In the Community, you can set access controls on you Topics to ensure each topic is viewed by the right audience. If you are looking to create specific Topics for certain audiences, for example, you want your customer admins to have a dedicated space to connect that end users won’t be engaging with. You also might want to have certain Topics visible to all audiences and others just for customers. At the Topic level, you can restrict access using Contact Segments to customize Community access.
Navigate to a Topic you would like to set access restrictions on and in the upper right corner, select the overflow menu and click “Access Settings.”
You will see a modal with three options:
Visible to all contacts - this is the default for all topics and means anyone with access to your Community can view this Topic and its associated Posts and Comments.
Visible to specific segments - when you select this option, you will be prompted to add in any existing Segments. This Topic and its associated Posts and Comments will only be visible to users included in these Segments.
Exclude specific segments - when you select this option, you will be prompted to add in any existing segments. This Topic and its associated Posts and Comments will be visible to any user EXCEPT users included in these segments.
Note: If a Contact is included in multiple Segments, their visibility will be based on the selected Segments in the modal.
If the Topic has been live in your Community before adding restrictions, users may have authored content in these Topics. If you select the options to restrict the Topic, you will see an option for how to handle Posts and Comments authored by users that will be restricted from this Topic as a result of this setting. This checkbox allows you to either delete all content from Contacts who are now restricted or leave them in the Community.
If the Posts and Comments remain, these users will only be able to view their authored content via direct email link (a Post Reply notification email, for example), but will not be able to access the Topic or post within the Community.
If you have your Community visibility open to users who have not signed in, users that are not logged in will only see Topics that are visible to all users. Once they sign in, they will be able to see any Topics that are visible to them based on your Topic settings.