Managing source and type filters for external content in your help center

If you're setting up a new web crawler, the name that you assign to the crawler will automatically be used to create the Source value. If you want to change the name later, you can always edit or assign a different source name.

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When you set up help center federated search, you must define the source and type of the external content that you want to make available in your help center:

Source: Refers to the origin of the external content, such as a forum, issue tracker, or learning management system.

Type: Refers to the kind of content, such as blog posts, tech notes, or bug reports.

If you're setting up a new web crawler, the name that you assign to the crawler will automatically be used to create the Source value. If you want to change the name later, you can always edit or assign a different source name.

When external content appears in a help center search, that content is grouped under the appropriate source and type names, making it easier for users to find the information they are looking for.

This article contains the following topics:

Create an external source or type

Edit an external source or type name

Delete an external source or type

Creating an external source and type

You can create new sources and types for your external content. However, if you're using connectors or web crawlers to ingest external content, source and type are automatically created, and unecessary for you to create manually.

In the help center, the search results filter will show the source or type whenever external content associated with that source or type appears in the search results.

Tip: To help users filter and locate content quickly, consider useful groupings and names for your external content sources and types when creating them. See Help center guide for end users (Using the search filters).

To create an external source or type

In Knowledge admin, click Settings ( ) in the sidebar.

Click Search settings.

Under Search filters, click Manage.

On the Sources tab, click Create source.

In the Name field, type a name that describes where this content lives, then click Create.

On the Types tab, click Create type.

In the Name field, enter a name that describes what kind of content this is, then click Create.

Editing an external source or type name

You can change the name associated with an external content source or type if you want to control how that element appears in the UI.

To edit an external source or type name

In Knowledge admin, click Settings ( ) in the sidebar.

Click Search settings.

Under Search filters, click Manage.

Select the Sources or Types tab, depending on the element that you want to edit.

On the row of the source or type that you want to edit, click the options menu ( ), and then click Edit name.

In the Name field, type the new name.

Click Save.

Deleting an external source or type

You can delete an external source or type if you no longer plan to ingest external content associated with that source or type into your help center search.
Important: Do not delete the source or type for the connectors to Confluence from this page. If you do so, the connectors will break and you won't be able to reconnect them. To remove a Confluence connection, see Managing the Knowledge connector to Confluence.

When you delete an external source or type, the following will occur:

External content records belonging to this source or type won’t be included in help center results.

Any crawler or external content connection associated with this source or type will be deleted, and the connection related to the deleted source or type becomes unsyncable.

If you have any API integrations that add external records to this source or type, they may break.

To delete an external source or type

In Knowledge admin, click Settings ( ) in the sidebar.

Click Search settings.

Under Search filters, click Manage.

Select the Sources or Types tab, depending on the element that you want to delete.

On the row of the source or type that you want to edit, click the options menu ( ), and then click Delete.

Click Delete.

Read the Delete source confirmation content and select the check boxes to indicate that you understand each item.

Click Delete.