Author teams overview

If authors have editing privileges, by default, they can edit all content in your knowledge base.

However, there are times when you'd like to be able to segregate who can edit which content. This is what Author teams are for!

• First, create author teams.
• Then, assign authors to those teams.
• Finally, restrict categories or articles to those author teams.

Any content that is restricted to one or more author teams can only be edited by authors who belong to that team.

Any content that is not restricted to any author teams can be edited by all authors with editing access on that knowledge base.

Get started with author teams

To start using author teams:

1. Create your author teams. Refer to Create and administer author teams for more detailed instructions.
2. Edit your authors' profiles to add them to the appropriate teams.
3. Then restrict categories or articles to those author teams. Refer to Use author teams in content for more detailed instructions.

Use cases for author teams

Here are some of the most common ways authors use our author teams feature.

Authors from different departments or teams

One of Linus's knowledge bases captures information for multiple departments across different lines of business. He has designated editors for each line of business:

• Owlbert Einstein: Content owner for the Science department; owns and manages content in the "Feathers & flight", "Aerodynamics", and "Flight Tips for Owlettes" categories.
• Beyonce Owls: Content owner for the Music department; owns and manages content for the "Songs" category.
• Owl Pacino: Content owner for the Defense department; owns and manages content in the "Home defense", "Hunting", and "Food sources" categories.

Each of these authors is responsible for different categories in the knowledge base and might also manage contributions from other authors on their team.

To keep these authors from accidentally or intentionally editing each other's content, Linus uses this setup:

• He creates three author teams:
  • Science team
  • Music team
  • Defense team
• He assigns all of his content owners and their contributing writers to the appropriate team.
• He restricts each of his top-level categories to one of these teams. All subcategories and articles inherit that author team restriction.
• Linus assigns himself to all three teams so he can still oversee and edit all content.

Restrict single category

In another knowledge base, all of Linus's editors have access to all content. But his boss would like to add a section for the HR team to add HR materials. This content should only ever be updated by HR staff. HR staff should still be able tol update other knowledge base articles, too.

To solve this, Linus uses this setup:

• He creates one author team called HR.
• He assigns all of his authors from HR to the HR team.
• He restricts the HR category to this team.
• All other categories have no author team restrictions.

All authors who have no author teams can update all content that isn't restricted, but they won't be able to touch the HR content. HR members will be able to update all other content as well as the HR category.

If Linus needs access to edit/oversee that HR content, he should also add himself to the HR author team.

Prevent contractor from editing other content

In our Support knowledge base, Linus would like to give access to an independent security consultant to update our security policies. This author needs to be able to edit content in the Security Policy category and nothing else. All other authors should be able to edit all content, including the Security Policy category.

In this case, Linus needs to use this setup:

• He creates two author teams:
  • One for his security consultant, called Security
  • One for all other authors, called All content
• He restricts all categories to the All content author team.
• He restricts the Security Policy category to both the All content team and the Security team.
• He adds himself to both author teams.

All of our regular staff will be able to edit all content in the knowledge base.

Our independent security consultant will only be able to edit content in the Security Policy category.