Basic authentication

Sometimes, to facilitate integration with a third-party tool, it's useful to have an account that uses basic authentication (basic auth). Basic auth uses an email address and a password, similar to readers set up directly in KnowledgeOwl.

Basic auth can be useful if you have your knowledge base access restricted in one format, but you'd like to give a third-party tool its own reader account to authenticate with. We see this most often used for tools that crawl your knowledge base for various purposes (such as Amazon's Kendra or other chatbot/search integrators).

To enable Basic Authentication in KnowledgeOwl, you need to enable the overall setting in Settings > Security and then configure an individual reader account to use basic auth. See below for more detailed instructions.

Knowledge base setup

First, enable basic authentication for your knowledge base overall:

1. Go to Settings > Security.
2. In the Security Settings section, look for the Basic Authentication subsection.
3. Check the box next to "Enable designated readers to log in via basic access authentication."
   
4. Save your changes.

Reader setup

Once you have basic auth enabled for the knowledge base as a whole, you need to designate a reader account to use that authentication:

1. Select your profile icon/name in the upper right.
2.  Select Readers from the dropdown to access the Readers area of your account.
3. You can choose to create a new reader account to use with basic auth or edit an existing reader account to use as your basic auth account. Be sure the reader account is set up with a self-administered password.
4. Once you're in the Edit Reader screen viewing the details of the reader account you'd like to use, look for the Basic Authentication subsection.
5. Check the box next to Allow this reader to log in via basic access authentication.
   
6. Be sure the reader has access to the appropriate knowledge base(s) and/or reader group(s).
7. Save your changes.

You can now use the email address and password you set this account up with as the username/password for your third-party tool.