Author roles & custom roles

KnowledgeOwl comes with two default author roles:

• Editor: can perform all actions in a knowledge base, including customizing any setting
• Writer: can perform any action related to creating and editing content; does not have access to customize settings

Here's a full breakdown of each role's permissions:

To further restrict what actions an author can perform, create a custom role.

If you need to lock down author permissions, you can create custom author roles to control what actions authors can perform in your knowledge base. 

Authors with full account admin access can create custom roles.

To do so:

1. Select your profile icon/name in the upper right.
2. Select Authors from the dropdown to view the author details for your account.
3. Open the Roles tab.
4. Select the + Add Custom Role button.
   
5. This will open an Author Role screen where you can define the custom role in more detail:
   
6. First, assign a Role Name. This is the name as it will appear in the list of roles, and will display as an option when you are assigning an authorr to this knowledge base. It should be descriptive but not too long.
7. Next, add a Description. Though optional, this description can provide more detail about what the role's permissions do or don't include. You may also want to provide guidance around when to use this role.
8. Finally, select the Permissions you'd like the role to have using the checkboxes in each section. See Available custom role permissions for a more detailed breakdown of these options.
9. Once you've finished assigning the appropriate permissions, click the Save Role button at the bottom of the screen.

Once you create a custom role, you can then assign authors to the role to further control what actions they can perform in your knowledge base.

Use cases

As Linus grows his content creating empire, he might want to have some authors who can create and edit draft articles but can't publish or delete them. These authors would mark something as Ready to Publish but an Editor or Content Reviewer might review it before officially publishing it. Linus creates a custom "Content Contributor" role and assigns authors to it.

By default, a custom role has no permissions and you choose what each role should be able to do. Here are the categories of permissions available:

• Article permissions
  • Create any type of new article, or specify any of the four article types (create from scratch, copy existing article, create from template, or link/sync content to an existing article). 
  • Edit draft articles
  • Edit published articles
  • Create new versions of articles
  • Edit versions of articles
  • Delete versions of articles
  • Activate versions of articles
  • Publish draft articles
  • Move or reorder articles
  • Archive articles
  • Delete articles
  • Edit articles in bulk (use the Bulk Edit link in Manage)
• Category permissions
  • Create new categories
  • Edit categories
  • Move or reorder categories
  • Delete categories
• Internal note permissions
  • Create new internal notes
  • Edit internal notes
  • Remove internal notes
• Homepage permissions
  • Edit homepage content
• Comments permissions
  • Create new comments
  • Approve submitted comments
  • Delete submitted comments
• Glossary permissions
  • Add glossary terms
  • Edit glossary terms
  • Delete glossary terms
• Snippet permissions
  • Add snippets
  • Edit snippets
  • Delete snippets
• File library permissions
  • Edit files
  • Delete files
  • Create file labels
  • Edit file labels
  • Delete file labels
• Tag permissions
  • Add existing tags to articles
  • Edit tags in the tag library
  • Add new tags
  • Remove tags from articles
  • Delete tags from the tag library
  • (Authors with the permission to edit tags and delete tags have the ability to merge tags)
• Admin permissions
  • Create and manage PDF and HTML exports 
  • Import content
  • Update article ratings settings
  • Update article favorites settings
  • Update basic settings
  • Update comment settings
  • Update contact form settings
  • Update PDF settings
  • Update search settings, synonyms, and reindex search
  • Update security settings
  • Update style / theming
  • Update subscription settings
  • Update required reading settings
  • Update widget settings
• Reporting permissions
  
  • View Dashboard
  • View Contact Form
  • View Widget
  • View Comments
  • Reset individual article ratings
  • Reset all article ratings
  • Reset individual article view counts
  • Reset all article view counts
  • View required reading reports
• Tools permissions
  • Run Broken Links Report
  • Run Advanced Search
  • Update Customize Text

If you'd like to document/audit custom roles, you can use this Excel file: KnowledgeOwl Author Roles - Excel format