5 Tips for Setting Reader Permissions

In private knowledge base software solutions like KnowledgeOwl, your readers are people who can view your knowledge base content.

If you are creating a private or restricted content knowledge base, you can ensure that the right people can access the information they need with proper reader permissions. These permissions also help you protect the security of your content and aid with organization.

Let's dive into 5 tips for setting reader permissions in KnowledgeOwl!

1 - Understand how to create reader groups

Reader groups are the foundation of reader permission management in KnowledgeOwl because they allow you to control access to specific content.

With reader groups, you can organize your knowledge base to serve various departments, teams, or customer types to ensure that each group sees only the information that is relevant to them.

To create reader groups:

1. Go to your profile icon/name → Readers → Groups
2. Click the "+ Add Group" button
3. Name your group and decide whether it should be a “KO only reader group”
   1. The “KO only reader group” checkbox determines whether SSO should be able to override/add/remove readers to this group.
      1. If the box is checked, SSO can't control group membership. You'll need to manually add or remove readers from the group.
      2. If the box is unchecked, SSO will control and override group membership. This means that even if you manually add or remove readers from the group, SSO will override your changes to match what it has stored for their groups.
      3. If you aren't using SSO, the box doesn't really change anything, since you'd still be manually administering group membership!
4. If needed, repeat steps 1-3 to create additional reader groups for your various reader segments

Remember, you can assign readers to multiple groups!

2 - Implement granular content restrictions

KnowledgeOwl offers multiple levels of content restrictions:

• Category-level restrictions apply to all subcategories and articles within that category.
• Article-level restrictions allow for more specific access control on individual pieces of content.
• Snippet-level and topic article-level restrictions allow for conditional blocks of content within article or category pages.

In general, use category-level restrictions for broad control over content access and use article-level restrictions for exceptions or highly sensitive information. Use snippet-level or topic article-level restrictions to display conditional content within a page based on reader groups.

3 - Leverage display settings for additional control

Beyond restricting access via reader groups, KnowledgeOwl's display settings offer additional ways to control the visibility of categories and articles.

These display settings give you fine-tuned control over how content is presented and discovered in your knowledge base.

For example, here are some of the display settings options for articles:

• Exclude from search results: when this box is checked, the article is always hidden from your knowledge base search results. It's still available by URL, and may be available in other navigation and lists depending on the settings you check below.
• Hide from the table of contents: this hides the article from the table of contents.
• Hide from home page / category landing page: this hides the article from the landing page for the category it's found in, or the home page if the article isn't within a category landing page.
• Hide from article lists: this hides the article from the home page/right hand column New Articles List, Popular Articles List, and Updated Articles List. It doesn't hide the article from the Recent Articles List or Article Favorites.

4 - Utilize auto-assign rules, remote authentication, or SSO for efficient reader group management

If your knowledge base has reader sign-ups enabled, you can create rules to automatically assign readers to groups based on their email domain.

For example, you can consider creating rules for common email domains (@yourcompany.com, @gmail.com, etc.) to automate a significant portion of your permission management.

However, it's important to note that remote authentication and Single Sign-On (SSO) are more commonly used for this purpose, especially in larger organizations or those with existing authentication systems. These methods can offer more robust and integrated solutions for managing reader permissions.

Whether you choose to use auto-assign rules, remote authentication, or SSO depends on your specific needs, existing infrastructure, and the level of integration you require. Auto-assign rules are great for simpler setups, while remote authentication and SSO offer more advanced integration and automation capabilities.

Regardless of the method you choose, these features can greatly reduce the manual administration of reader permissions, ensuring efficient and accurate group management.

5 - Test reader group access

After setting up your reader groups, it’s recommended to test what different reader groups can see by:

• As an author, using the “Change Reader Groups” option in your admin footer to simulate different group memberships.
  • Make sure you’re logged in as an author.
  • From app.knowledgeowl.com, click the View KB button in the top left navigation or the View Article or View Category links in the editor.
  • Use the Change Reader Groups option in your admin footer.
• Logging in as various individual readers who are assigned to different reader groups and navigate through your knowledge base as these different readers to ensure permissions are working as expected.

Final thoughts

By mastering these five aspects of reader permissions in KnowledgeOwl, you'll be able to create a secure, well-organized knowledge base that provides the right information to the right people at the right time. Remember, effective reader permissions not only protect sensitive information but also enhance the user experience by ensuring readers can easily find the content that's relevant to them.

It’s important for knowledge base software to provide robust options for setting reader permissions. We created a free “Knowledge base security comparison tool” to show which knowledge base software solutions include the ability to serve different content to different readers. It also showcases several other crucial security-related features. You can download the free comparison tool here: https://www.knowledgeowl.com/private-knowledge-base-comparison-tool

If you have any questions about setting reader permissions or need help with any other aspect of KnowledgeOwl, don't hesitate to reach out to us at hoot@knowledgeowl.com. We're always here to help! Hoot! 🦉

(This is a companion article to '5 Tips for Setting Author Permissions'. For a more comprehensive understanding of permissions in KnowledgeOwl, we recommend reading both articles.)