Knowledge Base

Knowledge Base Permissions

The four Knowledge Base permissions, the Manage knowledge base role template, and exactly which controls each one unlocks.

Reading is open to everyone

Every member of your organization can:

  • See Knowledge Base in the left navigation.
  • Browse and search the Library.
  • Read any published article, internal or customer-facing.

There is no permission to grant for this and no way to switch it off. The Knowledge Base is a shared reference — a runbook nobody can find is not doing its job.

Everything below is about writing, not reading.

The four permissions

PermissionWhat it lets you do
Create knowledge-base articlesCreate articles and drafts.
Edit knowledge-base articles you authoredEdit articles you created. Requires Create.
Edit any member's knowledge-base articlesEdit anyone's articles. An admin override that implies the two above.
Publish knowledge-base articlesPublish, unpublish, and archive articles; edit slugs and audience; manage the category tree. Requires Create.

Holding any of the four gets you into the Manage articles surface and the article editor. Holding none means you read the Library and nothing more.

Publish is broader than it sounds

Publish knowledge-base articles is the curation permission, not just the publish button. It covers:

  • Publish, unpublish, archive, unarchive
  • Changing an article's URL slug
  • Setting visibility and the company audience
  • The whole category tree — creating, renaming, re-parenting, reordering, deleting, and setting category audiences
  • Reordering articles within a category
  • Seeing other members' drafts

There are no separate category permissions. If you want someone curating your structure, this is the permission to give them.

The Manage knowledge base role template

DevStride ships a template that bundles the usual authoring set:

Manage knowledge base — Create, edit, publish, and organize knowledge-base articles and categories.

It grants Create, Edit your own, and Publish. This is the right choice for most people who write documentation.

It deliberately excludes Edit any member's knowledge-base articles. Publish already covers the moderation you normally need — you can unpublish or archive anything that should not be live — without also handing over the ability to silently rewrite a colleague's words. Grant that one explicitly, per role, when someone genuinely needs it.

Which controls each permission unlocks

ControlRequires
Knowledge Base nav link, Library, article readerNothing
Manage articles buttonAny of the four
New ArticleCreate
Title, body, category, visibility editing(Author and Edit your own) or Edit any member's
Publish / Unpublish / Archive / UnarchivePublish
Audience panel — Visibility and CompaniesPublish, plus edit rights on that article
Change URLPublish
Category +, menu, drag-reorderingPublish
Dragging articles to reorderPublish
Filing an article into a categoryEdit rights on that article
Seeing other members' draftsPublish, or Edit any member's

Archived articles are read-only for everyone regardless of permission. Only Unarchive is offered.

Choosing a setup

A small team where everyone documents. Give the Manage knowledge base template to everyone who writes. Simple, and the category tree stays tidy because everyone can fix it.

A larger team with editorial control. Give most writers Create plus Edit your own. Give a smaller group Publish as well. Writers draft freely; the publishers decide what goes live, own the structure, and control what customers see.

Customer-facing content with a review step. Same as above, and lean on the fact that unarchiving always returns an article to draft — retired content can never go live again without someone deliberately republishing it.

What permissions do not do

They are not per-category. Permissions apply across the whole Knowledge Base. You cannot let one team edit only the Product A section — see Overview for what version 1 leaves out.

A category's audience is not a permission. Marking a category Internal controls who can read it on the customer portal. It has no effect on who can edit it, and every member still sees it in the Library.