While we want most knowledge base articles to be public, there are some we want to keep private so that only our customer service representatives can view them. For example, a customer might ask a question that's sensitive, and we want to have an article for reps on how to respond to the question. So, ideally:
Enable a "Private" setting on knowledge base articles
Only allow certain users (maybe admins) to toggle this off once it's set
Don't show private articles in public knowledge base
Don't allow these articles to be searched through the chatbot interface or the knowledge base search box
@Fredrikhoglind we are currently working on extending the functionality of restricted access articles so that users can make articles accessible to only users logged into your HubSpot portal. This will stop the need of having to use contact lists to restrict articles for internal use only.
Hey Everyone!! My name is Dave and I work on the Service Hub product team -- we are about to release (into Beta) Restricted Article Access for the Knowledge Base. This feature will allow you to password protect your KB (by article) and the segmentation of who can view this articles will be 'list based' -- ex. I have Silver, Gold, Platinum customers - as long as these folks are accurately tagged in a list, they will only be able to view those articles that list has been provisioned to see).
If you are interested in the beta, feel free to ping me directly: dbarron@hubspot.com -- I'd expect a beta release in the next few weeks 🙂
@mollymetzger I like that idea too. Maybe there could even be the ability for dynamic content within knowledge base articles, so people see different content depending on variables such as the HubSpot list they're in.
Knowledge Bases are a great feature to introduce, but some permissions flexibility would make it incredibly flexible. Some sort of basic tiered system (Only Me, Only Selected Users, Password Protect, Anyone with the link, whole organisation, Public) would really expand what they can be used for. It'd certainly give an extra layer of usefulness for things like internal / client training on technical / behavioural subjects!
While we've upvoted this idea and completely support it in concept, we don't think it's reasonable to expect HubSpot to 'guarantee' that knowledge base content set to anything other than public will be 'private' to our organization, specific users, contacts, or otherwise. By design, the knowledge base product content is intended for public consumption.
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We suspect the entire KB product was built around this public viewing model. Simply setting some KB pages to 'no index no follow' probably wouldn't be a strong enough incentive for any organization to trust that their 'private' content would remain private and not somehow end up in a search engine somewhere.
Furthermore, adding a tiered layer of view settings on top of the KB would cerainly need to be accompanied by stricter user publication controls over who was permitted to both originally set content private and who was permitted to change that setting (if ever).
Just a few thoughts for anyone who may even consider entering 'private', 'confidential', 'proprietary', or otherwise 'sensitive' information into ANY KB on any SaaS platform in today's climate where so-called confidential business commuications can be seen spralled all over the internet.
Hope that adds to the discussion for the product team.
Our use case scenario is where we would have an internal knowledge base where our Sales Team can access anytime/anywhere. This is particulary useful when they need info at their fingertips during a client meeting.
Another use case would be access to IT specific articles (network diagrams, API documentation, encryption docs and any other NDA binding documention).
Please make this happen since this is a feature that many of Hubspot competitors are offering.
Definitely want the features described here. AND definitely want strong assurance that the knowledge base articles targeted at our team are ONLY viewable by users. Thank-you @MFrankJohnson for very helpful advice here before I started trying to implement something not really supported.
All the other flexibility mentioned by all other commenters here would be very helpful.
Hubspot needs to develop a syndiation process to spread content from their KB to other specialized distribution points, with a filtering mechanism to control what content goes where. For instance a brochure site could contain useful answers commonly found on the buyer journey, while a customer portal could contain content that is more complex or not something we'd like our non-customers (or competitors) to see. From the standpoint of someone who pays for Hubspot CMS and Hubspot KB, the current state is an integration fail.
Hey Everyone!! My name is Dave and I work on the Service Hub product team -- we are about to release (into Beta) Restricted Article Access for the Knowledge Base. This feature will allow you to password protect your KB (by article) and the segmentation of who can view this articles will be 'list based' -- ex. I have Silver, Gold, Platinum customers - as long as these folks are accurately tagged in a list, they will only be able to view those articles that list has been provisioned to see).
If you are interested in the beta, feel free to ping me directly: dbarron@hubspot.com -- I'd expect a beta release in the next few weeks 🙂