Use this guide to follow your first drafts from the Write docs step in onboarding through to reviewing and publishing them in Content.
Step 1: wait while Ellie writes your drafts
In onboarding, step 5 is Write docs. The page heading is Writing your help centre…
It shows a chip that says safe to close — progress is saved and a note that says This usually takes 10–20 minutes, longer when Ellie runs a test copy of your app for screenshots. It also says Leave this page whenever you like: we'll email you when your drafts are ready.
That email goes to workspace owners and admins. It is not sent if the analysis was low-confidence or if no articles were written.
A live checklist shows each stage with a tick, spinner or error. Depending on what you gave Ellie, the stages can include:
- Reading your website
- Importing your help centre
- Setting up a test login
- Seeding example data
- Writing your docs
- Capturing screenshots
Beside each stage, Ellie shows its result, such as how many articles were written or how many screenshots were captured and are still pending.
Below the checklist, an articles list shows the total number of articles, the first 12 titles, and a camera chip for each one with its captured and total screenshot count. If there are more than 12 articles, Ellie shows + N more.
Step 2: check whether writing finished cleanly
If writing fails, you see a red alert that says Ellie couldn't write your articles this time. You can re-run writing from the project page — reply to any Ellie Docs email if it keeps failing. Use Go to project to leave onboarding.
If the articles were written but a later step failed, you see an amber alert that says Your articles are written, but a later step didn't finish, so some screenshots may be missing. You can retry from the project page. Use Continue anyway if you want to move on.
Step 3: use the finish screen
When onboarding reaches the final step, the heading is Your docs are drafted.
This screen shows the number of articles and screenshots. If some screenshots are still pending, that is shown too. It also explains that the articles are still drafts until you publish them, so your help centre stays empty until then.
The footer says that from now on, Ellie checks each merged change against these docs and drafts a fix when one goes stale.
If Ellie did not write any articles, the screen says No articles yet and explains that Ellie did not manage to write any articles this time. Use Go to project to re-run writing.
Step 4: choose publish all or review drafts first
On the finish screen, you can choose:
- Publish all & view your help centre
- Review drafts first
If you choose Publish all & view your help centre, the button changes to Publishing… and then opens your help centre in a new tab.
Publish all only publishes articles whose status is draft. It does not publish articles marked needs review. Those can include articles imported from your old help centre, or articles that did not pass Ellie's quality checks. Open each of those articles and click Publish when you are happy with it.
If publishing fails from the finish screen, you see Publishing failed — you can retry, or publish from the project page.
If you choose Review drafts first, Ellie opens your project.
Step 5: open your articles in Content
In your project, go to Content → Articles.
The left-hand tree is headed CONTENT. It groups articles into collections. You may also see:
- Unfiled (N) for articles that are not in a collection
- Internal docs (N) if you enabled internal docs
Each row shows whether an article is published or draft. Anything unpublished also shows a draft chip. At the bottom, the legend shows published and draft, and explains that you can drag to reorder or move articles between sections.
If drafts exist, the bottom of the tree shows Publish all drafts (N). This publishes immediately, with no confirmation, and only publishes articles whose status is draft.
Step 6: review one article at a time
Open an article from the tree to review it.
At the top of the article, you can see its collection chip, editable title, status chip, history count and action buttons. The status can be draft, needs review or published.
Draft and needs-review articles show Preview and Publish. Published articles show View live and Unpublish. If you have unsaved edits, you see Discard and Save instead.
Before publishing, you can edit the article content and switch between Rich and Markdown. You can also edit Search snippet, which is the meta description, and add What changed? (optional — shown in history).
If you need to manage screenshots for the article, use the Screenshots (captured/total) panel.
Step 7: preview the article if you want to
Use Preview on a draft to open that article in a new tab as readers will see it.
You can also use Preview drafts from the header to open the whole help centre with drafts and needs-review articles included. In that draft preview, those articles are marked as unpublished and hidden from search engines.
Preview links expire after 12 hours.
Step 8: publish the articles you are happy with
When an article is ready, click Publish.
Publish sends any unsaved edits with it, so what you see is what goes live. There is no confirmation dialog. Ellie does not wait for screenshots to be captured before publishing, and the public page refreshes straight away.
After publishing, Ellie shows Published — now live in the help centre.
If you save without publishing, Ellie shows Saved — recorded as a new revision. If you unpublish an article, Ellie shows Unpublished — hidden from the help centre. Unpublishing sets the article back to draft.
Good to know
Why can I not open the live help centre yet?
The header button View Help Centre stays disabled until at least one customer-facing article is published. Its tooltip says Nothing is published yet — publish an article from Content and your help centre goes live.
Where does my help centre live?
Your help centre lives at https://<your-slug>.<docs domain>/ and an article lives at /<article-slug>.
The slug comes from the project name and you can change it in Content → Domain & support → Address & domain. Changing it redirects the old address.
If the shared docs domain is not live for you, links use the older help-centre address.
How do I check older versions of an article?
Use History (N) to review revisions. Restore makes an older revision current again as a new revision.