You can determine which content users see by setting view permissions. The following options are available:
- Visible to everyone includes anyone who visits your help center and does not require sign in.
- Signed-in users includes internal and external users who create an account and sign in to your help center.
- Agents and admins includes staff members only, so that you can create content that is internal-only.
- Custom user segment enables you to restrict viewing access to specific users based on tags, organizations, or groups by applying custom user segments, see Creating user segments to restrict access.
You set view permissions at the article level, not the section or category level. You must be a Guide admin or an agent with publishing permissions to set view permissions for articles.
If visibility for all the articles in a section is internal, then the section will not be visible to end-users, but if one article in an internal section is visible to any end-users, then the section will become visible as well.
View restrictions do not apply to Guide admins. Admins can access all knowledge base content, regardless of the view permissions.
To set view permissions for an existing knowledge base article
- In your help center, navigate to the article you want to edit, then click Edit article in the top menu bar.
Alternatively, in Guide, click the Manage articles (
) icon in the sidebar, then select an article from an article list to open it in edit mode. - Click Article settings at the bottom of the sidebar.
- Under Visible to, click the drop-down menu, then select an option to determine which users can view this article.
Guide admins and agents with publishing permissions can set view permissions. Agents who do not have publish permissions anywhere will not see this option, and view permissions will default to agents and admins. You can make the article visible to:
- Everyone
- Signed-in users
- Agents and managers
- A custom user segment, see Creating user segments to restrict access. Only twenty custom user segments appear in the drop-down; use search if you have more user segments.
Any articles that require users to sign in are not indexed by Google.
- Click Save.
To set access restrictions in the community, see Applying user segments to restrict access to community content.
56 Comments
Hey Mary,
They will need to sign in, unless they already have an active session on your help centre. There's nothing in the URL you send that includes authentication data. That process can be made somewhat smoother if you have something like Google/Facebook/Twitter/Microsoft SSO on your help centre, as they could login in a click at that point.
If they pass the link along to someone else, that person will also need to sign in and be in the correct segment to view the article.
We had similar concerns, but it didn't up being as much of an issue as we expected it would be. We also include a note to the end users when we send restricted links that to access this document they need to be logged in on our help centre. Doing that seems to have preempted tickets about login issues.
Hope that helps!
Hi Dan,
Thanks! That is helpful. So, outside of a ticket session, users would need to create a log-in in order to use the HC outside of the ticket interaction, or we'd need to implement SSO. Thanks again.
Hello,
Would like to know if it is possible to have different permission setting between HC as a web version and HC in Mobile SDK integration?
Our company would like to have the HC web version is available to everyone while HC in Mobile SDK integration will show specific article based on user segment.
What is the best way to achieve this?
Thank you
I am having an issue finding a way around the fact that if you use multiple tags in a user segment, then a user must have all of them on their record or they won't see the articles assigned to that user segment.
How have others dealt with this?
For example: I have one user segment with Dogs, Cats, and Birds in it. Whether a user is a dog, cat, or a bird is controlled by tags.
So if I want 1 article to be seen by Dogs, Cats, and Birds, how can I do that?
Hi Mercedes,
The best alternative I can think of is adding some sort of hybrid user segment along with a hybrid tag so this can be applied to any article that should be seen by Dogs,Cats, and Birds. For example, user segment name would be Dogs, Cats, and Birds and the tag would be dogs_cats_birds. I realize this isn't the ideal solution and can understand the importance of allowing users segments to look for Any tag vs All tags.
I was able to track down the following feedback post related to the functionality you're looking for: Change Sections access rules to allow someone with ANY of the user segments listed instead of ALL listed
I encourage you to upvote this post as well as provide your use-case in the comments section. This will help provide visibility to our Product Managers who review this feedback as well as other users in need of a similar functionality.
Let me know if you have additional questions for me :)
I am trying to set up a section where I will put some articles that should only be visible to a particular org. I set up a user segment based on the org, and created the section (draft, for now).
As far as I understand it, I will have to set permissions for every article in that section using my new user segment. My question is, does this mean that only signed in users within the user segment will see the section title? In other words, I don't want every signed in user to see the section title.
Also a suggestion: This might be easier if there were a way to set view permissions at a section level and then have the articles in that section inherit the setting. I don't like the idea of having to remember to do this for every single article I add to the section.
Hey Ellen!
A Category and Section will appear for users as long as they can view at least one Article within that hierarchy. To ensure signed in users who are not part of your User Segment do not see that Section then all Articles in that Section must have the User Segment applied, correct.
More details regarding that can be found in Category and sections are not visible to end-users.
Article's can have their User Segment updated in bulk via the Manage Articles tab in Guide Admin. I recommend creating a saved list of Articles in your Sections. You can then select any or all of the Articles in that Section and modify the User Segments applied via the Article settings dropdown at the bottom of the page > Change Permissions > Permission Type: Visible to > Visible to: Desired User Segment.
Hi guys! How can I create articles that only Managers can see?
Public Articles - Available to Everyone
Internal Articles - Available to Agents and Managers
Internal+ Articles - Available to Managers
Thanks James, I set up a saved list for that section. Might be even nicer if the section was visible in the All Articles view so you could sort on it and select articles that way, but this works.
Hi Stef,
You'd want to create a user segment based on a tag that you put on the Managers. Then you can apply that user segment to the articles and your internal staff with the tag would be able to see the articles.
Thanks,
Maggie
My question is, why are the only two options for creating these user segments, 'Signed-in users' or 'Staff'? Ultimately, we don't want our customers to have to create a Zendesk account and then later have to sign in to view articles. The goal is to have a group/database identified by us and Zendesk simply requires their email address be vetted using that list. If their email address is on the list, they have access. If it isn't, they can't view. I don't want customers to have to be signed-in users to be able to view. That is a PITA. Does anyone know of a way to restrict visibility, but only require a single password or a single email address to view; this is basically just asking for a password protected arena?
I would like my agents to be able to view which user segments can view a specific article.
For example, when viewing articles that are restricted to Agents and Managers, I see a "Lock" icon beside the title.
However, if I have an article that is restricted to logged in users belonging to the user segment "Company A", my agents have no way of knowing that. So they could send this article link to a customer in Company B, and that customer would not be able to read it.
I also just want agents to know when there is some level of security on an article. Right now there is no way to tell.
Unless I've just missed this feature?
Thanks!
Hi Amy Gracer,
We have the same challenge and I'm not aware of a solution as of yet. We ended up matching our article sections to the security (for the most part) so our agents can more easily guess what is needed to see the article but we still have missteps with it at times. Not a perfect solution but for us, it's worked a majority of the time.
Thanks!
Maggie
In the article_page.hbs template, is there a way to know if an article has a visibility restriction? I see the "internal" option, but I need to be able to distinguish the UI between an article that is visible to anyone or restricted to a subset of users.
Any help would be appreciated.
Is there information on the most efficient ways to mass add users to these segments to restrict access?
Hi Olivia,
I think the easiest way to do this is through tags. This article goes into more detail on creating user segment and adding users to it. If you aren't already using tags to segment your users, then you will have some ramp up time to do that but once you have it going, then it becomes self-managed. I haven't had to touch my user segments or any organizations since I set them up a few years ago so it's well worth the effort in my opinion.
Thanks,
Maggie
Are articles with "Signed-In Users" viewing permissions visible to web crawlers/google?
Thank you
found the answer on my own. Would be useful if you add a link to this in the article above.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/226008707-Preventing-Google-from-indexing-a-specific-article
Hi Oleksandra. We updated the article to include this information. Thank you for your comment.
Hi
Not sure if there is something somewhere else, but while we're on the topic of permissions. Is there anything on the roadmap to provide permission to access an article on a case by case basis with a shareable link? For example I don't want an article sitting there available for anyone to stumble upon, however once working through the query I want to then provide an article answer to my customer and that customer only. I don't want to do this with user segments because I don't want "everyone" or "everyone signed in" or every in a group to be able to see it. Like how Google Docs sharing works.
Thanks
Hello! Very helpful article here. If we are using user segments to create internal content, what is the best way to flag an internal article within search results? I understand that the internal article will not appear to external users, but is there a way to automatically flag on the search results page that an article is internal? Thanks for any insight!
How can I check the Visible to for ALL of my articles. I am getting reports that a few of my articles are not Visible to as they should be, so I would like to check them all, but I don't see Visible to in the Filters available for Manage Articles. How can I view that for ALL Articles in bulk?
This will enable the option buttons along the bottom
Lauren Ward - The default Copenhagen theme in Zendesk Guide has a built-in feature for flagging internal articles when viewing them in the knowledge base. For example, in my test account if I open a section to see the article list in that section, I can see lock icons next to any articles that are internal-only:
This same icon appears when viewing the article itself:
Within the default Copenhagen theme, the code that adds this icon can be found in any template where an article title could be shown, such as section_page.hbs or article_page.hbs, and the relevant code snippet looks like this:
{{#if internal}}<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="16" height="16" focusable="false" viewBox="0 0 16 16" class="icon-lock" title="{{t 'internal'}}">
<rect width="12" height="9" x="2" y="7" fill="currentColor" rx="1" ry="1"/>
<path fill="none" stroke="currentColor" d="M4.5 7.5V4a3.5 3.5 0 017 0v3.5"/>
</svg>
{{/if}}
Kelsey Davis - That's a great suggestion. There isn't any current estimate for when something like that might be released, but I can certainly see why that might be a useful feature to have. I'd recommend creating a Community post separately for that with your use case to help get more visibility and votes on the idea. Then, others can share their use cases to further drive demand for that feature.
I hope this information helps!
Are there other settings that need to be changed to allow "Visible to Everyone"? It appears that if I set that for an article, it still is only visible to signed-in users.
Under Security settings, I found this:
"Require Sign In (is checked)
Only allow signed-in users to access Help Center. Anonymous users will be asked to sign in."
Is this why Visible to Everyone, really isn't everyone? Most of our help articles are for customers, but some need to be available to prospective customers that do not yet have a sign-in.
Hey Cindy,
You are correct and if you have Require Sign in checked, then visible to everyone will only be visible to everyone that has signed in. I would recommend unchecking that box and restricting content at the article level instead.
Hope this clears up any confusion!
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