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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
- Consumer Electronics
Geography Category Group
- All Countries
- Americas
- USA
- Canada
- Brazil
- Asia
- China
- Japan
- India
- Europe
- France
- United Kingdom
- Poland
- Americas
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.
