You can limit access to your help center in two ways:
- Restricting your entire help center to signed-in users only
You can prevent anonymous visitors from accessing your help center by requiring end users to sign in. This is known as arestrictedhelp center. Visitors will only see the sign-in page.
- Setting view permissions that restrict signed-in users to a user segment (this feature is not available on Suite Team)
You can define which of your help center users can have view access by setting the help center view permissions. The following options are available:
- Signed-in usersThis includes internal and external users who create an account and sign in to your help center.
- Agents and managersThis option is for staff members only, so that you can create content that is internal-only.
- Custom user segmentThis option enables you to restrict viewing access to specific users based on tags, organizations, or groups by applying custom user segments (seeCreating user segments to restrict access).
You can also restrict access to specific areas of your knowledge base (seeRestricting access to knowledge base content) and community (seeRestricting access to community content).
To restrict your help center visibility
- In Guide, click theSettings(
) icon in the sidebar.
- UnderSecurity, selectRequire sign in.
- (Optional) If you want to restrict your help center visibility to a segment, underRequire sign in, selectLimit to user segment, then open the dropdown menu and select aUser segment.Note:Restricting visibility to a user segment is not available on Suite Team.
By default, the visibility of your help center is set toSigned in users.
- ClickUpdate.
View restrictions do not apply to Guide admins. Admins can access all help center content, regardless of view permissions.
Note:You can restrict agents from viewing your help center. However, they will be able to create and edit articles in Guide.
32 Comments
Hi there,
My apologies if I have missed where this is, but I want to have our knowledge base open but then require login for particular articles. I have set some articles to be open to everyone and some for signed-in users.
In setting, I then switched off the option to require sign-in. However, when I update this option and return it is automatically turned back on.
Am I missing something!? Thank you for any help.
Hi James, no worries, this is a fine place to put your question – and welcome to the community!
You definitely want to leave the option to sign in turned on in your help center settings. That won't affect articles that are set to be visible to Everyone. If you didn't allow people to sign in, there'd be no way for them to sign in and see the articles that require sign-in. Does that help clarify?
Hi@...and others, I'm looking for some clarification around end user behavior if "require sign-in" is turned off. My Help Center uses SSO and is currently requiring sign-in. When I test disabling this setting, I see that a non-authenticated user is prompted to sign-in when browsing. However, when the non-authenticated user enters a search term, they're sent to the search results page with no results and no prompt to sign-in for more. Can you recommend how to address this? My goal is to not require sign-in for my Help Center in general, but require it for most articles. I understand I can set that up by disabling the general setting and setting the visibility of articles to Signed in users, but the problem is that search results for a non-authenticated make it seem like there are no related articles, even though there are. Any guidance is much appreciated.
Hi Lauren,
I'd like to dig deeper into the behaviour that your end-user is experiencing. I'll create a ticket for you, please expect an email shortly.
Hi Dave,
I have a unique situation. I have over 5 brands in my Zendesk environment. The 5 brands are accessible to anyone. It is set up that way under the end-user general setting. Now I have two brands that I would like to set up restrictions for. I tried to set up these settings on the help center level, but when I try to submit a ticket, it said the ticket was submitted, but I also was directed to an error page. I am not sure what is going on. Do you have any advice for me? Thank you.
嗨,珍妮花,
Is your Help Center activated? Here's how you canactivate your Help Center
Hello Cheeny,
I have set up a total of 5 help centers already that is available to everyone and they work as expected. I do not receive any errors when submitting a form on these help centers.
I am setting up 2 new help centers that will require end-users to log in. The help center can be accessed, but when I complete the form I get the error page. They have been activated already. The ticket is successfully created and it shows up in our support center, but when you check the end-user profile, it shows that end-user doesn't have any tickets requested. Why is this happening?
嗨,珍妮花,
If so, I suggest that you reach out to ourCustomer Supportso they can have a closer look into your account.
I am adding some messages to the templates (e.g., home_page.hbs) and I want to control who can see them:
I found {{signed_in}} and implemented it as follows{{#if signed_in}}Message1{{else}}Message2{{/if}}and got the results I expected:
I can't find a way to separatesigned_in分成两组像他们在艺术icles --Agents and adminsandSigned-in users. I would then be able to do something like this:
{{#if agent}}Message1{{else}}{{#if signed_in}}Message2{{else}}Message3{{/if}}{{/if}}Message4.
任何想法吗?
Finally found the answer inhttps://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408887701146-How-can-I-hide-or-show-HTML-based-on-user-s-role-or-group-. Worked like a charm!!!
Hi. Are these restricted help centre users priced at the same level ($19/mo) OR are they free?
My use case is:
Make a help centre with 2 admin accounts. We will only publish a knowledge base. We want to make this KB available to 100+ signed-in users.
Thanks.
HiAKS,
This feature is available for Suite Team subscription and up or if you are subscribed to a Guide Professional subscription and up.
You can also check thislinkfor the pricing of each Suite plan.
I hope that helps!
I just set up a test brand for an Internal Only help center, and in settings I picked Sign In required, and then also selected Admin and Agents
But when I visit the help center, there is still an option to "sign up for access" how can this be removed or prevented? I want this Help Center totally closed unless users have been manually added by an admin?
To remove the option for your customers to sign up to your Help Center, disable theAnybody can submit ticketsoption. However, please take in mind that this will apply to all your brands. If you would like to completely hide the sign-up button, you may check How can I completely hide the sign up button from my Help Center?
I hope that helps!
Hi,
I have set my entire help center to signed-in users only.
Is there a way to have "some articles" viewable by unregistered users?
What does visible to Everyone mean in this context?
Yes, you can useuser segmentto restrict specific articles to signed-in users, and keep all other articles public so that unregistered viewers can still access your Help Center. However, you need to disable the required sign-in to guide
I created a user segment and tag with the same name..."validated_user" and added the tag to an organization. This allows me to not only lock down the help center, but allows me to, essentially, approve new users. I approve them by adding the tag to their organization. One big problem though. Chat (messaging). Even though the help center page was restricted for my test account, I was still able to start a chat and open a ticket. Seems like a little hole in the user segment security. Thoughts?
It's possible that you are testing it on the same tab where you are logged in as Admin. Please try to access it on an incognito window and test the behavior again.
Is there a possibility to add restrictions at the category levels? Are there any plans to incorporate this feature. Restricting the access at article level is at times a cumbersome exercise.
There's no plans currently to set up restrictions at the category level at this time. I'd recommend creating a feedback post in ourHelp Center (Guide) Feedbacktopic for our product managers to review.
You can also view our Guide Knowledge Management Roadmap here:https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4410198255386-Guide-Knowledge-Management-roadmap
I hope this helps!
I have followed the instructions to "To restrict your help center visibility" however, I am unable to select a newly created user segment i am looking to restrict. It is only showing me the "signed in end user" segment. How do I successfully allow some end users to sign in and see my help center and prevent others from creating accounts and accessing?
very strange, that it is still not showing for you.
It might be due to Browser settings, that it does still not appear for you. Therefore I recommend you try the following:
- Clear Cache and Cookies
- try it out of a different Browser
- try it out of an incognito window
- make sure that there are no outstanding updates of the Browser and PC itself
Furthermore, I will also go ahead to create a ticket on your behalf to investigate further.
谢谢安妮。尝试了所有的建议。还不resolved. I'll pick this up on the ticket.
Hi,
I have a few questions if I enableRequire sign in (and we plan to implement SSO):
Now, when I am signed into Zendesk as an admin and visit our Help Center, I see the home page, and I can clickSign in, but I don't have to fill out credentials; I am automatically signed in.
Or will they receive our platform's SSO sign in page and be redirected to the Help Center?
I appreciate any help you can provide :) Thanks!
Hi Folks,
I am a newbie, so forgive me if this is a dumb question. I want to be able to restrict access to my Zendesk help centre to only paid users of my app. I would also like it if when they have logged into my app, their credentials could be pre-verified in Zendesk, meaning they would not need to log in separately. Making it a nicer user experience.
So given I am a user when I select the help centre tab in the app, I am directed to the Zendesk help centre.
Hi all!
I am facing the same roadblock asPeter Lumley. I tried playing around with the end user authentication settings, but there's no option for users to just be logged in through our website.
If the help center is accessed through our website, there's no reason for users to have to sign in to Zendesk as well.
I tried checking the box for external authentication, but my account doesn't allow me to do so. Is this something that is covered only in a higher subscription model? Would appreciate some help on this subject.
Thank you!
We have the same issue, but now I have a better understanding on the ramifications after talking with one of our lead developers and compliance officer (I'm paraphrasing here a bit).
To be ISO compliant, you can't pass login credentials from one server to another server that is not inside the same domain (again, paraphrasing).
Zendesk runs on their servers, our applications run on ours (and our Mobile App). We can't pass along user credentials from ours to theirs to access our help system and remaining ISO compliant. Kinda makes sense.
So, here was our solution:
This approach does mean you really have to watch the "Visible To" field on all your articles, but you can bulk check that pretty easy, too (I do this at the end of each day).
One interesting side effect of all this, is that we did discover we had content we want to publish that didn't really need any kind of security -- marketing/sales type stuff that was once hosted elsewhere. It is kinda nice to have everything in one place.
Oh, and we did add another guide (you can have up to 5 on most Zendesk suites, I think) that still requires login. This is, in fact, for internal use only. We modified the templates for that guide so the contents is only visible to Staff. All others who attempt to access it get pushed to the public guide.
1. End-users will not see the sign in option. They will be routed directly on the sign in page/SSO once your are on the Help Center URL.
2. This is possible. However, if you have the option to "Require sign in" these articles will not appear as long as you are not signed in.
3. This will only work for signed in users.
Hope this helps!
Hi Peter and Jan,
Regarding this behavior, you will need to utilizeZendesk SSO optionso that end-users on your app will also be logged in to the Help Center. Please take note that you will have to coordinate with your devs in order to implement this.
Hi there,
I am attempting to setup the Guide for use by our end-user costumers. I don't have the require sign-in option ticked however when I attempt to access the Help Centre as a customer I am redirected to a sign-up screen. How can I bypass this to allow any user to view articles?
Thanks
Hi All
Is there a way to show the Guide Home Page to anonymous users but somehow restrict only certain users (eg: belonging to a particular Org) to sign in.
In effect we want to show the Home Page to anyone but ONLY allow certain users to sign in to the Help Center.
Many thanks.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.