage Subscriptions page.
Article saves will trigger a subscription notification email the first time the New or Updated callout is added to the article:
When an article is saved with one of these article status callouts, we add the article to the subscription queue. The next time your subscription notifications are scheduled to go out, we process that queue and include the article in the email.
If an article has an existing New or Updated callout set and you'd like to retrigger the subscription notification email, you can:
- Open the article for editing.
- In the Article Call Outs section, select the No Status option.
- Save the article.
- Now edit the article again to add either the New or Updated callout.
- Resave the article.
Saving to No Status basically resets the subscription queue for this article, and then resaving with the New/Updated callout will trigger it anew.
