Creating user segments

Tags, groups, and organizations are not available on Support Essential. To create user segments, you must have Support Team, Professional, or Enterprise and Guide Professional or Enterprise. If you have Gather Professional, you need Support Team, Professional, or Enterprise and any Guide plan.

A user segment is a collection of end-users and/or agents, defined by a specific set of attributes, used to determine access to Help Center content.

User segments are the building blocks for user permissions. You apply user segments to a knowledge base article or a topic in your community to define viewing access. And you use user segments to build management permissions that you apply to knowledge base articles to define editing and publishing permissions.

There are two built-in user segments by default:

• Signed-in users includes users who are signed-in to your Help Center
• Agents and managers includes all agents and Guide managers

You can create custom user segments to further refine those groups of users as follows:

• Signed-in users (internal and external), based on tags, organizations, or both created in Zendesk Support
• Staff (internal), based on tags, groups, or both created in Zendesk Support

Guide Managers have access to all content, regardless of any user segments they belong to. You must be a Guide Manager to create user segments.

Understanding access restrictions for user segments

Every user segment starts with a base user type of signed-in users or staff (agents and managers). From there, you can create a subset of users based on tags, organizations, and groups, as follows:

• Signed-in users can be restricted by tags, organizations, or both. Tags must be on the user or an organization they belong to.

  When you create a user segment based on tags for signed-in users, you can require that all specified tags match for the agent to be included and/or you can require that at least one of the specified tags match for the user to be included. For organizations, the user must belong to at least one of the specified organizations.

  Signed-in agents must have any required tags, but organization is ignored for agents; agents do not have to belong to any of the specified organizations to be included in the user segment.

• Staff (agents and managers) can be restricted by tags, groups, or both.

  When you create a user segment based tags for staff, you can require that all specified tags match for the agent to be included and/or you can require that at least one of the specified tags match for the agent to be included. For groups, the agent must belong to at least one of the any specified groups.

  Guide Managers have access to all content, regardless of the user segments they belong to.

You can define user segments as shown in the following table.

User role	Restrict by tags (users need all tags)	Restrict by tags (users need any of the tags	Restrict by organizations (users need at least one org)	Restrict by groups (users need at least one group)
Signed-in users	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Staff	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Creating user segments

There are two access types for user segments: signed-in users and staff.

You can create custom user segments to further refine those groups of users as follows:

• Signed-in users (internal and external), based on tags, organizations, or both created in Zendesk Support
• Staff (internal), based on tags, groups, or both created in Zendesk Support

You can create as many as 200 user segments per account. If you have multiple brands in your account, your user segments are shared across all brands.

Guide Managers have access to all content, regardless of any user segments they belong to.

To create a user segment

1. In Guide, click the User permissions icon () in the sidebar.

2. On the User Segments page, click Add new.

   If you receive an error message, then you have reached your maximum number of 200 user segments. You can delete some user segments if you want to continue.

3. Enter a Name for this user segment.

4. Select a User type as the base of your user segment.

   • Signed-in users include internal and external users who create an account and sign in to your Help Center.
   • Staff are internal users only, including agents and Guide managers.

   

5. Click Next.

6. Click Add tag, then click the drop-down menu to select a tag.

   • If you add tags under Users and organizations matching all of these tags, all of the tags must be on the user or org to be included in the user segment.
   • If you add tags under Users and organizations matching any of these tags, one or mor of the tags must be on the user or org to be included in the user segment.

   You can add up to 50 tags in Users and organizations matching all of these tags and up to 50 tags in Users and organizations matching any of these tags.

   You can search or scroll to find tags. Note that not all available tags appear in the list. You can choose any tag that is applied to existing users or organizations. The tags can be on the user profile or, for end-users, inherited through an organization.

   A list of matching users appears below. Any agents with the tag will belong to the user segment, but agents do not appear in the matching list.

   You must have user tags enabled to create a user segment based on tags (see Enabling user and organization tagging).

7. If you want to add multiple tags, click Add tag again, then select a tag.

8. You can further refine your user segment by doing one of the following:

   • For signed-in users, click Add organization if you want to restrict by org, then click the drop-down and select an org.
   • For staff members, click Add group if you want to restrict by group, then click the drop-down and select a group.

   The user must belong to at least one of the organizations or groups to be included in the user segment. The exception is that organization is ignored for signed-in agents. Agents do not need to belong to any of the organizations to be included in the user segment.

   The list of matching users updates, but, remember, agents do not appear in the matching list.

9. Click Save.

   You can apply user segments to:

   • Set view permissions on knowledge base articles
   • Create management permissions to define agent editing and publishing rights
   • Set view access for community topics