Links status (Beta)

Links status is a sub-feature under the Analytics section of Document360. This feature is a broken link checker that helps validate and monitor all internal links, external links, and media file links on your Knowledge base. It helps you fix bad links to improve SEO and enhance the reader experience.

Accessing Links status

1. Click on the Analytics menu icon on the left side menu
2. Now select the last option Links status on the left navigation pane
3. You can see the Links status overview page
4. Using the dropdown at the top of the page you can select the project version and language you want to check/validate
5. You can find the list of all the links used in the selected version and language of your Knowledge base

Links status overview page

This page contains all the necessary data and stats regarding the links used in your Knowledge base (selected version and language). You have two sections in the page, Links status and Links list.

1. Links status section

Links classification

• Total – The total number of URLs and files (both internal and external) linked in the different articles on your Knowledge base

• Internal – The total number of Internal URLs (article links and media file links within your Document360 project)

• External – The total number of External URLs (article links and media file links outside your Document360 project)

Current state

• Working – The link works fine and points to an intended webpage or file (Internal and External)

• Redirected – The link has been redirected to a new destination URL.

• Broken – A broken or dead link is a hyperlink in the article that no longer works, because it's encountering one or more of the issues like URL changes, incorrect URL, page or item removed, or restricted/private knowledge base article URL. This applies for URLs and media files.

Type

• Link – When the reader clicks on a broken link a 404 page error or similar message explaining the webpage is not available would be displayed.

• Media files – In case of an image or video file a broken image thumbnail icon would be displayed in place of it in the article

2. Links list section

Below the Links status section on the overview page, you can find the list of links added in your Knowledge base. You can find the following info columns for each link

3. Filter and Sort links list

The filter option available at the top of the Links list section would come in handy when you have a greater number of links. You can filter links based on two parameters: the link type and status.

Link type filters – Internal URL, External URL, Media URL, Secured URL, and Unsecured URL.

Status filters – Working, Redirected, and Broken.

How to use filter?

To use this, click on the Filter option and select from the dropdown the Link types and/or Status. If you want to hide this bar, click on the Hide filter option again.

You can sort all the columns in the links list in ascending or descending order (alphanumeric). Just click on the List column heading to change the sort type. The default setting would be ascending based on the link addition time.

4. Export links report

You can export the Links list and status into .pdf and .xlsx (MS Excel spreadsheet).

1. Click on the Export option adjacent to the Filter
2. Choose either Export to Excel or Export to PDF based on your need
3. The respective file type would be downloaded
4. You can access these downloaded files using the respective platforms (PDF viewer and MS Excel)

Actions and Controls

Above the Links status sections you can find the controls and data regarding the link analytics

Validation type: Scheduled validation, Manual validation, and Article level validation

Report data: The list of previously generated link reports in each of the validations type, based on previous validation type selection. The reports would be named as per the date they are generated.

When you hover over the ‘i’ (info) icon adjacent to the Report data dropdown you can view the next or upcoming Scheduled link validation date.

Validate project links: This button initiates the Manual link validation process at a project level when you click on it.

Link analytics usage: This progress bar shows the stats on the link limit used out of the total given limit for your project

Customers belonging to any price tier can always opt for link limit increase at anytime based on their requirement for a nominal charge. Just contact our support team to help you out.

Link validation

You can run link validation at a version and language level by one of two options.

1. Scheduled validation
2. Manual validation
3. Article level validation

1. Scheduled validation

As the name suggests this is an automated link validation that runs on Schedule every 7 days.

1. Click on the Analytics menu icon on the left side menu
2. Now select the last option Links status on the left navigation pane
3. You can see the Links status overview page with all the data in Link statuses
4. At the top you can find the Validation type dropdown, select Scheduled validation (Which would be the default setting in your projects)
5. You can find the recently generated Scheduled link validation
6. If you want to look into any previous reports, select the Report data dropdown and select the report date you want to view
7. When you hover over the ‘i’ (info) icon adjacent to the Report data dropdown you can view the next or upcoming Scheduled link validation date

2. Manual validation

1. Click on the Analytics menu icon on the left side menu
2. Now select the last option Links status on the left navigation pane
3. You can see the Links status overview page with all the data in Link statuses
4. At the top you can find the Validation type dropdown, select Manual validation
5. You can find the last Manual validation report in the Link status overview page
6. Click on the Validate Project Links button and a new validation process can be run anytime

7. Once the validation is complete a mail would be sent to your registered email and you can view the analytics report in the overview page

3. Article level validation

The article level link validation can be done from the article editor section. When you choose the Article level validation from the Validation type dropdown, you can just view the article link validations you have already run. If you haven’t validated links at the article level, this overview page would be empty.

To know how to validate link at an article level check out the Article level analytics guide.