- 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 team members only, so that you can create content that is internal-only.
Note: Light agents are included in this segment. For a list of light agent permissions, see Understanding and setting light agent permissions.
- 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 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.
38 Comments
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
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}}
@... - 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!
Are there any plans to allow multiple Custom User Segments to be selected for Visibility permissions?
Anyone know how to link a team member who has chat to Support?
Are you able to clarify your question a little further. What is it you are trying to link between chat and support?
Thanks!
Does the new staff role, CONTRIBUTOR, also have view permissions as Agent & Admin ( as light agents do ? ) to keep internal info
Contributors can provide limited support by viewing and adding private comments to tickets assigned to Groups they're a part of. Does that answer your question?
Hi Dave, yes that helps, but if Contributors are intended for a use case such as staff at an organization using Zendesk, (who dont need light agent status), but do need to be able to view internal documentation, then they need to have the same viewing permissions in Guide so that when an article is set to visibility 'admin & agents only' Contributors can view - this is a use case that Zendesk even mentions when it talks about using that setting for 'staff' for internal articles
we have zendesk suite growth and these are my options. Why am I not seeing custom user segments?
For the role Contributor, they have similar function as light agents that can add internal notes on tickets. For more information, you can refer to Understanding native custom agent roles in Zendesk Support.
Hope this helps!
Dear Zendesk Team,
I have a question about searching according to user rights(user segment).
I understand about view permission.
But I think this rule applies to searching and reading articles at the same time.
What I want to do is, when a user searches for an article using a keyword, the result list is shown to everyone, but when the article is clicked, the reading is restricted according to the user's authority.
Is it possible?
Then I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Jeongah Seo
Viewing permission directly hides the article. With your current use case, it will not be possible. 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.
Is there a way to make an article or section visible ONLY to anonymous users, but NOT to signed in users? I would like to have some content that is lighter weight and more of a pre-sales section that would not be relevant to signed in users (who in my case must use SSO, so I know they are already clients)
Dear all, as indicated in the community, a Multi-Select setup for User Segments is really key to be able to scale the ZD Guide KB correctly. I hope this feature can be added very soon as it prevents us to create a single global KB.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4409217017114-The-structure-of-user-segments-enforces-too-much-restriction-on-knowledge-base-content-forcing-our-customers-to-create-an-overwhelming-and-unscalable-number-of-segments?page=1#community_comment_4567034344218
Does a "light agent" count as an agent for "Agent and admins only" permission articles?
Yes, Light Agents have visibility to articles that are set as "Agent and admins only".
Can I set the visibility of an article to multiple user segments?
Only one user segment can be applied to an article so you'd need to create a user segment that includes a list of all the users you'd need to have access to that article. This will most likely need to be done through user tags.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi! We have SSO in place, but need some articles to be "prospect-facing". Even after unchecking "Require Sign-in", the article is not visible to anonymous users due to SSO (I'm assuming, not my area of expertise). What is the solution or workaround for this? Thank you!
Is there a way to keep some users from accessing chat and submit a request? We'd like to offer the articles/videos in Guide at no charge to anyone, but chat, community, and email only available to those who pay for support.
Yes, this can be done -- that's what we call a "closed instance". Here's an article to get you started on setting that up: Permitting only added users to submit tickets. For more context to how closed instances compare to other types of configuration, see Configuring end user access and sign-in.
Are you planning on allowing multiple user segments to have visibility to articles?
If not, what are my options other than creating user segments based on the many possible combinations of user segments that I want to have visibility of a given article?
Can multiple organizations have access to a single article? Or Brands?
I need to echo the request to be able to restrict visibility of a Zendesk Guide article to multiple user segments. This is a VERY significant oversight on Zendesk's part.
I would also like the ability to grant or restrict guide article visibility to multiple user segments, rather than having to create additional new segments to reflect a combined group
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