Use author teams in content

By default, all content in your knowledge base can be edited by all authors. If you'd like to prevent some authors from editing specific categories or articles, restrict those categories or articles to editing by specific author teams only. Authors who belong to the team can still edit the content as normal. Authors who don't belong to the team will be able to see the content, but they can't edit it.

Author team restrictions set at the category level are inherited by all articles in that category. You can choose to restrict an article or subcategory to a subset of those author teams. Refer to Inherited author team restrictions for more information on how inherited author team restrictions work and how you can further refine inherited author team restrictions.

The information below varies based on whether you're using our 2026 new editor or old editor.

To figure out which instructions to follow:

1. Open any article for editing.
2. If the lefthand navigation is collapsed and there's a link near the top of the page to Switch to old editor, follow the New editor documentation.
   
3. If the lefthand navigation is expanded and the top of the editor and the righthand column have a heavier grey background, follow the Old editor documentation.

Here are side-by-side examples of the new editor and the old editor:

Sample New editor

Sample Old editor

If you restrict a category so it can only be edited by specific author teams , that restriction is automatically applied to all articles within that category. We describe this as saying the articles or subcategories inherit author team restrictions.

Setting author team restrictions at the category level can be a fast way to ensure that all content within the category can only be edited by certain teams without requiring any additional setup or configuration in individual subcategories or articles.

When you set author team restrictions in a category, it means several things:

• Articles within the category will automatically inherit the category's author team(s).
• Articles within the category can only be edited by authors who belong to the selected teams.
• Articles within the category can be refined to be editable by a subset of the category's author team(s). So if the category overall is restricted to two author teams, you can restrict an individual article within it to only be edited by members of one of those teams, rather than both.

We explain each of these concepts in more detail below.

No action needed to restrict articles to category's teams

Thanks to the inherited author teams, authors don't need to select any boxes for the article to be restricted to all the author teams as the category. It already carries the same restrictions.

Articles only editable by the category's author teams

Thanks to the inherited author teams, articles within this category can only be edited by authors who belong to the selected teams. You cannot add new/additional author teams to individual articles; they must be added at the category level.

If restrictions have been set at the category level, the article's Edit access section (new article editor) or the category's (and old article editor's) Restrict Editing to Author Teams section will only list the author teams that the whole category is restricted to. You won't see checkboxes for any other author teams that exist in your knowledge base.

Let's say we're working in a knowledge base with three author teams:

• Burrowing owls
• Owlets
• Night owls

If I restrict a category to Burrowing owls and Owlets, when I open an article within that category, I'll only see those two author teams listed in the checkboxes:

Our example inherited author teams in the new article editor's Edit access section. Note that only Burrowing owls and Owlets are available here even though we have a third author team in our knowledge base overall.

Our example inherited author teams in the category editor's Restrict Editing to Author Teams section. Note that only Burrowing owls and Owlets appear here even though we have a third author team in our knowledge base overall.

Further refine inherited restrictions

When inherited author team restrictions exist, use the checkboxes in the editor to further restrict or refine the author team restrictions.

If you don't make any changes, the article or subcategory uses the same author teams as the category.

If you make further changes, you can restrict the article or subcategory so it only uses some of the author teams inherited from the category.

In our example, where the article is inheriting Burrowing owls and Owlets author teams, here's how that plays out:

• If we make no changes to the Edit access section (new article editor) or the Restrict Editing to Author Teams section (category editor and old article editor), authors who are part of either the Burrowing owls or the Owlets author team can edit the content.
• If we make any changes to the Edit access section (new article editor) or the Restrict Editing to Author Teams section (category editor and old article editor), we can restrict the article to editing by only members of Burrowing owls or Owlets teams, instead of both of them.

This lets you make the article more restricted than the category overall.

So if we only check the box for the Owlets author team, any author on the Burrowing owls will no longer be able to edit this article, though they'd still be able to edit other articles in the category.

Removing author team restrictions depends on how the restriction has been set.

Author team restrictions can be set:

• Directly on an article itself, using the Restrict Editing to Author Teams checkboxes
• Inherited from the category the article's within, no further refinements (no boxes checked in the article's Restrict Editing to Author Teams section)
• Inherited from the category the article's within AND further refined/limited to a subset of those teams (boxes checked in the article's Restrict Editing to Author Teams section)

Direct restrictions

Remove author team editing restrictions that have been added to the article directly (and aren't inherited from the category) following these steps:

1. Open the article or category in the editor.
2. Uncheck the team's checkbox in the Restrict Editing to Author Teams section of the editor.
3. Be sure to Save your changes.

Inherited restrictions, no refinements

If an article has inherited author team restrictions from the category, the only way to remove the author team restriction is to remove it from the category.

As long as no Restrict Editing to Author Teams boxes have been checked in the article itself, removing the team from the category will totally remove the author team restriction from the article. If any boxes have been checked in that section for the article, follow instructions in the next section.

Inherited restrictions with refinements

If an article has inherited author team restrictions from the category AND has boxes checked in the Restrict Editing to Author Teams section, removing the restrictions is a little more complicated.

In this scenario, you'll need to remove the author team:

• From the category's Restrict Editing to Author Teams section
• From the article's Restrict Editing to Author Teams section