Sprucewell: setup and user guide

What Sprucewell does

Sprucewell keeps a Zendesk help center tidy. It finds and replaces text across every article and language, checks every link inside your help center, finds articles nobody has edited in a long time and changes them in bulk, and manages your help center's redirect rules. Every change shows a preview first, writes only what you approve, and saves a copy of what it replaced in your Zendesk account so you can undo it from History.

It works on your default brand's help center.

Install

1. In the Zendesk Marketplace, open Sprucewell and choose Install. Choose the plan for your help center's size in article translations (an article in three languages counts three): Starter up to 2,000 ($85 a month), Growth up to 6,000 ($125), Scale any number ($175). The 14-day trial starts and Zendesk asks for a card. Billing starts when the trial ends unless you uninstall.
2. Restrict the app to the people who maintain your help center: Admin Center > Apps and integrations > Zendesk Support apps > Sprucewell > Role restrictions.
3. Optional settings on the same page: Old domains to flag (your previous website or help center addresses, separated by commas) and Keep undo copies for (days), default 365.

Sprucewell creates one custom object at install, "Sprucewell change", which holds the undo copies. Custom objects are part of every Zendesk Suite plan and of Support Enterprise. On accounts with custom roles, give the roles that use Sprucewell access to this object (Admin Center > Objects and rules > Custom objects > Sprucewell change > Permissions).

Who can do what: anyone who can open the app can search and check links. Changing articles needs a Guide admin or an agent allowed to edit those articles; Zendesk refuses the rest and Sprucewell lists them as not changed. Redirects need a Guide admin.

The overview

Open Sprucewell from the left navigation bar. It reads your help center (every language) and shows three numbers: broken or risky links, translations not edited in 12 months, and redirect rules. Click one to open the matching tab. Reload reads everything again.

Find and replace

1. Type what to find and what to replace it with (leave Replace empty to remove the text).
2. Options: Match case, Whole words, Pattern (a regular expression; use $1, $2 for groups in the replacement).
3. Where to search: Titles and Article text are on by default. Link addresses and Image addresses change the href of links and src of images, which is what you want when a website or file host moves. HTML source (advanced) searches the raw HTML of each body, tags and attributes included; use it to change markup, and check the warnings.
4. Narrow it down by language, category, section, labels or status.
5. Click Find matches. Every translation with a match is listed with each match in context: the old text struck through, the new text highlighted. Untick any match, or a whole article, to leave it as it is.
6. Name the change (it appears in History) and click Apply.

Sprucewell re-reads each translation just before writing it. If someone saved it after your preview, it is skipped and listed under "Not changed"; search again to include it. Changes run one translation at a time and leave API room for your agents; you can stop a run, and whatever already changed is in History.

Things Sprucewell never does in article text: change tag names, attributes, scripts or styles, or turn your replacement into HTML (a < you type shows as <).

Links

The Links tab checks every <a href> and <img src> in every translation:

Also listed but not problems: Missing, redirected (the target is gone but a redirect rule sends readers on; link straight to the new page to skip the hop), Other site (not checked) and Help center page (not checked) such as search or request forms.

Click Check attachments to look up every help center attachment the articles link to (up to 1,000 per run).

On each row: Replace everywhere opens Find and replace with that address, ready for the new one; Add a redirect opens Redirects with the missing address filled in; Open article opens it in Knowledge admin.

Links to other websites are grouped by domain under the table. Sprucewell does not fetch other websites: Zendesk apps cannot send the lightweight HEAD request a link check needs, and we do not download other sites' pages from your account. If you are leaving a domain, list it under Old domains to flag and every link to it shows as a problem.

Clean up

1. Pick Not edited since a date, or click 6, 12 or 24 months. Narrow by language, section, labels the article has or does not have, status or title.
2. The list shows every matching translation, oldest edit first, with its section, labels and age.
3. Tick articles (or Select all), choose an action and click Preview:
   • Add labels or Remove labels (comma separated).
   • Move to section.
   • Archive, optionally with a redirect: type an article id, a /hc/... path or a full address, and every language address of each archived article gets a 301 to it.
4. The preview shows each article before and after. Before archiving it also lists the articles that link to it.
5. Click Apply (or Archive).

Section and labels belong to the article, so a change applies to every language of it. Archived articles cannot be restored by Undo: Zendesk lets apps archive articles but not restore them. Restore them in Knowledge admin > Manage articles > Archived. Undo does remove the redirects Sprucewell added for them.

Redirects

Redirect rules are your help center's own redirects (301 permanent by default; 302, 303, 307 and 308 are available). They work only for addresses that no longer exist, so an article must be archived or deleted before its redirect takes effect.

1. Type or paste one redirect per line: old address, new address and optionally a status. Or pick a CSV file with those columns (a header row is skipped).
   • Old addresses can be paths (/hc/en-us/articles/123) or full addresses on your help center; Sprucewell removes the host and the article title part for you. Old addresses from a previous site work too (for example /support/old-faq), as long as you moved that domain to your help center.
   • New addresses start with /, https:// or http://.
2. Click Preview. Each line shows as new, update (replaces a rule for the same old address) or a problem (duplicate line, not your help center, the same address on both sides). Lines whose old article still exists are flagged.
3. Click Set. The list below shows every rule; search it, tick rules and Delete selected.

History and undo

Every change made in Sprucewell is listed with its name, time, who made it and what kind of items it touched. Show items lists each one with its saved copy.

• Undo puts back every item in the change; Undo this one puts back a single item.
• If an item was changed after Sprucewell's change, Undo skips it and offers Undo anyway, which overwrites that later change.
• Archived articles are listed with a note instead of Undo (see Clean up).
• Clear removes undo copies older than the number of days in the settings. Cleared changes can no longer be undone.

Plans and limits

• When the help center has more article translations than your plan covers, a banner names the plan that fits. Scans, previews and undo keep working; applying new changes waits for the plan change (Admin Center > Apps and integrations > Zendesk Support apps > Sprucewell).
• Default brand only. Up to 50,000 articles per language are read.
• Find and replace lists the first 5,000 matching translations; narrow with filters for more.

Your data

Sprucewell runs in your browser inside Zendesk. It has no server and sends nothing to Great Work or anyone else. Article text is held in browser memory while the app is open; undo copies are records in your own Zendesk account. Nothing is exported or downloaded. See the privacy policy at https://greatwork.company/apps/sprucewell/privacy.

Uninstall

Uninstall from Admin Center > Apps and integrations > Zendesk Support apps. Billing stops. Your articles and redirects stay as they are. Zendesk keeps the "Sprucewell change" object and its records so a reinstall can still undo; delete the object in Admin Center > Objects and rules > Custom objects to remove them.

Support

hello@greatwork.company, reply within one business day. Send the change name from History and a screenshot, never customer data or passwords.