Freshservice

Freshservice is Freshworks' IT service desk, the one most school IT teams use, and its Solutions are where your team keeps how-tos and runbooks, filed in categories and folders. Connecting Freshservice brings the published articles from the folders you choose into Admin › Help Center › Articles: each becomes an article there, with its formatting, filed in categories named after yours, and editable like any other (see Imported articles). schoolAgent answers from them on your website and in the app, and Otto cites them for your admins.

schoolOS only reads from Freshservice. It never creates, edits or deletes anything there.

Find it under Knowledge on Admin › Account › Integrations, or from the Knowledge tab of Admin › Agent › Configuration: Add knowledge source › Help Center › Freshservice. You need Manage integrations. An account has one Freshservice connection.

Find your API key#

schoolOS signs in with an agent's API key, so it never holds a password. In Freshservice, select your profile picture, then Profile settings, and copy API key.

schoolOS sees what that agent can see: every category, folder and article they can open in Solutions, in every workspace they belong to (IT, HR, Facilities, ...). Use a shared or service agent rather than a person's own account, so the connection keeps working when someone leaves. Resetting the key in Freshservice is the same as disconnecting.

Connect#

1. Open the Freshservice page and fill in Connection: Freshservice domain (the part before .freshservice.com; the whole URL works too) and API key.
2. Select Connect.

schoolOS reads your categories and folders before it saves anything. If Freshservice refuses, nothing is saved and the page says what to fix. Once it works, What schoolOS can see says what it found, like "Connected to yourdistrict.freshservice.com, with 4 categories and 22 folders." The key is stored encrypted and never shown again.

Choose what comes in#

Nothing syncs until you choose. What to bring in lists your Solutions under category headings, one row per folder (the page calls them sections, like the Zendesk and Freshdesk pages).

• Tick a section to bring in every published article in that folder, including ones your team adds later.
• Expand a section to tick single articles instead.
• A folder with a lock and restricted is visible in Freshservice to less than everyone (logged-in users, agents, or chosen departments or groups), or its visibility wasn't reported. See Who sees it.

Select Save selection, then Sync now, or wait for the scheduled sync. Only Published articles sync; drafts never do.

Sync#

Each sync works like Freshdesk's (see Sync):

• A new article becomes a help center article, filed under its category and folder.
• An article nobody has edited in schoolOS is updated from Freshservice. Once someone edits it in Admin › Help Center › Articles, syncing keeps their edit and marks it Changed in Freshservice when Freshservice changes it, so they can Compare and decide.
• An article that's unpublished, deleted or no longer ticked is archived in Admin › Help Center › Articles unless someone has edited it there. A sync that can't read your Solutions all the way through archives nothing.

Keeping it current sets How often: once, or hourly, daily, weekly or monthly. New connections start at weekly. Every run is listed on the Integrations tab of Admin › Account › Logs under Freshservice.

Who sees it#

Every knowledge source has an audience, and the agent only answers a person from sources in their audience (see Knowledge). Who can see what comes in, under the picker, sets two:

• Articles everyone can see in Freshservice: articles Freshservice shows to everyone. They start as Public: anyone can be answered from them, including people who aren't signed in on your website.
• Restricted articles: articles in a folder Freshservice shows to less than all users (logged-in users, agents, or chosen departments or groups), or whose folder's visibility schoolOS couldn't read. They start as Staff: agents and admins can be answered from them, and students, guardians and guests can't.

Each opens the same picker as the other knowledge sources: Public, Everyone signed in, Staff, Students, Guardians, and your district's school roles, so restricted runbooks can go to, say, Staff and your Building Technicians role. Select Save selection to save it with what you ticked; the next sync applies it.

The same audience is who can read each article in Admin › Help Center › Articles and your help center. An article follows these settings on every sync, wider or narrower, until someone changes that article's Who can see it in Admin › Help Center › Articles; from then on the sync leaves its audience alone.

Otto answers admins, so it can use every synced article.

Disconnect#

Open Connection and select Disconnect, or use Disconnect from the row's ⋯ menu on Admin › Account › Integrations. Syncing stops and the saved key and selection are cleared. Articles already in Admin › Help Center › Articles stay there: they're yours.

Troubleshooting#

• "Freshservice rejected the API key." The key was mistyped or reset. Copy it again from Profile settings.
• "That Freshservice API key does not have permission for Solutions." Use a key from an agent whose role can read Solutions.
• "Freshservice returned 404." A typo in the domain.
• A folder is missing. The key's agent can't see it, or it's in a workspace the agent isn't in.