Private Categories and Sections
With private categories, you can control user access to specific areas in your community. For example, you can create private spaces accessible only to employees or specific clients. This article explains how to configure and manage access to private categories.
Understanding Categories and Sections
Sections are organizational containers that help you structure your community content:
- Sections can contain multiple categories
- Sections can be nested within other sections
- Categories can be moved between sections to organize your community layout
For example, you might create a "Product Support" section containing categories like "Troubleshooting," "Feature Requests," and "Known Issues."
Configuring Private Categories
To make a category private:
- Go to Admin > Categories
- Select the category
- Expand the Access section
- Select Specific members
- Click Save
Understanding Private Sections
Sections inherit access settings from their categories:
- When all categories within a section are private, the section automatically becomes private
- The section's visibility adjusts automatically as you modify category permissions
- For nested sections, privacy settings flow through the hierarchy
Granting Access to Private Categories
There are three ways to grant users access to private categories:
1. Add Multiple Users by Email
- Go to Category Settings > Users
- Click Add
- Paste a list of user email addresses
- Click Save
2. Add Individual Users
- Navigate to Admin > Users
- Locate the specific user
- Expand the Category Access section
- Click Add
- Select the categories to assign
- Click Save
3. Use Groups for Simplified Management
For managing access at scale, groups offer a more efficient solution. With groups, you can:
- Grant access to multiple categories at once
- Manage permissions by email domain
- Upload user lists in bulk
For detailed instructions on group management, see: Using Groups to Manage Category Access
4 replies
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Forumbee Support is there a way to invite users to a private category via a link instead of inviting through forumbee? I'd like to share a link w/ our users instead of adding their email addresses in forumbee.
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Hi Erie , it is possible to grant user access to private categories without sending them an invite email from Forumbee.
First, you need to configure user access:
- If they are not already in your user list, they need to be added as users by going to Add Users and entering their email addresses. If you don't want the email invitation to go out, just don't check the box to send the email invitation.
- After they are added as users, expand the user details and check the private categories to which you would like to grant access.
How users will access the private category link:
- After you have shared the private category link with them, users will be prompted to log in to see it. If they haven't signed up already, they will need to click the 'Sign Up' link and sign up using the same email address as the one you used to grant access.
Let me know if that helps? Thank you!
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Forumbee Support Thank you. So it is not possible for me to invite people using only a link? It requires their email address so they are added as users/given access to the category? We're running into an issue where we don't have the end users information and there are too many of them to manually add to forumbee. We want to provide a link to their regional managers who will be sending the link out to whoever needs access.
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Erie B Unfortunately, it isn't possible to invite people to a private community or a private category using only a link.
If you are looking to give access to private categories, one option might be to use the 'Access code' setting for the category:
You can give out a link to the category with the access code, and users with the code can enter the category. They only need to enter the code once, and from then on it remembers it for them.
Keep in mind that with this setting, all users in the community will see the category name in the list with a padlock icon next to it. If they click the category name, they'll see the access code prompt.
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