# Add Home, Help and News tabs to the widget

> Turn the widget into a messenger with a home screen, help articles and product news.

Not every visitor wants to chat. Tabs turn the widget into a small messenger: a home screen, your help articles, product news and the conversation, all in one panel.

## How tabs work

A deployment starts with a single **Chat** tab, so the widget is just the chat, with no tab bar. Add more tabs, up to four, and a tab bar appears.

| Layout | What it shows |
| --- | --- |
| Chat | The conversation, answered by your agent |
| Home | A greeting, search and your pinned articles from the tab's collections |
| Help center | Searchable articles from the collections you pick |
| News | Announcements from the collections you pick, newest first |

Tabs work the same on a **Hosted page** deployment, next to its sidebar.

## Prepare Help and News content

1. **Create the collections.** Open **Content**, which starts on **Collections**, select **Create collection** and pick the **Articles** preset for help articles, or **News** for announcements.
2. **Add content.** Open a collection's items (select its name) and select **New content**, write the **Title** and **Body**, and set **Status** to **Published** and **Visibility** to **Public**.

The widget only shows items that are both **Published** and **Public**.

## Add a tab

1. Open your deployment and go to **Settings** → **Tabs**.
2. Select **Add tab**. A new tab starts as **Help center** and goes at the end.
3. Choose its **Layout** and enter a **Tab name**.
4. Pick its **Collections**: the published items from these collections, in this order. Up to 20 per tab.
5. Select **Save changes**.

Tabs show in the order you add them. To move one, remove it and add it again. The last tab can't be removed.

The **Help center** tab shows one section per collection, in the order you picked them. Visitors can search, and articles open inside the widget. **News** shows 10 posts at a time, newest first.

## Set up Home

| Setting | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **Brand name (optional)** | Shown at the top of the tab |
| **Greeting (optional)** | Your own greeting, up to 280 characters. `{name}` becomes the visitor's name |
| **Greeting**, **Search bar**, **Recent conversations** | Switches to show or hide each part. The search bar opens Help |
| **Team avatars (optional)** | Up to 10 team faces, one per line |
| **Status banner (optional)**, **Status level** | A service status line, such as "All systems operational". The level, such as `operational`, `degraded` or `down`, sets its colour |
| **Content list heading** | The heading above your pinned articles. "Popular articles" if empty |

Write each team avatar as `Name | Role | Photo URL`. The role and photo are optional.

The list at the bottom of Home shows the **Pinned** items from the tab's collections. To add an article, open it in **Content** and turn on **Pinned**.

Home also adds two parts by itself:

- a message box that starts a new chat, when the widget has a Chat tab
- a "What's new" row with your newest post, when it has a News tab

## Tab names

The **Tab name** takes your own text, up to 40 characters, or a built-in key that's translated for you: `tabHome`, `tabConversations`, `tabHelp` and `tabNews`. In English these read Home, Chats, Help and News. To reword them in each language, use **Chat widget** → **Languages** → **Interface text** → **Tabs**.

<Tip>
The widget remembers the last tab each visitor used on their device, so returning visitors land where they left off.
</Tip>

See also [Publish articles with Content](https://support.help.ai/library-and-content/publish-articles-with-content).