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KB User's Guide - Understanding Access to Documents

The purpose of this document is to outline the many ways in which a document can be made available to certain (or all) audiences within the Knowledgebase (KB) system. There are several options that require specific setup and settings to make certain that your users are able to access the document’s content.

Quick Reference Guide

This table will outline a few basics of document access to provide a high-level overview of settings for your documents.

Setting

Grants Access To...

Excludes

Search Options

Site access options for making a document internal and external

All external users as well as providing a copy for an internal group space as well. This is the recommended way to publish a document for an external audience, making it both externally and internally available. No one Document would be searchable at external and internal group space. Also can be crawled by search engines such as Google and Bing.
Internal only settings for a document

All internal users who have been added to the group space's Users list can access this document. They would need to log in to the internal site, and the document would appear.

This document could be accessed by users who were added via Group Authorizations (explained below)

No external access, no campus-wide access to this document. Document is only searchable by users who have access to the internal group space and are authenticated via NetID.
External / Internal for all campus users options set

The document's title and summary would appear within a search of the external Knowledgebase, but any campus user can access the content of the document once they have authenticated via NetID.

No external access, content restricted to authenticated NetID users. Document title, summary, and keywords are searchable externally, but content cannot be seen or crawled by search engines.
Access options for internal for all campus users

The document is visible and searchable for all campus users after they have authenticated via NetID.

No external access to the document. Document is only searchable when a user accesses the group's internal Knowledgebase.

External Audiences

A document can be made available to all users, so long as they are aware of the specific URL of the KB group space, by creating your document and setting the Site access value to -external, and leaving Campus access set to Defer to SiteAccess.

Site access options for making a document internal and external

This also allows for search engines to crawl the document as the content is available without any authentication needs.

Sharing Documents With Other Group Spaces

While you are creating documents for your audience, you may want to share those documents with audiences of other KB group spaces, or with the Unified KB. This feature allows you to share documents with both external and internal group spaces, as well as the ability for other groups to share their documents with you.

This option can be managed by following the instructions at the following KB document: KB User's Guide - Settings Tab - Managing Group Relationships.

Internal Audiences (basic)

Internal documents require a great amount of planning and setup to make certain that you have appropriately limited the document’s visibility to the correct audiences. Before publishing a document internally, be certain you are aware of the audiences that you want to view the content, as well as making certain that there is no restricted or sensitive information included in the document(s). For more information, please refer to KB User's Guide - Sensitive and Restricted Data Policy.

Internal documents are also not subject to being crawled by search engines such as Google or Bing, as the content requires some level of authentication to access it.

Group Space Users only

The most immediate way to limit access to a document is to make it internal only. This would only allow users who have been added to your Users list or authorized via a Group Authorization rule (more information below) to be able to access the document.

  1. Add users to your Users list - KB User's Guide - Users Tab - Adding a User
    • Users should be added with Active and Internal KB options set

      User list with active and IKB boxes checked

  2. When publishing your document, set the Site access to -internal and Campus access to Defer to SiteAccess

    Site access set to internal and campus access set to defer to site access

    Users would still need to authenticate via NetID and password to view this document.

Internal (campus users) only

Next, you can set a document to be accessible to anyone on your campus with a valid login credential. The document will be visible in your KB’s internal group space, however, campus users who are not directly authorized for your internal site will only see external site resources (e.g. menus) when viewing your internal site.

  1. When publishing your document, set the Site access to -internal
  2. Set the Campus access to Internal for all campus users

    Access options for internal for all campus users

It is important to note that documents that are set to Internal for all campus users are only searchable when the user is logged into the group’s internal knowledgebase (ie. https://kb.wisc.edu/kbtraining/internal/).

External / Internal with campus login

You can make a document’s title publicly visible to anyone with the URL to your KB’s external group space, but the actual content of the document will only be visible to those who have a valid login credential for your institution.

  1. When publishing your document, set the Site access to -external and -internal
  2. Set the Campus access to Ext/Internal with campus login

    Site access set to external and internal, with campus access set to ext/Internal with campus login

    It is important to note that this setting will make a document’s title and summary visible and searchable to an external audience, while requiring authentication to view the full content.

Internal Audiences (advanced)

This section will introduce some of the more advanced ways to allow for access to documents within your KB’s internal group space. These will require some additional setup or knowledge of previous setup to create the access.

Group Authorizations

The Group Authorizations option expands your ability to make documents visible to specific audiences based on criteria like UDDS (Unit Division Department Sub-department), Manifest, and eppn (eduPersonPrincipalName) attributes.

Demonstration image of Group Authorizations

In the image above, several departments are given access to the internal site through the use of UDDS. A sample Manifest group was also given access to the internal site. And the user Bucky Badger was given both document specific access (to limit read or write access) as well as access to the internal group space.

For instructions on how to use Group Authorizations, please refer to this document: KB User's Guide - Users Tab - Group Authorization.

Reminder: When creating options for Document specific access, those users/groups must also have Internal site access as well (as seen with the user Bucky Badger in the above image).



Keywordsprivate, accessibility, internal, external, search, searchability, intranet, private, internal data, hiddenDoc ID135986
OwnerMatt G.GroupKB User's Guide
Created2024-03-12 12:14:06Updated2024-07-15 08:47:31
SitesKB User's Guide
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