Who can see a knowledge base

Access shows who reaches this knowledge base and which documents they get, and previews what an audience really retrieves. Changes happen on Documents and in Access Control.

What you'll need

• The Knowledge Base module visible in your left-hand navigation.
• These permissions: Knowledge Base · Kb — VIEW, Knowledge Base · Document — UPDATE.
• Read access to the roles, departments and groups directory — without it this page is replaced by Access Forbidden.

If Knowledge Base isn't in your navigation, your role doesn't have visibility for it — ask a workspace administrator, or see Permissions and module visibility.

Steps

1. Open the knowledge base, then select Access in its section navigation.

2. Select How access works. Layer 1 · KB access gates the whole knowledge base by role; Layer 2 · Document visibility is set per document, then intersected with the viewer’s role, department and people group at retrieval. Both must pass; Layer 2 only narrows.

3. Under Layer 2 · Document visibility, Roles in use, Departments and People groups list every tag in use. Unrestricted is the only value that widens reach.

4. Choose a Role, Department and Group, then select Preview access. The result — This audience can retrieve 12 of 40 documents. — marks each document Reachable or Not reachable with a reason, over the first 200 documents.

5. Layer 2 is edited on Documents: tick rows and select Reassign access, or open a document and select Edit beside its Access. A reassign replaces the tier and all three dimensions, and opens blank for a multi-row selection — saving untouched strips existing tags.

What success looks like

• The preview reports a count for your audience, with a reason per row.
• A reassign confirms with Access reassigned for 3 document(s).
• The document’s access summary reads Public — reachable by everyone, or Internal with your tags.

If something goes wrong

Symptom	Likely cause	What to do
Access Forbidden replaces the page.	It also reads the roles, departments and groups directory.	Ask an administrator for those read permissions.
KB-scoped role grants are not available yet.	Neither that table nor access-change history is live in this build.	Manage grants in Access Control.
The preview is stamped computed locally or Layer-1 denied.	The server preview failed, or the audience fails Layer 1.	Trust a local result loosely; for Layer-1 denied, grant a role first.
Nobody can retrieve a document.	It is internal with no role, department or group tagged.	Reassign it with a tag, Unrestricted / all internal users, or Public.

Next

• Roles, Departments and Groups — the Layer-2 dimensions; only a role carries permissions.
• Uploading documents — where access is first set.