Managing document categories

All knowledge documents in the knowledgebase are assigned to a document category. Categories for knowledge documents are ordered into hierarchies. The document categories order documents into top-level categories and subcategories. Each subcategory has a parent category that is the category immediately above it in the ordered list of categories. A top-level category is also a parent category of the subcategory immediately below it in the ordered list of categories.

The following is an example of category and subcategory hierarchy:

Animal > Dog > Retriever or Category > subcategory > subcategory

• Animal is the top-level category for Dog and Retriever.
• Animal has no top-level category or parent category.
• Dog is the parent category for Retriever.

For a top-level category, the level in the hierarchy is always zero (0).

A category and subcategory has associated with it a set of permissions. These permissions specify the profiles and knowledge groups that have access to the category or subcategory. When a profile and knowledge group is given access to a category or subcategory that profile and knowledge group also has access to all of the subcategories below that point in the hierarchy.

If there are any published documents assigned to the category, they cannot be deleted. You cannot delete a document category before deleting a category. Assign any of the published documents to another document category. You can delete a document category if there are only retired documents assigned to the category. If you decide to unretire those documents, a KM Admin will provide a new document category for the document as part of the unretire process.