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 creating 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.
3. Access Control Options: In the Access Control section, you can select one of the following options:
4. Select one of the following Access Control options:
(Public for everyone naming convention will soon be changing simply to Public)
Public: content is discoverable in the catalog and and accessible to everyone unless the channel it's in has restricted access set, overriding the Public access setting in the content item.
Note that if both the Channel and the content item in the parent channel are set to Public, the content item is open to everyone, unhidden and unrestricted.
Hidden: The content is only visible in the catalog to users with elevated access (organizers, admins, and content owners), regular users who have an assignment or enrollment. Caveat with Regular users with no assignment or enrollment, although hidden, the content item can still be accessible if they have a direct URL link. This can occur if a user with access provides a direct link - rare but noteworthy.
Hidden and Restricted, Except for the Following Groups: The content is only visible per the same hidden limitations mentioned in the Hidden point above.
The difference is access is denied to the content item unless users are in a group permitting access. This option requires you to specify the groups with access to the content in the "Selected Groups" field.
Content item access control overrides channels access control, the content item's restrictions always wins between the two.
5. Save your changes.
Channel Content restrictions
Channel Public: The channel and its included content are only discoverable in the catalog and accessible to everyone unless the channel content has restricted access set, overriding the Public access setting in the content item. If both the channel and the content item in the parent channel are set to Public, then the channel and content item is not hidden or restricted.
Note the helptext below the access control component warns you if your channel has access restrictions that limit the visibility of your content. To share content despite those restrictions select Public instead.
Channel Hidden: The channel and its content items are not visible and not accessible to regular users even if they have a direct URL link. Organizers and admins will have hidden channel access, but content owners with content item access in the hidden channel will not be able to access the channel.
Channel Hidden and Restricted, Except for the Following Groups: The channel and its content items are not visible and not accessible to regular users even if they have a direct URL link. Users must be in a group allowing access to channel to view the channel and engage in content. Organizers and admins will have hidden channel access, but content owners with content item access will not be able to access the channel if not in the correct group set in the channel.
This option requires you to specify the groups with access to the content in the "Selected Groups" field. This will override the channels access control setting.
Channel vs Content Access Settings - what wins?
As an example, if a channel is restricted to the Sales group, but a content item within that channel is specifically set to allow access only to the HR team, the content item's access settings will take precedence. In this scenario, only the HR team can access the content, not Sales.
Conversely, if a content item is set to public access but resides within a channel restricted to the HR and Engineering groups, the channel's restrictions will prevail. The outcome, only HR and Engineering groups can access the content, preventing accidental exposure of confidential information.
In summary:
If the content item has specific access controls set, those settings override the channel's restrictions.
If the content item has no specific access settings, the channel's access control policies determine who can view the content.
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 regular users, thus preventing clutter with content that may not be relevant to them.