Choose where your articles are stored

Your articles live in one of two places. They are Markdown files in a repo, or they are saved and managed in HelpWell. The dashboard words its pages to match, so it never sends you to a repo, a config file or a command that isn't there.

#Articles kept as files in your repo

Most installs keep their knowledge base in a repo.

• Articles are Markdown files your team owns.
• helpwell sync indexes them.
• The playbook and eval cases are files beside the articles.
• The dashboard says Your repo is the source of truth.
• On an article, you can edit it in the dashboard, or edit the file and run helpwell sync.

This is the default.

#Articles managed in HelpWell

Some installs have no repo behind the dashboard. Their content is managed for them.

• Articles, the playbook and settings are saved into a content source the host provides.
• A save is the whole story. There is no terminal and nothing to run.
• The dashboard says Articles are saved here.
• A save goes live once the article is indexed. After you save a new article, the page says Saved and indexed: live for text search.
• When there are no articles yet, the page says Write the first one here.

The dashboard doesn't show repo wording, config file names or CLI commands on these installs.

#Hosted products that sync from GitHub

A hosted product can also be built from GitHub repositories. You connect them under Settings → GitHub repositories. Edits made in HelpWell then behave like this:

• The edit is live at once.
• It waits for a pull request back to the repository it belongs to. Open it with Open a pull request on that repository.
• An article in a repository's folder goes back to that repository.
• A new article elsewhere goes to the repository chosen under New articles. By default, that is the top-level one.

#Which one do I have?

Look at the Knowledge base page.