Creating user segments for Guide user permissions

Note: If you have Gather Professional, you need one of the following Support plans: Team, Professional, or Enterprise and any Guide plan.

A user segment is a collection of end-users/agents, defined by a specific set of attributes, used to determine access to Help Center content.

User segments are the building blocks for user permissions. You apply user segments to a Help Center, a knowledge base article, or a topic in your community to define viewing access. And you use user segments to build management permissions that you apply to knowledge base articles to define editing and publishing permissions.

There are two built-in user segments by default:

• Signed-in users includes users who are signed-in to your Help Center
• Agents and managers includes all agents and admins

You can create custom user segments to further refine those groups of users as follows:

• Signed-in users (internal and external) - these segments are created in Zendesk Support and can be based on tags, organizations, individual users, or all of them combined
• Staff (internal) - these segments are created in Zendesk Support and are based on tags, groups, individual users or all of them combined

Guide admins have access to all content, regardless of any user segments they belong to. You must be a Guide admin to create user segments.

This article covers the following topics:

• Understanding access restrictions for user segments
• Creating user segments

Understanding access restrictions for user segments

Every user segment starts with a base user type of signed-in users or staff, (agents and admins). From there, you can create a subset of users based on tags, organizations, groups, and individual users as follows:

• Signed-in users can be restricted by tags, organizations, individual users, or a combination of all three. Tags must be on the user or an organization they belong to.

  When you create a user segment based on tags for signed-in users, you can require that all specified tags match for the agent to be included and/or you can require that at least one of the specified tags match for the user to be included. For organizations, the user must belong to at least one of the specified organizations.

  Signed-in agents must have any required tags, agents do not have to belong to any of the specified organizations to be included in the user segment, so the organization is ignored for agents.

  Individual users do not need to meet any filters to be included in a user segment, in fact if only individual users are in a user segment, the segment will contain only those users.

• Staff (agents and admins), can be restricted by tags, groups, individual users, or a combination of all three.

  When you create a user segment based on tags for staff, you can require that all specified tags match for the agent to be included or you can require that at least one of the specified tags match for the agent to be included. For groups, the agent must belong to at least one of the specified groups.

  Guide admins have access to all content, regardless of the user segments that they belong to.

  Individual users do not need to meet any filters to be included in the user segment, and if only individual users are in a user segment, the segment will contain only those users.

To define user segments, refer to the following table

Table 1.

User role	Restrict by tags (users need all tags)	Restrict by tags (users need any of the tags)	Restrict by organizations (users need at least one org)	Restrict by groups (users need at least one group)	Restrict by individual users
Signed-in users	YES	YES	YES (ignored for agents)	NO	YES
Staff	YES	YES	NO	YES	YES

Creating user segments

The two access types for user segments are: signed-in users and staff. You can create custom user segments to further refine those two groups of users as follows:

• Signed-in users (internal and external) - created in Zendesk Support, these segments are based on tags, organizations, individual users, or a combination of all three.
• Staff (internal) - created in Zendesk Support, these segments are based on tags, groups, individual users, or a combination of all three.

You can create as many as 200 user segments per account. If you have multiple brands in your account, then your user segments are shared across all brands.

Guide admins have access to all content, regardless of the user segments they belong to.

To create a user segment

1. In Guide, click the User permissions icon () in the sidebar.
2. On the User Segments page, click Add new.

   If you receive an error message, that means you have reached the maximum number of 200 user segments. You can delete some user segments if you want to continue.

3. Enter a Name for this user segment.
4. Select a User type as the base of your user segment.
   • Signed-in users - includes internal and external users who create an account and sign in to your Help Center.
   • Staff - is for internal users only, including agents and Guide admins.

     

5. Click Filter by tag.

   Then click the drop down menu to select a tag:

   • Users and organizations matching ALL of these tags: all of the tags must be on the user or org to be included in the user segment.
   • Users and organizations matching ANY of these tags: one or more of the tags must be on the user or org to be included in the user segment.

   You can add up to 50 tags each in Users and organizations matching ALL of these tags and Users and organizations matching any of these tags. Not all available tags appear on the list, so use search or scroll to find the tags that you are looking for. You can choose any tag that is applied to existing users or organizations. The tags can be on the user profile or, in the case of end-users, inherited through an organization.

   A list of matching users appears to your right. Agents do not appear on the list of matching users. If there are more than 30 matching users, click View all matching users, then you will see the full list.

   Note: You must have user tags enabled to create a user segment based on tags. For more information, see Enabling user and organization tagging).
6. (Optional) You can further refine your user segment by doing one of the following:
   • For signed-in users - if you want to restrict by organization, then select an organization from the drop down menu, and click Filter by organizations.
   • For staff members if you want to restrict by group, then select a group from the drop down menu, and click Filter by groups.

     The user must belong to at least one of the organizations or groups to be included in the user segment. You can add up to 50 organizations or groups to a user segment. The exception is that organization is ignored for signed-in agents. Agents do not need to belong to any of the organizations to be included in the user segment.

     The list of matching users will update accordingly.

7. To add users to a new user segment, click Add individual users.
   You can add up to 50 users to a segment. Likewise, you can add individual users, as well as any group, tag, or organization filters. As you add users, the list of matching users updates.

   Note: If you add individual users, they are added to the user segment regardless of any group, tag, or organization filters that you may have already set.
8. Click Create segment.

   See the following topics for more information on how you can apply user segments:

   • Setting view permissions for the Help Center
   • Set view permissions on knowledge base articles
   • Create management permissions to define agent editing and publishing rights
   • Set view access for community topics