Understanding Guide user permissions for knowledge base access (Professional and Enterprise)

Guide user permissions include:

• View permissions for viewing content in the Help Center knowledge base. View permissions include both internal and external users.
• Management permissions for creating, editing, and publishing content in the Help Center knowledge base. Management permissions include internal users only.

User permissions are defined by user segments. You apply user segments to articles to define user viewing permissions. You use user segments to build management permissions, which you then apply to articles to define agent editing and publishing permissions.

The process for building and applying permissions has the following steps:

1. Start with the building block, user segments
2. Build management permission for editing and publishing
3. Apply user permissions to articles

Step 1: Start with the building block, user segments

User segments are the building block of user permissions. A user segment is a group of agents and/or end-users defined by a specific set of attributes. Before you build or set your user permissions, you'll want to make sure you have created the necessary users segments to define your user groupings.

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 Guide admins

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

• Signed-in users, based on tags and/or organizations created in Zendesk Support
• Staff (agents and admins), based on tags and/or groups created in Zendesk Support

To create users segments, see Creating user segments.

Step 2: Build management permissions for editing and publishing

User permissions include content view permissions and management permissions. You do not need to build view permissions--you apply a user segment directly to an article to set the view permissions for that article--so you can skip this step for view permissions. You do need to build management permissions to define editing and publishing rights for agents, then apply it to an article to set agent management permissions for that article.

There is one predefined management permission, plus another predefined management permission that can be activated on Enterprise:

• Managers is active by default and gives only Guide admins edit and publish permission.
• Editors and publishers (Enterprise only) can be activated on Enterprise and gives all agents and admins edit permission, but gives only Guide admins publish permission.

You can create management permissions based on user segments. On Professional, edit and publish permissions are assigned together, to a user segment of agents. On Enterprise, editing and publishing permissions are separate, so that they can be assigned to different user segments.

To create management permissions, see Creating management permissions to define agent editing and publishing rights.

Step 3: Apply user permissions to articles

You apply user permissions at the article level. You cannot apply permissions to a category or section.

• View permissions You apply a user segment to an article to set the view permissions for that article. To apply view permissions, see Setting view permissions on articles with user segments.
• Management permissions You apply management permissions to define editing and publishing rights for agents, then apply it to an article to set agent management permissions for that article. To apply management permissions, see Setting agent editing and publishing permissions on knowledge base articles.