Category Group Article Visibility Settings Examples

Review examples of category group settings for article visibility permissions.

Required Editions

Available in Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience. View supported editions.

There are three types of visibility:With custom data category visibility, you can only see the data categories permitted by their role, permission sets, or profile.

All Categories: All categories are visible
None: No categories are visible
Custom: Selected categories are visible

These examples are based on two sample category groups, Products and Geography. Although category group visibility settings are available with answers communities (questions) and Salesforce Knowledge (articles), the examples below apply to articles only. Answers communities support one category group and one data category per question.

Products Category Group

All Products
- Consumer Electronics
  - Cameras
  - Audio
  - Printers
- Enterprise Electronics
  - Routers
  - Switches
  - PEX
- Computers
  - Laptops
  - Desktops
  - PDAs

Geography Category Group

All Countries
- Americas
  - USA
  - Canada
  - Brazil
- Asia
  - China
  - Japan
  - India
- Europe
  - France
  - United Kingdom
  - Poland

Example 1: A Role Hierarchy

In this example, the Acme Electronics organization manufactures hardware and provides customer support for both consumers and enterprises. The Engineering department is organized by products. The Support department is organized geographically. Europe and the Americas are managed by corporate teams, but Asia is outsourced. Within the corporate and outsourced teams, there are subteams dedicated either to consumer or enterprise support.

The table below shows the categories visible to each role in the Acme Electronics organization, and states whether the visibility settings are inherited from the parent role or if they are custom visibility settings.

Acme Electronics Role Hierarchy				Visible Geographic Categories	Visible Product Categories
CEO				All Countries	All Products
	VP of Engineering			All Countries Inherit from CEO	All Products Inherit from CEO
		Consumer Engineering Team		All Countries Inherit from VP of Engineering	Consumer Electronics Custom
		Enterprise Engineering Team		All Countries Inherit from VP of Engineering	Enterprise Electronics Custom
		Computers Engineering Team		All Countries Inherit from VP of Engineering	Computers Custom
	VP of Support			All Countries Inherit from CEO	All Products Inherit from CEO
		VP of Corporate Support		Europe, America Custom	All Products Inherit from VP of Support
			Director of Corporate Consumer Support	Europe, America Inherit from VP of Corporate Support	Consumer Electronics, Computers Custom
			Director of Corporate Enterprise Support	Europe, America Inherit from VP of Corporate Support	Enterprise Electronics, Computers Custom
		Outsourced Support		Asia Custom	All Products Inherit from VP of Support
			Consumer Support Team	Asia Inherit from Outsourced Support	Consumer Electronics, Computers Custom
			Enterprise Support Team	Asia Inherit from Outsourced Support	Enterprise Electronics, Computers Custom

Example 2: Article Visibility

The table below is an in-depth example of how category visibility settings restrict what users see. This example has three sample users whose category settings are noted in parentheses.

Categories	When User 1's visibility is All countries/Computers, the category is:	When User 2's visibility is America/All products, the category is:	When User 3's visibility is France/None, the category is:
All countries/Laptop	VISIBLE	VISIBLE	NOT VISIBLE
Canada/Computers	VISIBLE	VISIBLE	NOT VISIBLE
USA/All products	VISIBLE	VISIBLE	NOT VISIBLE
Europe/Switches	NOT VISIBLE	NOT VISIBLE	NOT VISIBLE
Europe/No Categories	VISIBLE	NOT VISIBLE	VISIBLE

User 1: The user must be granted visibility in each category that classifies the article, or each category that classifies the article must be visible by default. In this example, User 1 can see Europe, because Europe is the child of All Countries, but he cannot see Switches, because Switches does not belong to Computers. That's why User 1 cannot see articles classified with Europe/Switches.

User 2: When a category is made visible to a user through custom settings or is made visible by default, its child and parent categories are implicitly included; therefore, User 2 can see articles categorized with All Countries because it is the parent category of America. He can also see Articles classified with USA because it is the child of America.

User 3: If a user has no access to the whole category group, he can only see articles that are not categorized in that group. User 3 cannot see the articles categorized with All countries/Laptop because he has no visibility in the category group that includes Laptop, but he can see articles categorized with Europe/No categories.