KB User's Guide - Settings Tab - Managing Group Relationships
Note
You must have full administrative permissions in your space to perform these steps. This means access to the Documents, Settings, and Users tabs.
Navigation
The Group Relationships page can be accessed in the KB Admin Tools under the Settings tab > Group Relations link.
The image below shows the Group Relationships screen for the Knowledgebase User's Guide group space.
Types of Relationships
There are three types of relationship—sharing documents, sharing internal KB access, and trusting activation.
Sharing Documents
Sharing relationships includes the automated sharing of external documents with the Unified KB, as well as the sharing of individual documents with one or more other group spaces.
Unified KB Sharing
In order to make your group's external documents indexed in the Unified KB, you can establish an automated sharing relationship. An institution's Unified site is an aggregate site in which KB subsites allow their external content to be seen.
The image below shows the UW-Madison Unified KB Site. To see which UW KB sites have chosen to share their external documents with UW Unified, click on the Knowledge Base Partners link in the upper right section of the page.
Individual Sharing
This page can also establish a sharing relationship with another group space. When a relationship is created, the external and internal sites of the selected KB space appear in the SiteAccess section of the document edit screen for your group space. From there, the appropriate sites can be selected to share the document.
The image below shows the SiteAccess field in the KB Admin Tools. It indicates that this document is shared with two other KB sites, allowing those sites to view it from their own KB instance. The Admin also has the option to share the document with nine additional KB sites, though it has not been shared with those sites.
Enabling a Sharing Relationship
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On the Group Relationships page, find the group you wish to share with.
- Note: The Unified KB (if one exists for your institution) will be first group listed, and the name will be in bold.
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Check the box in the green Share Docs column, then click Update.
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The following changes will take effect:
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For individual group sharing, the next time you open the document edit screen, you will see the site(s) of the group(s) you selected under the SiteAccess section of the page.
- For Unified KB sharing, all of your currently published external documents will immediately be available in the Unified KB of your institution.
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Sharing Internal KB Access
In some cases, your KB space may have a close affiliation with another KB space. It may then make sense to allow the internal users of the other site to automatically have access to your internal site, without having to add them to your users list separately.
Note: You will not know which exact users gain access to your internal site via this setting, as they will not appear under the Users tab for your space. It is recommended that you only use this setting if you are also an admin for the other group space, or if you are in regular contact with the group admin(s).
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On the Group Relationships page, find the group you wish to provision internal site access to.
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Check the box in the blue Share iKB column, then click Update.
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All users who currently have internal KB access in the group space you selected will now be able to log into your internal KB.
Trust Relationships
When a document is activated for the first time by its owning group after being shared with another group space, it is set to In Review for the non‑owning group. This gives the non‑owning group an opportunity to review the content independently and confirm that it is appropriate for their site(s) before activation. After this initial activation, subsequent updates are activated automatically, except when a major change occurs, which triggers the review process again.
When the Trust Activation setting is enabled, the non‑owning group agrees to bypass this review step. Any document shared with them and activated by a trusted group is automatically activated for their site—both for the initial share and for any major changes.
Trust Activation
To trust the activation of documents shared with you by another group space:
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On the Group Relationships page, find the group you wish to trust.
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Check the box in the red Trust Activation column, then click Update.
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All future documents that are shared with you by that group will be automatically activated when the owning group activates them.
Trusted By
The "Trusted By" column will display a Yes for groups that are currently trusting the activation of docs your group space shares with them.