Adding and Managing User Groups

Adding and Managing User Groups

Groups are a collection of end users, often related to a specific account, geography, brand, or product, that is used to determine access to your knowledge base and community content on the Help Center. For example, you can add a group that includes all end users that should be able to access a specific category on your knowledge base or community. This is most helpful when you have private documentation or an exclusive user forum, and you want to limit its access to a certain group of end users only.


Benefits

Here are some of the benefits of grouping your end users.
  1. Set flexible group-based article permissions for granular control so that some articles will be visible only internally and some externally to specific groups.
  2. Build a private online community whose conversations can only be accessed by users of a specific group.
  3. Associate a group's users with appropriate labels to categorize or identify them on the community.
  1. User Groups are not available in the Free edition.
  2. You can add up to 200 unique groups per help center.
  3. Each group can be associated with up to 2000 end users.
  4. You can add up to 30 groups per knowledge base or community folder.


Adding Groups

Adding groups is a quick two-step process. The first step is to enter the name of the group you wish to create and upload its logo. The second step is to add end users to the group. Here's how you can do both:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) on the top bar.
  2. Click Help Center under the Channels menu.
  3. Select the Help Center in which you want to add a group.
  4. Click User Groups under the Help Center sub-menu.
  5. In the User Groups page, click Add Group.



  6. On the Preference tab, do the following:
    1. Upload a display picture for the group.
      Note: Only JPG, PNG, and GIF images under 1 MB are accepted for upload.
    2. Enter a name for the group.
    3. Enter a short description of the group.
    4. Click Save.



  7. Click the Users tab and do the following:
    1. Click Add Users in the upper-right corner of the page.
      The       Add Users panel will slide open from the right side of the screen.
    2. Select the end users you wish to add to this group.
      You can also search for the user in question.
    3. Click Add.
  8. The group will be added successfully.



You can click the More icon (  ) corresponding to a group and then click Edit to modify the group's properties. You can also click Delete to delete any group.

You can also associate groups on the user's profile page under settings. Learn more.

Deleting Users from Group

You can delete end users from a group on the Users tab of the Group details page.
To delete users from a group:
  1. On the User Groups page, click on the group to view its details.
  2. Select the Users tab on the Group Details page.
  3. Select the users you want to remove from the group.
  4. Click Delete from the top of the page.
  5. Click Delete again on the confirmation window.


Setting up Group-based Article Access

Now that you've created a group, you can assign it to knowledge base categories, sections, or subsections so that only the end users who belong to the group can access the articles underneath it.

To set this up for a category (root-level):
  1. Click the Knowledge Base (KB) module.
  2. Click Manage KB from the left panel.
  3. Click Organize Category under the Manage KB sub-menu.
  4. Hover your mouse pointer on the category that you would like to display to a group and then click the Edit icon (  ).
  5. On the Edit Category page, select Groups under the Visibility drop-down menu.
    Note: None will be the default visibility setting.



  6. Select the groups you'd like to associate with the category.
  7. Click Add, and then click Update.
The article-level permission of all articles underneath the category will be set to "Registered Users". Also, their articles will now be visible only to the end users who belong to the group.

To set this up for a section or a subsection (child-level)
  1. Click the Knowledge Base (KB) module.
  2. Click Manage KB from the left panel.
  3. Click Organize Category under the Manage KB sub-menu.
  4. Click on a category to navigate to the sections underneath it.
  5. Click the More icon (  ) corresponding to a section or a subsection and then click the Edit button.
  6. On the Edit Section page, select Groups under the Visibility drop-down menu.
    Note: None will be the default visibility setting.



  7. Select the groups you'd like to associate with the section.
  8. Click Add, and then click Update.
The article-level permission of all articles underneath the section will be set to "Registered Users". Also, their articles will now be visible only to the end users who belong to the group.

The article-level permission of articles under a folder will not fall-back to their original state on setting its visibility from Groups to None.

Setting up Group-based Community Access

Now that you've created a group, you can assign it to community categories, so that only the end users who belong to the group can access the forum posts underneath it. Keep in mind that unlike the knowledge base, you can only add groups to a top-level category and not to the individual forums underneath it.

To set this up for a community category (root-level):
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) on the top bar.
  2. Under Channels, click Community.
    You will land on the Categories page.
  3. Hover your mouse pointer on the category that you would like to display to a group and then click the Edit icon (  ).
  4. On the Edit Category page, select Private under the Visibility drop-down menu.



  5. Click + Add Group and select the groups you'd like to associate with the category.
  6. Click Save.
    Note: Any existing followers of the category who don't belong to the group will be removed.
  7. Click OK on the alert window.
The topics under this category and its associated forums will be visible only to the specified groups.

Associating Labels to Users in Group

You can associate labels with users in a group. These users can view the labels assigned to them on the community. Learn more.
To associate labels:
  1. Click the Setup icon (  ) on the top bar.
  2. Click Help Center under the Channels menu.
  3. Select the Help Center in which you want to associate labels.
  4. Click User Groups under the Help Center sub-menu.
  5. On the User Groups List page, click on the group to view its details.
  6. Select the Users tab on the Group Details page.
  7. Select the users you want to associate with labels.
  8. Click Associate Labels.
  9. From the list of labels, select the labels you want to associate with users.
    Note: You can associate a maximum of 5 labels at a time.
  10. Click Associate.

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