Team discovery, section landing pages, and sign-in codes

October 13, 2026 newimproved

When a teammate signs up for Ferndesk, they should land in your workspace, not in a lonely trial of their own. This update makes it easier for your team to find you, gives every section a proper front door, and gets readers past strict corporate email filters.

👋 Team discovery: Teammates on your company's domain can ask to join your workspace instead of starting a new trial
🚪 Section landing pages: Choose what readers see when they open a section
🔢 Sign-in codes: Readers can type a 6-digit code when their email filters mangle sign-in links
🧭 Import from Stoplight: Bring your Stoplight docs over, API references included
🖼️ Resize images and widen pages: Size screenshots to fit, and give wide content the whole page

Teammates can find your workspace

When someone signs up with a verified email on your company's domain, onboarding now offers your existing workspace so they can ask to join, instead of quietly starting a separate trial. Only the workspace name is shown. Pending invitations are offered first.

Owners and admins approve or decline requests under Settings > Team > Requests to join. Approved teammates join as admins, and you can switch them to Contributor afterwards. Approvals respect your plan's seats.

Team discovery is on by default. To keep your workspace invitation-only, turn off Let teammates find this workspace in Settings > Team. See How to invite your team.

Section landing pages

Each section can now choose what opens when a reader clicks it: the section's card page, its first item, or a specific article, collection, or API reference. Set it under Section > Settings > Landing page. Existing sections keep working exactly as before. See How to create and manage sections.

We also fixed home sections that contain only articles (no collections), which used to show "No published content yet". The homepage now lists those articles.

Corporate mail filters love to break sign-in links. Help center sign-in emails now include a 6-digit code, in the subject and at the top of the email, that readers can type in instead.

Link scanners like Microsoft Defender Safe Links no longer use up the sign-in link before your reader can click it, Outlook no longer cuts the email off, and sign-in emails are sent in the reader's language. See Sign in with magic links.

Import from Stoplight

Stoplight docs can now be imported into Ferndesk. Articles keep their sidebar order and old URLs, and each API service becomes a Ferndesk API reference, with redirects for every old operation and schema URL. Only public Stoplight projects can be imported. See Migrate your help center to Ferndesk.

Resize images and widen pages

Drag an image's edge to resize it, with a live percentage, then align it left or center, so screenshots don't have to fill the whole article. Double-click the handle to go back to full width. Sizes carry through to your help center and widget. See Edit images in the article editor.

Each article can also choose a page layout in its settings: Default, Wide (content spreads into the right side, table of contents hidden), or Full width (navigation and table of contents hidden). It's great for wide tables, diagrams, and embedded API explorers. Translations use the same layout as the original article.

Other improvements

Manage help center users from AI tools: On the Pro plan, AI tools connected through the Ferndesk MCP can now list, create, and update help center users and their properties, and see your user groups. See MCP.
Clearer MCP tools: Every Ferndesk MCP tool is now labelled as read-only or as changing your live help center, so AI apps know when to ask you first. Articles can be @-mentioned too.
Better results for half-typed searches: Search-as-you-type keeps showing good results for partly typed or misspelled queries, like "wordpre".
Language changes go live right away: Adding, removing, or renaming a language updates your public help center immediately, and links to a removed language redirect to the same page in your primary language instead of a 404, protecting your search rankings.
Faster help center pages: Pages no longer wait on the trending articles lookup.
A new look for Fern: Our logo has a crisp new vector look across the dashboard, Chrome extension, emails, and the Ferndesk badge in your help center. Fern still puts her pixel sunglasses on when something ships.
Clearer browser tabs: Every dashboard page has its own tab title, so several open tabs are easy to tell apart.
Imports survive our updates: If we ship an update while your onboarding import is running, it restarts on its own instead of getting stuck.

Fixes

Articles with code samples, like curl commands, no longer fail to save with a firewall error when saved through the API or AI tools connected with MCP.
Widget Text panel edits are no longer overwritten when you save another panel afterwards.
Clicking a changelog entry's date opens a calendar again, and typed dates save when you press Enter.

Breaking changes

Sign-in links ask readers to confirm: Opening a help center sign-in link now shows a "Finish signing in" step with a Continue button, so email scanners can't sign in on the reader's behalf.
MCP conversation tools return less personal data: Conversation tools no longer include visitor names or emails, and page URLs no longer include query strings.
Resized images and Markdown: Markdown can't store an image size, so writing an article back as Markdown through the API or MCP resets resized images to full width.
Profile photos and workspace logos: AVIF, HEIC, and BMP files can no longer be uploaded as a profile photo or workspace logo. Existing ones keep working.