---

Groups are used to control access and visibility to categories and any articles contained within those categories.

From the Groups menu in the knowledge base navigation bar, you can see the list of defined groups, as shown here:

Notice that the "Public Access" group has "Public" flag set, meaning that anonymous (public) users can see any content associated with this group. In other words, users who have not registered with or logged into the system can see any articles and categories associated with this group.

For other (non-public) groups, Categories and their respective articles are typically gathered into logical groupings, based on how they will be viewed, and by what group of users.

These groups may be logically defined differently for different accounts, depending on your specific requirements. For example, if you are listing recipes on your knowledge base site, you might have some freely accessible recipes available, and others only available after someone registers with your account. There may also be another possible grouping, based on readers that have paid for special access to some recipes (for example Grandma's Secret Recipes).

The organization and definition of these groups is left for content editors to decide. These can also be modified later if needed, or groups can be split or combined as required.

Adding a new Group

The first step in defining this organizational structure is to define the groups themselves, which is done using the "Add Group" button from the group list (shown above).

You can add as many groups as you feel necessary, however to start, you find it easier to create only a few until you get familiar with assigning users and content to groups, after which you can add as many as you need.

Once your groups have been defined, they can be assigned to categories (by using the Edit Category option). After you have completed this, the benefit of using groups should become much clearer, so each category should typically be assigned to one or more of your defined groups. Any articles within these categories will receive the same group access as their parent category. To be clear - articles are not associated with groups, only their parent categories are, which they inherit.

After group assignments have been made to categories, then users can be organized to allow them individual access to certain groups (or none)

When viewing lists of articles, such as on the Homepage or when Searching , users will only be able to see articles and categories in groups to which they have been associated.

Feel free to modify the default groups (Public Access, Registered Users and Internal Team) since these are meant to serve as examples.