Deliver customer-specific Knowledge Base using User Groups

  • Scenario
  • Problem
  • Solution
  • Output

Scenario

An organization in the industrial automation industry manufactures customized systems for sectors such as automotive assembly, pharmaceutical packaging, and semiconductor manufacturing.

Every customer purchases a different combination of machines and software integrations, requiring a specific set of documentation for each deployment.

To help customers resolve issues independently, the company hosts knowledge base articles, user manuals, and implementation videos on its Help Center. Customers can also submit and track support tickets through the ticketing system.

The knowledge base contains installation guides, procedures, maintenance manuals, software integration instructions, warranty information, and safety documentation for each product line.

Problem

Initially, the organization maintained documentation for all product lines in a single help center. The knowledge base was organized under common category with separate categories for each product line. For example:

Category:

  • Automotive Assembly Systems
  • Pharmaceutical Packaging Systems
  • Semiconductor Manufacturing Systems

Although the articles were organized into separate categories, every customer could access the entire knowledge base regardless of the products they purchased.

As the knowledge base grew, customers found it difficult to identify the documentation relevant to their systems. For example, a search for "emergency stop reset" returned articles from multiple product lines because similar maintenance tasks existed across products. Customers had to read through each article to determine which procedure applied to their systems.

The organization wanted customers to see only the documentation relevant to their purchased products, without maintaining separate help centers for each product line.

Solution

To restrict customers from accessing unrelated documentation, the organization created separate user groups for each product line and associated each knowledge base with its corresponding group.
 

knowledge-base-category-with-user-groups

This ensured that customers who purchased automotive assembly systems could view only the documentation relevant to the Assembly Automation Suite.

Configuration:

Below are the configuration processes they used:

To set up user groups in the help center

  1. Navigate to Setup > Channels > Help Center.
  2. In the Help Center, click User Groups from the left panel.
  3. Click Add Group.
  4. Upload a Display picture.
  5. Enter the Group name as Assembly Automation Suite and the Description as Documentation for automotive assembly automation systems.
  6. Click Save.
  7. Click Add Users, select Mario, Edwin, and Jonathan, and click Add.

Repeat the same steps to create Pharmaceutical Packaging Suite and Semiconductor Manufacturing Suite user groups.

To add categories and associate user groups in the knowledge base

  1. Navigate to Knowledge Base module.
  2. Click Manage KB > Organize categories.
  3. Click Create Category.

  4. Select as Display picture.

  5. Enter Automotive Assembly Systems as category name and "Documentation for installing, configuring, operating, maintaining, and troubleshooting automotive assembly equipment and production line systems" as description.
  6. Choose Documentation as Primary Department.
  7. Select Groups as Visibility.
  8. Click +Add and select Assembly Automation Suite under Groups.
  9. Click Add.
  10. Click Add again to save the entire configuration.

Repeat the same steps to create Pharmaceutical Documentation, and Semiconductor Documentation as knowledge base categories.

From the Help Center, the Assembly Automation Suite user group could access only the articles available under the Automotive Assembly Systems category. Articles from the Pharmaceutical Packaging Systems and Semiconductor Manufacturing Systems categories remained hidden, ensuring users saw only content relevant to their product line.

This visibility setting also ensured that when customers in the Assembly Automation Suite user group searched the Help Center, search results included only articles from the Automotive Assembly Systems category, preventing unrelated content from appearing.

Category and user groups

Output

This significantly reduced the time customers spent searching for the right information and prevented confusion. Self-service adoption increased because customers could easily solve their issues without reaching out to the support teams for every issue.

As a result, the ticket load reduced for the support team. By creating User Groups and setting group-based article visibility, customers were able to view and access only to the documentation relevant to their products.

Also Read - Adding and Managing User Groups

  • EditionExpress and above
  • Key FeaturesKnowledge Base and User Groups in Help Center
  • Profile PermissionAdmins and users with the Manage KB and Support Channel > Help Center permissions.