Creating a Help Center

A Help Center is a website built from your Notes. Visitors read articles, search, vote on whether a page helped, and (if you connect a chat widget) ask questions. You can run more than one Help Center in an organization.

You need to be an organization settings manager to create a site.

Create the site

Open Help Desk → Help Center (or Help Center in the sidebar if you do not have Help Desk access).
Click New Help Center.
Enter a Display name. This is what visitors see in the header and browser tab, not a web address.
Pick a Domain:
- Hosted by Records Labs: enter a subdomain such as support (a suggestion is filled in for you). The site is live at support.recordslabs.site right away, with no DNS work.
- A domain you have already verified under Settings → Custom Domains: enter the host label (such as help). The site is created verified and goes live as soon as its CNAME points at Records Labs.
Pick a Layout (you can change it later):
- Library for support articles, FAQs, and policies. Collection cards, featured articles, breadcrumbs, previous and next.
- Technical docs for configuration references and integration guides. A persistent section sidebar, compact search, on-page headings.
Click Create Help Center. Branding, content, and access unlock right after this.

The builder then walks through seven steps. Every control saves as you go.

Step 1: Basics

Name, domain, and layout, plus a danger zone to remove the Help Center. To take the site offline without removing it, click Unpublish at the top of the builder; visitors get a not-found page until you click Publish again.

Step 2: Branding

Theme color (used for buttons, links, and accents), color scheme (dark, light, or auto to follow the visitor's device), fonts for headings, subheadings, and paragraphs, and a logo (upload a file or paste an image URL). The logo also becomes the browser tab icon.

Step 3: Content

What the site shows:

Articles. Every Note with its External Channels access set to Public or Signed-in customers is eligible. Select articles and click Publish / update, or Unpublish. Each live article has an SEO button for its search-engine title, description, and indexing. Private notes, drafts, and Notes waiting in or set aside in Review stay out.
Categories and Collections. Group articles for the home page and navigation. See Collections and navigation.
Documents. PDFs, images, and transcripts visitors can view or download, with the same access rule. A file that is not eligible shows why.

See Publishing Notes.

Header links (up to 6) and footer links (up to 8). A link can point to the home page, Contact us (opens chat), the Resources section, a collection, an article, or a custom URL. Drag to reorder. The footer line is filled in with the current year and your Help Center's name; edit it to say anything else.

See Collections and navigation.

Step 5: Access

Public. Anyone with the link can read articles, and search engines can index them.
Gated. Visitors sign in first, with an email magic link or through your customer portal.

On a gated site you can also let verified visitors see their company's requests (off by default) and, once that is on, limit it to visitors whose portal sign-in says they are an owner or admin. While it is on for any of your gated sites, requests from visitors whose sign-in names their organization are filed under that organization. Every site can hold article edits for manual review before they go live (also off). See Gated access and the customer portal.

Step 6: Support

Connect an AI chat widget. You are picking one of your chat widgets from the Widgets page in Help Desk, not an agent directly; the widget carries its own look, hand-off rules, and hours, and its agent answers the questions. Only active customer-facing widgets are offered. On a gated site, visitors who signed in through your customer portal reach the chat already identified when the widget is set to Public knowledge only and has a signing key. See Website chat widget.

When a widget is connected, a Contact us button appears in the footer automatically, and you can add a Contact us header link on the Navigation step. Either one opens the chat.

The Requests card applies to gated sites. It turns the Submit a request form on or off (on by default), adds a Severity field to that form (off by default; severity sets the ticket's priority), and holds the company-wide visibility switch. Gated sites always include My requests, where signed-in visitors follow their conversations and requests.

Step 7: Tracking

Analytics tags, as provider IDs only: a Google Tag Manager container, a GA4 measurement ID, a Meta Pixel ID, and an optional data layer name. Raw script tags are not supported, which keeps the site's security policy strict. Fields save when you click away.

Platform subdomain or your own domain

A hosted .recordslabs.site address works instantly. To serve the site from your own domain, follow Custom domains: prove you own the domain once with a TXT record under Settings → Custom Domains, pick it for the site, then add a CNAME that points the address at Records Labs. TLS is issued automatically.