In this article, we’ll explain these concepts and tasks and direct you to Zendesk resources that can help you incorporate restricted help center content into your AI agent. You may find that not all of the suggestions in this article apply to your configuration; just use the information that applies to your use case.
This article includes the following topics:
About restricted content
There are two ways you can restrict content in your help center:
-
Using the Require sign-in option in the Guide
security settings, which restricts all content in the help
center to authenticated and signed-in end users.
- AI agents for messaging support this type of restriction. AI-generated answers will be available only for end users who are signed in to your help center.
-
Setting view permissions (on Suite Growth plans and above) to restrict
access to specific articles. Access to categories and sections is based on
article settings.
- AI agents for messaging support this type of restriction. Restricted articles are used in AI-generated answers only for end users whose user segment(s) match the article’s view permissions.
When you apply restrictions to one of these elements, they apply to all elements below it in the help center hierarchy:
- When Require sign-in is selected in Knowledge admin security settings, the entire help center is restricted; all categories, sections, and articles are also restricted and require users to sign in for access.
- When an article is restricted, all comments in that article are also restricted, and users must sign in for access.
- When all articles in a section are restricted, that section only appears to signed-in users.
- When all sections in a category are restricted, that category only appears to signed-in users.
Authenticating end users
End users may be able to view restricted content in a help center using a simple sign-in procedure. However, to view restricted content through an AI agent for messaging, you need to take these additional steps to be authenticated by Zendesk:
To view restricted help center content in an AI agent for messaging:
- The end user must already exist as a user in your Zendesk account.
- The end user must be authenticated via messaging JWT, including mapping them to user records.
- The external ID passed via the JWT authentication must be associated with the user in Zendesk via the external ID field.
Using restricted content in AI agent responses
When you configure the settings described above, authenticated customers can view restricted content from help center articles in responses from your AI agent for messaging.
Additionally, these settings let authenticated customers view restricted content in the following legacy AI agent functionality:
- If the AI agent finds relevant articles responses in the standard response, including:
- Show help center articles step type in an AI agent answer.