Every Zoho Desk Knowledge Base article is identified by a permalink, a URL made up of the category name, any sub-category names, and the article title, which is generated automatically when the article is published. Over time, updates and edits can mean that permalink no longer reflects the article's content well. For example, if an article originally about company privacy and security is expanded to include compliance guidelines, it makes sense for the permalink to include a term like "compliance" too. When you edit a permalink like this, the old URL needs to be redirected to the new one using 301 redirection, so links people already have keep working.
You'll need the Knowledge Base - Update permission on your profile to access 301 redirection at all. Beyond that, users with Edit permission on an article can edit that article's own permalink, while users with Edit All permission can edit the permalink of any article. You can set up a maximum of three 301 redirections per article.
If you update an article and there happens to be another article with the same title, Zoho Desk appends the update date to the newly updated article's permalink to tell the two apart, for example turning a URL ending in zylker-communication-getting-started into one ending in zylker-communication-getting-started-13-12-2024. When this happens, you'll see an alert flagging that another article shares the same name.
Zoho Desk does this to keep articles distinguishable across every state, including drafts, unpublished, published, expired, deleted, and even items sitting in the Recycle Bin. To remove the date from the permalink, check your full list of articles under that category for another one with the same title, including in the Recycle Bin, and either delete or rename it. Once no duplicate title remains, the date can be removed from the URL.
When you merge two or more articles into a single new one, the original articles become outdated and are usually deleted. However, if customers still have links to those deleted articles, they'll hit an error when they try to use them. Setting up a 301 redirection from the old articles' URLs to the new merged article avoids this. To do this, go to the Knowledge Base module, open the article you want to add the redirection to, and click the Edit icon to access the permalink and redirection settings.
To remove a 301 redirection, go to the Knowledge Base module and open the article that has the redirection you want to delete, then remove it from that article's redirection settings.