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.

Use cases for author teams

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:

• Owlbus Dumbledore: Flight & Aerodynamics; owns and manages content in the "Feathers & flight", "Aerodynamics", and "Flight Tips for Owlettes" categories
• Minerva McGonagowl: Nest building & Structural integrity; owns and manages content in the "Nest building", "Camouflage", and "Structural integrity" categories
• Owl Pacino: Defense & Food sources; 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 has created three author teams:

• Flight & Aerodynamics: Assigned to Owlbus Dumbledore and all of his writers
• Nest building & Structural integrity: Assigned to Minerva McGonagowl and all of her writers
• Defense & Food: Assigned to Owl Pacino and all of his writers

He's then restricted each of his top-level categories to one of these teams. All subcategories and articles will inherit that author team restriction.

Finally, Linus assigned himself to all three of those author teams so he can still make edits to 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 HR staff to add HR materials. This content should only ever be updated by HR staff. HR staff can still update other knowledge base articles, though.

To solve this, Linus has created one author team called HR. He's restricted 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 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 only the security policy content and nothing else. All other authors should be able to edit both the security content AND the rest of the content.

In this case, Linus needs to create two author teams: 

• One for his security consultant, called "Security team"
• One for all other authors, called "All content"

He'll restrict all categories to the "All content" team; he'll restrict the Security Policy category to both the "All content" team and the "Security team". He'll add himself to both teams, just to be safe.

Because all content is restricted to a specific team, and all other categories are NOT restricted to the Security team, the security consultant will only be able to edit the security category.

Because all categories--including the security category--are restricted to the All content team, authors with that author team will still be able to edit all content.