5 tips for setting author permissions

In KnowledgeOwl, authors are users who can log in to create and manage content in your knowledge base.

Since authors play a key role in creating and managing your knowledge base content, it's important to dedicate time to setting up and optimizing your author permission settings to ensure the right people have the appropriate level of access.

Let’s dive into 5 tips related to setting author permissions in KnowledgeOwl!

1 - Understand the default author roles

Author roles determine which actions an author can complete in a knowledge base.

KnowledgeOwl has two default author roles, Editor and Writer:

• Editor: can perform all actions in a knowledge base, including customizing any setting.

• Writer: can perform any action related to creating and editing content, but cannot customize settings in your knowledge base.

2 - If needed, create custom author roles

If the default author roles (Editor and Writer) are not granular enough for your needs, you can create custom author roles to fine-tune permissions and assign specific capabilities to different authors based on their responsibilities.

Remember, author roles are specific to each knowledge base in your account (i.e. users can have different author roles for each knowledge base in your account).

3 - Consider utilizing author teams

If authors have editing privileges, by default, they can edit all of the content in your knowledge base. However, you might want to segregate who can edit which content. This is where author teams can come in handy!

If your knowledge base includes content from different departments or teams, you can create author teams to restrict editing access to specific categories, subcategories, and/or articles. This prevents authors from accidentally editing content they shouldn't have access to.

4 - Document custom author role and author team permissions

If you create custom author roles and/or author teams, it would be in your team’s best interest to create (and maintain) internal knowledge base articles that clearly describe what each role and team entails and which permissions are granted. This documentation will serve as a vital reference anytime you need to adjust author role and/or author team permissions for anyone on your team who contributes to your organization’s knowledge base.

Linus Says: To ensure that this documentation remains accurate and up-to-date, consider setting the article to automatically switch to the "Needs Review" status if it hasn't been updated for a specific time interval (e.g., 6 months). This "set it and forget it" approach will remind you to review and update the article as needed, at a frequency that makes sense for your team.

5 - Create and document clear processes for onboarding and offboarding authors

Personnel changes are inevitable for any organization, and onboarding and offboarding usually involve a bunch of small (but important) steps. Documenting every step that needs to be done when onboarding and offboarding team members will help ensure that everyone on your team has whatever author permissions are appropriate for their role at any given time.

Final thoughts

It’s important for knowledge base software to provide robust options for setting author permissions. We created a free “Knowledge base security comparison tool” to show which knowledge base software solutions include author permission control. It also showcases several other crucial security-related features. You can download the free comparison tool here: https://www.knowledgeowl.com/private-knowledge-base-comparison-tool

Please reach out to us at hoot@knowledgeowl.com if you have any questions about setting author permissions or anything else. We’d love to hear from you! Hoot! 🦉

(This is a companion article to '5 Tips for setting reader permissions'. For a more comprehensive understanding of permissions in KnowledgeOwl, we recommend reading both articles.)