Notifications

Notification banners let you tell visitors about service disruptions, product or pricing updates, and general news.

Which themes

These steps apply to Flatrock 11.0 and later, Braden 6, Mink 6, and Lotus One 5. If you use Selway, skip to Notifications in Selway.

Not sure which version you have? In Guide, open Customize design and look at the version number under the theme name.

Step 1 — Create the dynamic content item

The notification text comes from a Zendesk dynamic content item. This lets you translate the message and edit it later without republishing the theme.

1. In Zendesk Support, go to Admin Center → Workspaces → Dynamic content.
2. Click Add item and name it notification_content.
3. Enter your message in the default variant. HTML is allowed, so you can add a heading and a link:
   <h2>Scheduled maintenance</h2><p>We are upgrading on 12 March. <a href="/hc/en-us/articles/123">Read more</a>.</p>
4. Add a variant for each language your help center supports.
5. Save the item and note its placeholder name.

Step 2 — Turn the notification on

1. In Guide, click the Customize design icon in the sidebar.
2. Click Customize on your theme.
3. Open the Notification section in the settings panel.
4. Set Notification position to Homepage.
5. Choose a Notification type: Info, Success, Warning, or Danger.
6. In Notification content, enter the placeholder name you created — notification_content. Enter the name only. Do not enter the message itself and do not add a {{dc ...}} wrapper.
7. Click Publish.

The banner appears at the top of the home page, above the custom blocks. To hide it again, set Notification position to None.

Notification types

The type sets the colour of the banner. Each colour comes from the matching setting in the Colors section, so the banner always follows your branding.

Type	Colour setting	Use it for
Info	Brand info color	General news and announcements
Success	Brand success color	A resolved incident or a completed migration
Warning	Brand warning color	Planned maintenance or a degraded service
Danger	Brand danger color	An outage or an urgent security notice

Notifications on other pages

The built-in notification shows on the home page only. To show notifications on other pages, or to show more than one at a time, use our Alerts extension.

Notifications in Selway

Selway uses an earlier version of this feature, with a separate title and body.

1. In Guide, click the Customize design icon, then click Customize on your theme.
2. Open Home page layout and select the Info block checkbox.
3. Open the Info Block section and fill in Title and Body.
4. To translate the block, open the Translations section and select Use dynamic content translations. Then enter dynamic content placeholder names in Title and Body instead of plain text.
5. Click Publish.