The Resource Center is a customizable in-app menu that provides on-demand access to guides, announcements, Listen, classic Feedback, and integrated modules. This article provides an overview of key Resource Center functionality. For instructions on how to create a Resource Center, see Set up a Resource Center.
Note: The Resource Center replaces the previous Guide Center and launches guides created using the Visual Design Studio experience. The Resource Center can't use guides created with the Classic Designer.
Resource Center modules
A Resource Center menu is made up of modules. A Resource Center can consist of the following modules:
- Guide List. Provides a list of guides, allowing visitors to manually activate guides at any time.
- Onboarding. Provides a checklist that functions like a guide task list, but guide completion is tracked in a checklist element that shows guide progress by step and completion.
- Code Sandbox. Allows your developers to create bespoke modules with custom code launched in the Resource Center.
- Announcements. Delivers announcement guides (formerly called What's New guides in the Classic Designer).
- External Website. Allows you to create an iframe that points to a page on a website so that you can display external resources in the Resource Center.
- Listen visitor portal. Adds an ideas portal from Listen to your Resource Center so your visitors can see what you're working on and provide their own feedback.
- Pendo Feedback (classic). Allows visitors to make product requests and see what other visitors are requesting.
You can add multiple modules of the same type to group similar content or to deliver content to segments of visitors. For example, you can:
- Use one announcement module to announce product releases and another to promote marketing events.
- Create a different onboarding checklist for each persona.
- Segment each module to display according to your metadata.
- Present unique Support workflows and levels of service to your customer tiers with multiple Integrations or Sandbox Modules.
For instructions on adding modules to your Resource Center, see Set up a Resource Center.
Module segmentation
Resource Center modules and the content they display are contextual, defined by the segments and tagged Pages that you set for modules and guides. This allows you to show the right Resource Center content to the right groups of visitors based on their Visitor ID and the page they're on.
To prevent empty modules or unusable guides from displaying in the Resource Center, modules and guides only display in the Resource Center if the visitor:
- Is included in the segment for a module. For instructions, see the Add segments section in Set up a Resource Center.
- Is included in the segment for a guide in a module. For information about segmentation in Pendo, see Segments. For information about segmenting guides, see Create a guide.
- Is on a tagged Page in your application where that guide can be activated. For information about Page tagging, see Page tagging. For information about guide activation, see Activate your guide.
Resource Center activation
You can choose whether a Resource Center is activated (opened) with:
- A badge positioned over your application. If you choose to use a badge as your activation method, you can style your badge to match your company's brand and style.
- An existing element in your UI.
If a visitor isn't eligible for any of the modules in a Resource Center that's badge-activated, they don't see the Resource Center at all. If a visitor isn't eligible for any of the modules in a Resource Center that's element-activated, the Resource Center appears with an error message if the visitor selects the element.
You can also choose:
- Whether the Resource Center can be launched from a specific page in your application or sitewide.
- Whether the Resource Center is launched when the visitor selects the badge or UI element, or when they hover over the badge or UI element as well.
For more information, see Activate your Resource Center.
Staging and production environments
If you have a staging environment (a non-production instance of your application) that you've set up with Pendo, you can push your draft Resource Center to your staging environment before making it live in your production environment. This way, you can interact with the Resource Center and check that it's working as expected before making it public to your visitors. For information about adding a staging server to Pendo, see Stage your guide.
If you don't have a staging environment, you can still test your Resource Center in production by setting the segment for all the modules in your Resource Center to include only internal testers. When you're done testing in your production environment, you can set your Resource Center modules to different segments that include your visitors. For instructions on how to edit a module's segment, see Add segments in Set up a Resource Center. You can also test your Resource Center using the Preview functionality, described in Test your Resource Center in Set up a Resource Center.
From your Resource Center's Settings page, you can see what's live in your staging environment in the View Staging tab and what's live in your production environment in the View Production tab.
If you've never pushed your Resource Center to your production environment to make it public, Pendo shows a message in the View Production tab of the Resource Center's Settings page stating that there's no production content.
If you've pushed your Resource Center to your production environment before, Pendo shows a preview of the live Resource Center content in the View Production tab of your Resource Center's Settings page in Pendo.
Multiple Resource Centers
If your subscription has multiple web applications, you can create a unique Resource Center for each web application. Any one application can have one Resource Center.
A Resource Center can't be shared across multiple applications, regardless of whether it's in draft, staging, or production. If all web applications in your subscription have a Resource Center deployed on them, the + Create Resource Center button is grayed out.
When you create a Resource Center, any applications that already have a Resource Center are grayed out from the Application dropdown menu.
For more information about creating a Resource Center, see Set up a Resource Center.