Two Forms of Access Control

As an admin or content owner, you may want to limit access to some of your content to specific groups or individuals. There are two ways to do this:

Limit Content to Certain Groups

A robust catalog offers content that targets specific groups of people, like manager training tracks that do not apply to individual contributors or events for engineers that do not apply to salespeople. You can use groups to control access to content. Learn more about using groups for access control.

Hide Content

You can designate content items as hidden, which makes them visible in the content catalog only to users with elevated access (admins and site owners). These users see hidden content in the catalog with a crossed-eye icon indicating it is not public. You can share the URL for hidden content with anyone in your organization, allowing them to access and engage with it directly. However, this approach is sometimes referred to as "security by obscurity" because while it hides the content from casual view, it does not provide robust security since anyone with the link can access the content.

Solution

To set access control on content:

Go to the Content Item: Navigate to the specific content item you want to manage.

2. Open the context menu (button with three dots) and select Edit.

Content item details open - this is the same view you see when creating new content, so you can set access control during the creation process as well.

4. Access Control Options: In the Access Control section, you can select one of the following options:

a. Public for Everyone: The content is discoverable and accessible to anyone with access to your PlusPlus instance.

b. Hidden: The content is only visible in the catalog to users with elevated access (admins and site owners) and to regular users who have an assignment or enrollment. Regular users who do not see hidden content can still access it if they have the URL link, which provides unrestricted access.

c. Hidden and Restricted, Except for the Following Groups: The content is only visible in the catalog to users with elevated access and the specified groups. All users can open it with the direct URL, but only assigned group members and owners can engage with it. This option requires you to specify the groups with access to the content in the "Selected Groups" field.

5. Save your changes.

Go Deeper: Hiding Content vs. Using Groups

Hiding Content: This method is ideal for content that is still being developed or for one-off content items that you want to share via a URL with a select few people. Hidden content is only visible to users with elevated access in the catalog. However, keep in mind that this approach relies on "security by obscurity," as it does not prevent anyone with the link from accessing the content.
Using Groups: Groups provide a long-term, sustainable solution for access control, making content items visible and accessible only to certain groups of people within your organization.

Did you know? You can set up automated workflows to open access to content based on the completion of other content. For example, if you have a course called "Python 101" and an advanced course called "Advanced Python" that is restricted to a group called "Python 101 Complete," you can create a workflow that automatically adds users to the "Python 101 Complete" group upon completing "Python 101." This automation will then ungate or open access to the "Advanced Python" class for those users.

Tracks and Hidden Content

You can include hidden content as part of a track, allowing regular users to consume it within the track. Inline track items are preferable because they do not appear in the catalog for users with elevated access, thus preventing clutter with content that may not be relevant to them.