← Tomewell
DocumentationPrivacyEULASupport

Tomewell documentation

Tomewell turns your Zendesk help center into branded PDF manuals: a cover, contents with page numbers, chapters, and your articles with their images, tables, code and links. You pick the articles once and rebuild the PDF in one click whenever they change.

Open it from the Tomewell icon in Zendesk Support's left navigation bar.

Make a manual

  1. Click New manual and type a name (it becomes the cover title and the file name).
  2. Contents
    • Brand: on Multi-brand, pick whose help center the manual comes from.
    • Edition: Public includes only articles visible to everyone and leaves out drafts. Internal includes what you can see (restricted articles too) and, if you tick it, drafts; an admin has to allow internal editions first.
    • Languages: tick every language you want. Each one becomes its own PDF.
    • Untranslated articles: include them in the default language with a short note, or leave them out.
    • Then pick what goes in:
      • Pick categories, sections and articles: click Add next to anything in the help center tree. A category brings its sections and articles; a section brings its subsections and articles; both follow the help center's order and include new articles automatically on the next build. Each top-level entry becomes a chapter. Pick on a category or section lets you leave out single articles. Use the arrows to reorder.
      • Chapters of your own: type a title and click Add chapter, then choose it under "Add to" and add sections or articles into it.
      • By label: articles with any of the labels (or all of them), grouped by category and section.
      • By search: articles whose title or text contains all the words.
    • The line under the lists counts the articles and says what was left out and why.
  3. Design
    • Cover title (the manual name if empty), subtitle, a note (edition, audience), logo and two colors: the brand color for the cover band, headings and links, and the text color on it. Use brand logo fills in the brand's Zendesk logo. Tomewell warns when the cover text is hard to read.
    • Paper (A4 or US Letter), contents depth (chapters; plus sections; plus articles; or none).
    • Header and footer: your text with {manual}, {brand}, {chapter}, {page}, {pages} and {date}. Put " | " between two parts to place one left and one right.
    • Start every article on a new page, show "Updated" dates, print category and section descriptions, and the "Generated on" date on the cover.
    • Use this logo and colors for new manuals saves them as the brand's defaults.
  4. Click Save. Saving needs a Zendesk admin, because Zendesk lets only admins change app settings.

Build

Open the manual's Build tab and click Build PDF (or Build N PDFs for several languages). Tomewell reads the articles as they are right now, lays out the pages in your browser and shows the page count, articles, images and anything it left out. Then:

  • Download saves the PDF. Open shows it in a new tab.
  • Attach to an article: type an article's id (the number in its address) and click Attach. Readers download the manual from that article. With Replace an older copy ticked, the previous PDF with the same file name is removed after the new one is attached. Needs edit rights to that article; Zendesk takes attachments up to 20 MB.

Changes you haven't saved are used in the build, so you can try a design before saving it.

In the PDF

  • Contents entries are links to their pages.
  • Links between articles in the manual jump inside the PDF, links to a heading jump to that heading, and links to anything else open the live help center or website.
  • PDF bookmarks list the chapters, sections and articles.
  • Images are embedded from your help center. Any image Zendesk doesn't hand to Tomewell prints as a labeled box, and the Build card lists them.
  • Videos print as a link.

The theme button (optional)

Theme button gives you two snippets for your help center theme:

  1. HTML for article_page.hbs, under the article title: a Save as PDF button and, if you paste the attachment link from Build, a link to the full manual.
  2. CSS for the end of style.css: the button in your brand color, and a print layout that hides your help center's navigation.

In Zendesk: Knowledge admin > Customize design > your theme > Customize > Edit code. Edit a copy of the live theme, preview it, then publish. The button opens the reader's print dialog with a clean layout of that one article. To remove it, delete the two blocks marked "Tomewell".

Settings (Admin Center > Apps and integrations > Zendesk Support apps > Tomewell)

  • Who may edit manuals: admin (default), agent (everyone), custom role ids, or group:<id>, comma separated. Everyone with access can build saved manuals.
  • Allow internal editions: off by default.
  • Saved manuals: written by Tomewell. Leave it alone.

Plans

  • Single brand, $79 per month per Zendesk account: manuals from one brand's help center.
  • Multi-brand, $149 per month per Zendesk account: every brand.
  • 14-day trial, card required. Every feature on both plans. On Single brand, a manual for a second brand can't be saved or built until the plan changes.

Limits

  • Help center content only. Tomewell doesn't read tickets, users or other Zendesk records and has no data export: it makes formatted PDFs of the articles you choose.
  • Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Vietnamese scripts. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai and Indic languages can't be printed yet; Tomewell says so instead of printing empty boxes.
  • Up to 40 saved manuals per account (and 30,000 characters of definitions); up to 600 images per PDF.
  • Article attachments up to 20 MB.
  • Article styling from your theme's CSS isn't copied; Tomewell prints headings, lists, tables, code, quotes, callouts (div with a class like callout, note, tip or warning) and images in its own clean layout.

Privacy

Tomewell runs in your browser inside Zendesk, as you. Articles and images are read into the browser tab only while a PDF is built. Only the manual definitions are saved, in the app's settings in your Zendesk account. Nothing goes to Great Work or anyone else. Full policy: https://greatwork.company/apps/tomewell/privacy

Uninstall

Admin Center > Apps and integrations > Zendesk Support apps > Tomewell > Uninstall. The saved manual definitions go with the app's settings. PDFs attached to articles stay until you remove them in the article editor.

Help

hello@greatwork.company. A person replies within one business day.