Our knowledge base article synchronization to our external self-service portal has been failing consistently for the past two weeks. We’re using Zendesk Sell 2021’s KB module and trying to sync to our customer-facing help center.
The sync process starts but then aborts with validation errors. From what I can see in the logs, it’s complaining about missing or inconsistent metadata on the articles. Some articles sync fine, others fail completely. We have about 200 articles total, and roughly 40% are failing.
The error messages aren’t very specific - just “metadata validation failed” or “required fields missing.” I’ve checked the articles manually and they all seem to have titles, content, categories, and tags. What metadata standards is the sync tool enforcing that I’m missing? This is blocking our self-service initiative launch scheduled for next month.
The sync tool enforces metadata standards based on the destination system’s requirements, not Zendesk Sell’s internal requirements. Your external portal probably has mandatory fields that ZS doesn’t require. You should be able to find the metadata schema requirements in Admin > Knowledge Base > Sync Configuration > Metadata Standards. There’s usually a validation rules section that lists all required and optional fields for external sync.
Kim’s point about category inheritance is spot on. Another thing to check is whether your sync configuration has custom validation rules that were added by a previous admin. We discovered our sync had a custom rule requiring article_difficulty_level field that wasn’t documented anywhere. Check the sync job configuration XML or JSON for any custom validators that might be enabled.
Also worth mentioning - ZS2021 had some quirks with metadata inheritance from categories to articles. If your category metadata is incomplete, articles inherit those gaps and fail validation even if the article itself looks complete. We had to go back and fill in category-level metadata like owner_department and content_lifecycle_stage to get our sync working properly. The article audit tool can show you these inherited metadata issues.