Objective
This article provides an overview of Content Governance within the Outreach platform, allowing admins to manage who can engage certain types of content in your instance by building and configuring permissions within content Collections.
Applies To
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Content Governance
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Outreach Admins
Overview
Introduction
Outreach's Content Governance capability allows organizations to restrict access to Sequences, Templates, and Snippets only to users that should be able to see them by placing them into a Collection, and then associating that Collection with a Team of users.
One Team can be associated with multiple Collections, and one Collection can be assigned to multiple Teams.
Content Governance ensures that users always have the most relevant content at their fingertips by enforcing that only Team members can access the content inside associated Collections, while Users can use Content Governance to share their content with specific groups of users or with the entire organization.
- Collections group content (Sequences, Templates, Snippets), while Teams group users. Multiple Teams can be associated with multiple Collections.
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Users, admins, and content managers in your organization will be able to create these access control boundaries around content (through Content Collections) and allow access only to specific groups of users (Teams)
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End users will now only have the most relevant content inside their content experiences instead of having to make sense of all content shared with the entire organization
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Content Governance will be an additional access control capability that can be used in conjunction with the existing Role Based Access Control capabilities Outreach already provides
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Once the Teams-Collections boundaries have been set up, the same access controls boundaries will be enforced on the Sequences, Templates, and Snippets associated with the Collection(s).
Note: Admins will need to provide non-admins with the appropriate Teams and Collection management permissions.
Outreach Governance Models
Content Governance is a backward-compatible, opt-in feature that admins would need to enable in their organizations before users can use it. It is also fully compatible with the existing Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) settings you have put in place.
- RBAC: General Access Control mechanism used by features across the product to assign, manage, and revoke user access to specific resources and actions allowed on them. Can provide derived access through organizational hierarchy.
- Teams-Collections Access Control: Access Control mechanism designed specifically for Team-based selling motions, and used in conjunction with Collections to create access control islands. Does NOT depend on organizational hierarchy.
Sharing content with others in the organization
Content Governance doesn’t impact any existing RBAC settings. Rather it’s an additional capability for organizations that want to use Teams and Collections as a primary or secondary mechanism for sharing content within their organization.
Users have two choices for managing organization access to Sequences, Templates, and Snippets they own:
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If Content Governance is NOT enabled, within content Sharing settings, users can select either Others can only see it or Others can see and use it to provide access to anyone in the organization.
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If Content Governance is enabled, the content must be put into one or more Collections and associated with one or more Teams to allow access to other users.
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Users still have the option to share content with everyone in the organization through a Public Collection.
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Using RBAC with Teams and Collections
While content can be put into Collections irrespective of whether they have been marked as Private to owner, Others can only see it, or Others can see and use it, private content won’t be visible to the user unless they have permission to view it through RBAC. This means, effectively, only content that has been marked as Shared can be accessed purely through the Teams-Collections association.
Note the following exception: When the User wants to actually use the content, the content owner's original sharing intent is enforced -- that is, Others can only see it vs. Others can see and use it. This is to ensure relevancy to the user using the content as the owner of the content thought appropriate.
Content Manager Permissions
Content Governance also allow you to split teams and collections management responsibility. That means technical admins can delegate day-to-day content management responsibilities to Content Manager roles that are closest to the sales workflows.
Once enabled, users with Profiles that have only enabled manage collections will be able create, edit, and view all content within collections. However, they will not have permissions to create, edit, and view users within the teams.
On Outreach instance creation, the default profile for Content Managers provides a pre-cofigured set of permissions that you can provide to content creators and managers inside your organization.
Associating Teams to Collections
Users with appropriate permissions have the ability to associate content to Collections.
Similarly, users with appropriate permissions have the ability to associate Teams to Collections, and vice-versa.
However, once Content Governance is enabled, access to content within those Collections will be restricted to the user’s Teams memberships only.
Public Collection
While Teams-Collections allow users to share specific content with specific groups of users across the organization, they can also share content with the entire organization through a Public Collection. Any content associated with the Public Collection will be available to everyone in the organization.
Note that the Collection name Public (the single word, as typed) is reserved in the Outreach platform as a system-owned Collection name and cannot be changed or deleted by admins or end users. No new collections will be allowed to have this reserved name.
Ready to turn on and use Outreach Content Governance?
Click here to review the complete Content Governance enablement procedures, including important admin considerations and prep.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Content Governance replace RBAC?
No. Teams-Collections can be used in addition to RBAC controls.
What content types does Content Governance support?
Sequences, Templates and Snippets can be added to Collections in this release. Other types can be added through future roadmaps if there’s popular demand.
My org is not ready for Content Governance yet. Can we wait or go slow?
Yes. The feature is opt-in by design and is ready when you are.
Can I disable Public Collection?
Public Collection is a system construct and cannot be disabled.
What happens to my existing Collections named Public?
The name Public will be reserved going forward and new collections can’t be named Public anymore. Existing collections called Public will be retained till you need to edit it, then the name would need to be changed before save.
How do I delegate Teams and/or Collection management responsibilities?
Teams-Collections management permissions are controlled through Profiles. Create the appropriate Profiles you need and assign to the appropriate user.
How do I rollback the Content Governance feature?
You can disable Content Governance by reversing the options selected on the profiles and content types it was enabled for.
What happens if a user is not assigned to any team or they are part of Teams with no Collections associated?
Content Governance is enabled per Profile, so individual user's access depends on whether the feature has been enabled for their profile. If enabled, they can only see sequences, templates and snippets that they own directly. If the feature has not been enabled, they will continue to see content they own and content that has been marked as Shared.
Additional Information
How to Enable Outreach Content Governance
Teams and Content Collections (Outreach University)
Better control and manage content with Content Governance (Outreach Blog)