How the knowledge base is structured

Ref: C02 · Track: Knowledge Base Admin · Time to complete: ~7 min

Why this matters

If you get the structure right on day one, the help center grows smoothly for years. If you get it wrong, you'll spend weekends moving articles around and breaking links.

Good news: Zendesk's structure is simple. There are three levels and one rule.

The three levels

Category
   └── Section
          └── Article

• Category — the top-level bucket. Example: Getting Started, Billing, Product Documentation.
• Section — a grouping inside a category. Example: inside Billing you might have Invoices, Payment methods, Refunds.
• Article — the actual piece of content a customer or agent reads. This is the only level with real content.

The one rule

Articles can only live inside sections. They cannot live directly under a category, and they cannot live at the top level.

This means every article you write has to belong to some section. If you can't decide which section, that's a signal the section might not exist yet.

"Categories and sections are really just navigation. There's no actual content inside them — a customer clicks through a category and a section before they ever get to an article." — Gauvin Group training

How deep can you go?

• On Suite Professional: exactly two levels — one category, one section, then articles.
• On Suite Enterprise: up to five levels — you can nest sections inside sections inside sections.

Recommendation: stick to two levels even if you have Enterprise. Deep nesting hurts findability — each extra click loses readers — and search makes depth mostly irrelevant anyway.

The exception: a very large B2B help center with strict separation of content per product line. In that case three levels (Category → Product → Section) is sometimes the right call.

A worked example

Here's a minimal, sensible structure for a Zendesk help center covering a single product:

Getting Started
   ├── Create your account
   ├── Invite your team
   └── Your first 15 minutes

Using the product
   ├── Dashboard
   ├── Reports
   └── Integrations

Billing
   ├── Invoices
   ├── Payment methods
   └── Refunds and cancellations

Account and security
   ├── Two-factor authentication
   ├── Managing users
   └── Data export

Troubleshooting
   ├── Connection issues
   ├── Error messages
   └── Contact support

Five categories, 3–5 sections each, articles under those sections. Two levels. Easy to navigate, easy to maintain.

Things to get right before you create anything

Naming

• Category names are browsed, so they should sound like what a customer is looking for. "Billing" > "Finance & Commercial Operations".
• Section names can be slightly more specific. "Refunds and cancellations" is fine; "Refund Request Process 2024 v2" is not.
• Article titles should start with a verb if they describe an action: "Set up two-factor authentication", not "Two-factor authentication setup guide".

Brand scope

If you have multiple brands (common with Gravity CX customers), each brand has its own category/section/article tree. You switch brands using the brand dropdown in the top-right of Guide. Articles in Brand A's help center are not visible on Brand B's — unless you deliberately clone them.

Visibility

Every article has a "visible to" setting (everyone, signed-in users, or specific user segments). A section is visible if any of its articles are visible. This means you can't hide a section by itself — you have to hide all the articles inside it. This is a common trap for internal-only content; see article C12 for how access control actually works.

How to create your first category and section

1. Open Guide admin (the bento icon top-right → Guide → admin).
2. In the left sidebar, click Arrange content.
3. Click Add category at the top.
4. Give it a name and description. Save.
5. Click into your new category.
6. Click Add section.
7. Name it, save, and choose who can manage and who can view.

You can now start creating articles inside that section (article C15 covers the editor itself).

Rearranging later

You can drag-and-drop categories, sections, and articles in Arrange content without breaking their URLs as long as you only change their position in the tree. Moving an article to a different section changes which section it appears under, but the article's own URL is stable.

What does break URLs: renaming categories or sections if you also have URL-based linking elsewhere. If you must rename a category after launch, use Zendesk's URL redirect feature to avoid 404s.

Anti-patterns to avoid

• A "Misc" or "Other" section. It will fill up and never empty. If an article doesn't fit your current sections, that's information — maybe you need a new section, or maybe the article doesn't belong in this help center.
• One section per article. If you have 20 sections and 20 articles, your categories are doing the work of sections. Collapse them.
• Categories named after internal teams. Your customers don't care that Billing and Finance are different departments; they just want to know how to get a refund.
• Mixing audiences in one category. Don't put agent-only troubleshooting in the same category as end-user getting-started. Use different categories (and different visibility rules — see C12).

Quick check — have you got this?

• Can an article live directly inside a category?
• You have Suite Professional. A colleague wants you to create Products → iOS app → Installation → Step 1 → Prerequisites → Article. Is this possible?
• You rename the "Billing" category to "Money stuff". A partner site has a hard-coded link to the old URL. What happens?
• You have a category that currently has no visible articles. Can an end user see the category?

Related articles

• C01 — Why have a knowledge base?
• C12 — Controlling access at the article level
• C15 — Creating and editing an article
• C19 — Using your sandbox to experiment safely