Import your Help Scout help center into FoxChat in 3 minutes

The auto-importer reads your Help Scout Docs collection, brings every article into the FoxChat knowledge base, and has Foxy answering visitor questions from them within minutes. Here is the whole process, end to end.

The 3-step process

Open the import tool in your FoxChat dashboard. The Knowledge Base panel has an Import button. Choose Help Scout from the source list and paste your Docs site URL. For most teams the URL pattern is docs.yoursite.com or a Help-Scout-hosted subdomain. The importer reads the public Docs surface directly, so no Help Scout admin login, OAuth scope, or API key is required for a public Docs site.
Run the import and watch the article count climb. FoxChat enumerates every article in every category and collection of your Help Scout Docs. Collections become topic groups in FoxChat, categories become sub-groupings, and the article slugs are preserved. A typical small Docs site completes in under sixty seconds. Larger libraries take a few minutes and surface any failed articles for one-click retry from the dashboard.
Spot-check the first dozen common answers. The dashboard surfaces the dozen most common questions Foxy can now answer from your imported content. You scroll through them, watch Foxy reply in plain language with the source article attached, and click any thin or wrong answer to open it in the KB editor for a fix. Fixes land in production immediately.

The end-to-end sequence is usually complete in three minutes for a typical Docs site. The biggest variable is how many articles you have and how thoroughly you read the sample answers Foxy generates.

What gets imported

The importer brings across every published article in your Help Scout Docs: titles, body content, collection assignment, category nesting, and last-updated timestamps. Article slugs and the canonical Help Scout URL pattern are preserved so any deep links you have built into other content continue to resolve once you redirect them. Articles marked as featured or pinned in Help Scout become high-priority entries in the FoxChat retrieval index, surfacing earlier in answer generation.

Embedded media transfers in two passes. Images, inline screenshots, and video embeds are referenced by their original Help-Scout-hosted URLs at import time, which keeps the import fast and lets Foxy start answering immediately. The optional follow-up sync mirrors media to FoxChat's own storage so the KB has no remaining dependency on your Help Scout instance. The follow-up sync is a button in the dashboard.

Article author bylines, last-updated timestamps, and reader-rating scores transfer as metadata. They are visible in the FoxChat editor but do not influence retrieval — Foxy ranks by semantic relevance plus full-text overlap, not by view popularity, because historical views often reflect findability rather than correctness.

What does not get imported

Help Scout's shared inbox, ticket workflows, Beacon configuration, Saved Replies, and Workflow automations all live outside the Docs surface, so they are out of scope for this importer. The closest FoxChat equivalents are the operator inbox (for shared conversation handling), the coaching rules (for behaviour constraints), and the closed-loop unanswered queue (for the kind of pattern-capture Saved Replies are normally used for). The data models differ enough that none of these transfer cleanly across.

Customer profiles, ticket histories, and contact tags from Help Scout's Customer record do not transfer because they are inbox-side data, not Docs-side content. If you continue using Help Scout for ticketed support after importing your Docs into FoxChat, those records stay where they are. Internal-only Docs articles (gated behind login) are not read by the public-surface importer; you can bring them in manually via paste or markdown upload from the dashboard.

What changes after import

The first change is retrieval quality. Help Scout Docs search is a keyword match against titles and tags. FoxChat retrieval is semantic, which means a visitor who types "how do I get my data out before cancelling?" finds your data-export article even though it is titled "Exporting your workspace". Same content, same visitor, different surface, materially better hit rate. Most teams notice the difference within the first day.

The second change is the closed loop. When Foxy could not answer, the question lands in an unanswered queue inside the FoxChat inbox. You answer once in plain prose and the answer becomes part of the knowledge base on save. In Help Scout the equivalent path runs through the Docs article editor plus a publish step; in FoxChat it closes inline inside the operator inbox in roughly fifteen minutes a week.

The third change is operational. Help Scout's shared inbox can continue running for email-shaped support while FoxChat handles web-chat-shaped help on the site. This is the most common steady state for teams migrating gradually. Some teams eventually move their email support to a dedicated email-first tool and consolidate everything else in FoxChat, but that is a longer arc.

Common questions

Do I need a Help Scout admin to run the import?

No. The importer reads the public Docs surface, which does not require authentication for published articles.

Can I keep Help Scout's shared inbox?

Yes. The most common steady state is Help Scout for email support, FoxChat for in-site chat and help content. Both run cleanly side by side.

How often does the import re-sync?

On demand, from the dashboard. Most teams sync at install and again after major content edits. Continuous sync is on the Agency tier roadmap.

What about Beacon and Saved Replies?

Beacon is a Help-Scout-side widget that does not transfer. Saved Replies are inbox-side templates and stay in Help Scout. FoxChat's retrieval-grounded answers replace most Saved Reply use cases natively from your Docs content.

What if I edit an article in FoxChat after import?

The FoxChat edit stays in FoxChat. A subsequent re-import does not overwrite edits by default — the dashboard surfaces conflicts and lets you decide per article.