ABAC: How to restrict a page by audience

Overview 

Audience Based Access Control (ABAC) provides the flexibility to enable highly target content, communications and access controls. This article provides an overview on how to create a page restricted to a specific audience. This capability allows content creators to control content visibility by assigning relevant audiences and is often referred to as “having private pages on a site.” 

Who is this for: App managers, site owners, site managers, site content managers

Jump to a section: 

• Step 1: Identify your site 
• Step 2: Creating a page and restricting audience
• Deep dive: Selecting your audience 
• Visibility of restricted content
• Manage a restricted page
• Searching a page

Page definition and usage

Pages are one of the three types of site content, along with events and albums. Pages are pieces of content that populate your users’ home and site feeds. They can contain multimedia information including files and images. Pages are the most common form of communication on sites.

Audience definition and usage

Audiences are customizable groups of users based on attributes like role, location, or specific individuals. They can then be used to manage who has access to specific features and content. 

What does it mean to restrict a page? 

Restricting a page will ensure that only the selected audiences within a site have access to view that specific page. This means you can have pages that are visible to everyone within your site, or you can have pages visible to specific people/audiences within your site. 

If a page is not restricted, it is accessible by the default audience in the site as always:

• Public site: Everyone who can access the site can see the page
• Private site: Everyone who is a member of the site can see the page

Who can restrict a page? Any user who can create content will be able to restrict the access of a page:  

• App managers, Site owner, Site managers, Site content managers 
• Standard users (if content submission enabled) 
• Feature owner/Admin/Manager of Manage site Access Control Group (if enabled) 

Step 1: Identify your site

As always, pages are created within sites. Before you create your page, determine which site the page will be added to. Your site’s target audience will determine the max scope on who can see your content. 

For example, if I have a public site for everyone in the organization, then by default when I create a page, everyone in the organization will see my page.

1. Check out this article for creating a site and defining visibility and site subscription. 

Step 2: Creating a page and restricting your audience 

To create a page:

1. Click the + Create button at the bottom left of your screen. 
2. Click Page.
3. Select the site you would like to publish your page to.
4. Fill out the necessary fields:
   1. Title 
   2. Content body 
   3. Page category 
   4. Topics
   5. Upload files (if applicable)  
5. Toggle on the option to Restrict who can see this page.
   1. Select whether you want to restrict files. Files can be restricted even if the page
6. Select your audience for the page.
7. Click Publish. 

Deep dive: Selecting your audience for a page

Available audiences while restricting a page depends on the type of the site:

• Content on a public site: Site visibility and their hierarchy and site’s system audiences will be available in the audience picker.
• Content on a private site:  Only the site’s default system audiences will be available in the audience picker.

Select an audience by following the below steps: 

1. Under the Select audience section, click Browse.
2. If you would like for this page to be visible to a selected audience:
   1. Browse through the available audiences.
   2. Select your preferred audience. 
3. If you would like for this page to be visible to a sub-audience:
   1. Click on the + icon (Add sub-audience) in front of any audience.
   2. Enter the audience details.
   3. Click on Create.
   4. Select the newly created sub-audience.
4. Once your audience selections are made, click Done.
5. If you are not ready to publish this page just yet, click Save to save it as a draft.
   1. To access this draft at a later time: 
      1. Click the rocketship icon on your side navigation bar, titled Manage features.
      2. Click Content.
      3. Your drafted page will appear, and will be available to edit, delete, or publish.

Best practices and recommendations: 

• When creating a page:
  • Use descriptive page titles that accurately reflect the content and purpose of the page.
• Selecting your audience:
  • When choosing your audience, you can create a more targeted sub-audience by clicking the + button. This allows you to add a group or rule to define a smaller segment of your existing audience. Within the sub-audience selection, you can view the list of users included in that audience by clicking on the number indicating its size.
• After audience selection:
  • Once you have made your audience selection, you can verify which users will have access to the page. Click the three dots to the right of the user images to double-check the list of individuals with access.
• When publishing your page:
  • Consider creating a review process for restricted pages to ensure content accuracy and audience relevance before publishing.

Visibility of the restricted content

Content will continue to reside within sites. However, content can now be restricted to a specific audience, making it visible only to that audience, with certain exceptions as follows:

• Restricted content is always visible to the author in manage content screens and search results even if author is not part of the target audience of the content
• Restricted content is always visible to the users with manage sites permission i.e. Site managers, Site owners, Site content managers or Feature owner/Admin/Manager of Manage site ACG

Managing a restricted page

Content that has restricted access will now be marked with a lock icon within the Manage content screens (accessible via Manage > Content or Manage site > Content). This update helps managers easily identify restricted content.

Clicking on the lock icon displays what audience is that page is restricted to.

View all the restricted content in that site by using the ‘Restricted’ filter on Manage content screen.

Page notifications

If a page is restricted, notifications will be sent only to users who are a part of the restricted audience. 

Searching a restricted page

Only users in the restricted audience would be able to search and find the restricted page.

Related articles: 

• ABAC: Creating a site
• Content creation/What are pages?