Help center · Access guide

Give each customer the right answers

Show guidance to the people it applies to. Use basic audiences for visitors and signed-in customers, or create groups from verified traits such as plan and role.

1. Connect verified customer sign-in

An owner or admin sets up access under Channels → your channel → Help Center. Your application’s developer connects the customer identity once. For visitor-only content, you can choose Visitors without building a sign-in flow.

Open the channel’s Live Chat tab. Connect a website if the channel does not have one, then find Secure visitor identity.
Choose Optional verification or Require proof to identify, select Generate signing secret, and store it only on your backend. If a secret is already configured, choose Optional — verify when JWT is present or Required for identify and attributes under Verification mode. Require proof to identify still permits anonymous chat; the help-center audience controls content access.
After your app authenticates a customer, your server signs a short-lived identity token (JWT) containing user_id, email, iat, exp, and trusted traits. Read plan and role from your own database. Unsigned browser attributes and contact fields cannot grant access.
Pass the JWT to the widget, and connect a help-center sign-in action for people opening hosted pages or your custom domain. Use the developer walkthrough linked below for the exact code.

Generate and send a verified identity

For the example below, the signed traits are:

JSON · traits inside the signed JWT

{"plan":"pro","role":"admin"}

2. Create a Pro customers audience

Return to Help Center. In Audiences, select New audience (the plus button), or Create an audience if this is your first group.
Enter Pro customers as the Name. Leave Match set to All rules.
For Trait, enter plan. Set Condition to is one of and Value type to Text.
Enter pro and business on separate lines in Values · one per line. Select Save audience.
To create an Admins group, repeat with Trait role, Condition is, Value type Text, and Value admin.

How rules match: All rules requires every condition in this audience; Any rule requires at least one. You can add up to 10 rules. All inherited audiences must still match, even if a particular audience uses Any rule.

Text is case-sensitive. The number 5 differs from the text “5”; choose Number for comparisons such as is at least. Missing traits never satisfy comparisons, including is not. Has a value excludes null; Has no value matches missing or null. Trait keys start with a letter and use letters, numbers, or underscores, up to 64 characters; reserved identity keys such as email are not traits.

3. Apply the audience where you need it

One article

Open the article, set Who can read this? to Verified customers, then choose Pro customers under Customer audience. Select Publish for a new article or Save changes for a live one. If basic access is inherited, it is read-only; you can still choose an additional customer audience.

A whole category

Select the pencil beside the category under Categories. Choose Verified customers and a Customer audience, then Save. Every article in that category must satisfy this restriction as well as its own.

A private help center

In Help center access, choose Verified customers. Leave Customer audience as All verified customers, or choose Pro customers to restrict the entire center to that group.
Enter your application’s login page as the Customer sign-in URL, for example https://app.example.com/login. This is your app’s login page, not Sonny’s staff sign-in.
After login, your app must send the customer to the help-center authentication endpoint with a fresh signed JWT. The login URL alone does not complete this connection.
Select Save access. Keep the center Live so authorized customers can open it.

Connect hosted and custom-domain sign-in

Restrictions add together. If the help center requires Pro customers and a category requires Admins, its articles require both. Everyone on an article does not override the category. Visitors and verified customers are mutually exclusive basic audiences.

4. Preview, then check a real customer session

At the top of Help Center, change View as to Visitor, Verified customer, or Customer with traits….
For Customer with traits…, enter the sample JSON above. Dimmed rows are hidden from that reader; the count includes publication status and all inherited restrictions. All articles returns to the full authoring list.
Use the table below to test a Pro-only help center containing an Admin-only category. Change the sample plan and role to check each result.
Open a real signed-out browser, then sign in with each test customer. Check browsing, search, a direct article URL, and the widget’s Help tab. Previewing traits does not log you in or change a customer’s access.

Expected access for a Pro-only center and Admin-only category
Reader	Help center	Admin category article
Signed-out visitor	Sign-in page	Hidden
Pro customer, admin	Can read	Can read
Pro customer, member	Can read	Hidden
Free customer, admin	Access message	Hidden

Denied articles are omitted from results and direct URLs return not found. A private help center shows a branded sign-in or access message instead of its content. Its sitemap is empty and indexing is disallowed; visitor-only articles are also excluded from public sitemaps. AI answers and copilot retrieval use the same rules for the conversation’s verified customer identity.

Uploaded image URLs are public. Restricting an article does not protect its images if someone already has the image URL.

Change or remove an audience

Edit an audience using its pencil button and select Save audience. Rule changes apply on the next request. Updated customer traits require a new JWT or help-center sign-in; existing signed reader sessions retain their traits until expiry.

To remove a named restriction from one place, select All verified customers (or Everyone in the inherited audience) under Customer audience, then save. To make that content public, also choose Everyone under Who can read this? and check that its parents permit public access.

The audience’s delete button shows how many articles, categories, and help centers use it. Deleting removes that group’s trait rules; linked content stays verified-only and retains any other inherited restrictions. Customers who previously failed the deleted rule may now gain access. Review those assignments before confirming.

Troubleshoot access

A verified customer sees the sign-in page: Check the verification mode on this channel’s Live Chat tab, the JWT expiry, the signing secret, and the help-center sign-in URL. Staff dashboard sign-in is separate from customer sign-in.
The customer is signed in but cannot read an answer: Check every inherited audience and the exact signed trait names, types, and values. A Pro customer can still fail a category’s Admin rule.
Who can read this? is disabled: The help center or category sets the basic audience. Edit that parent to change it; use Customer audience to narrow verified access further.
No matching readers appears: Visitor-only and verified-only restrictions conflict. Use inherited access when offered, or correct the help-center/category settings first.
A changed plan has not changed access yet: Mint a new JWT with the updated traits and identify again in the widget. For hosted or custom-domain pages, complete help-center sign-in again. Existing cookies keep their signed traits until expiry.
An article is missing from search or the widget: Check that it is published, the center is Live, Search is enabled for search results, and the reader matches all restrictions. An empty Help tab is hidden.