Knowledge base audiences: show readers the articles meant for them

Audiences say who a knowledge base article is for, such as Students, Parents or Staff. Once audiences are set up, readers of your help center can pick theirs and see only the articles meant for them, instead of browsing everything.

Agents must have a manager (or higher) role to manage audiences.

How audiences work

  • You can create up to 10 audiences. Each name can be up to 30 characters.
  • An article can have one audience, several, or none. An article with no audience is for everyone and shows for every audience.
  • Audiences are a filter to help readers find articles, not a permission. Anyone who can open your knowledge base can still open any public article, for example from a shared link or a search engine.
  • Nothing changes on the help center until you turn on the audience filter (see below), so you can set audiences up and tag your articles first.

Create audiences

  1. Click the waffle icon on the upper right
  2. Select Knowledge base solutions
  3. Select Audiences in the left menu, between Topics management and Import
  4. Click add audience, enter a name (for example Students), and save
  5. Repeat for each audience

The list shows how many public and staff-only articles each audience has. Use the arrows to change the order: the help center shows audiences in this order. You can also rename or delete an audience from its row. Deleting an audience does not delete any article: articles left with no audience show for everyone.

The Audiences page with the Show audience filter on help center switch at the top and a table of audiences with their public and staff-only article counts.

Give articles an audience

One article at a time: open the article in Knowledge base solutions. Next to Audience, under the article's topics, click the cog, tick the audiences the article is for, and click the check mark to save. Leave everything unticked to keep the article for everyone.

A knowledge base article with its Audience popover open, Students and Staff ticked, and the hint None ticked: for everyone.

All articles in a topic at once: open a topic's article list and click Add an audience to all articles in this topic, then pick the audience and confirm. Articles keep the audiences they already had, and staff-only and unpublished articles in the topic are included.

A topic's article list with the Add an audience to all articles in this topic menu open, offering Students, Parents and Staff.

The Knowledge base solutions article list has an audience column and an Assigned audience filter, including Everyone (no audience), so you can find articles that still need one.

Show the audience filter on the help center

When your articles have their audiences, turn the filter on:

  1. Go to the Audiences page
  2. Turn on Show audience filter on help center

Readers now see Show articles for: with All and your audiences, under the search box on the help center home page and above the results on topic and search pages. On a phone it is a dropdown with an Apply button.

When a reader picks an audience, the help center shows the articles for that audience plus the articles for everyone. Topics with nothing for that audience are hidden, and a note offers to show all articles. Each article page lists its audiences under For:.

The help center home page with the Show articles for switcher under the search box, offering All and each audience.

The filter is not shown in the help center widget or in the staff knowledge base.

Good to know

  • Staff-only articles never appear on the public help center, whatever their audience.
  • The knowledge base CSV export has an Audiences column. Audiences cannot be imported from a CSV yet.
  • Changes to audiences, and turning the filter on or off, are recorded in the event log.