---
title: "Set Up and Publish with the External Knowledge Base"
sidebarTitle: "Getting Started"
description: "Publish your first customer-facing help articles in under 30 minutes by adding a SaaS product, configuring access, and optionally connecting an AI agent."
---

> **For AI agents:** the complete documentation index is at [llms.txt](/llms.txt). Append `.md` to any page URL for its markdown version.

Setting up your External Knowledge Base takes less than thirty minutes and results in a live, searchable help site your customers can use right away. This guide walks you through every step in order, from adding your first SaaS product to optionally wiring up an AI customer agent that answers questions directly from your published content.

## Setup Steps

<Steps>
  <Step title="Add Your First SaaS Product">
    The External KB organizes all help content around the SaaS products your team supports. Before you can write a single article, you need to register at least one product. This creates the content scope — the named space inside your KB where all related articles will live.

    Navigate to **External KB → Products → Add Product** and enter the product name, a short description, and optionally a logo. Once saved, the product appears in your KB navigation and is ready to hold articles.

    For a full walkthrough of product settings, slug configuration, and how to add multiple products, see [Adding a SaaS Product](/external/saas/adding-a-product).
  </Step>
  <Step title="Write and Publish Your First How-To Article">
    With a product in place, create your first customer-facing article. Open the product you just added, click **New Article**, and write your guide using the rich-text editor. Structure your article with a clear title, a short introductory paragraph that states what the article covers, and numbered steps for any procedural content.

    When the article is ready, click **Publish**. Published articles become immediately visible to anyone with access to your External KB — either the general public or the permissioned audience you configure in the next step.

    For guidance on article structure, formatting conventions, and how to promote an internal draft to the External KB, see [Writing Product Documentation](/external/saas/writing-product-docs).
  </Step>
  <Step title="Configure Who Can Access Your Content">
    By default, a newly created External KB is private — no one outside your workspace can see it until you explicitly open it up. Decide whether your KB should be publicly accessible to anyone with the link, restricted to authenticated users, or limited to specific customer organizations.

    Open **External KB → Settings → Access & Permissions** to set the visibility level for the whole KB or for individual product collections. You can mix visibility settings: for example, make your general onboarding guides public while keeping enterprise-specific configuration guides permissioned.

    For the full breakdown of access levels, token-based sharing, and organization-scoped permissions, see [Sharing and Permissions](/external/access/sharing-and-permissions).
  </Step>
  <Step title="Connect to an AI Customer Agent (Optional)">
    If your team uses an AI-powered chat assistant for customer support, connect it to your External KB so it can retrieve and cite your published articles when answering questions. The KB feed gives the agent a curated, reviewed knowledge source — which means fewer hallucinations and answers your team has already approved.

    Go to **External KB → Integrations → AI Agent** and follow the connection flow for your agent platform. Once connected, the agent indexes your published articles automatically and stays in sync as you add or update content.

    For supported agent platforms, authentication setup, and how to test the integration, see [Connecting Your KB to an AI Agent](/external/ai-agents/connecting-your-kb).
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Tip>
  Not sure which articles to write first? Open your support queue and look at the ten questions your team answered most often last month. Those questions are your first batch of articles. Customers who are already asking them in tickets will find the articles through search — and future customers will never need to open a ticket at all.
</Tip>

## Public vs. Permissioned Content

<Note>
  **Public** External KB content is accessible to anyone who has the URL — no login required. It's ideal for general product documentation, onboarding guides, and FAQ-style articles that apply to all customers.

  **Permissioned** content requires authentication and is only shown to customers who have been explicitly granted access, either as individual users or as members of a customer organization. Use permissioned collections for enterprise configuration guides, beta feature documentation, or any content that shouldn't be indexed by search engines.

  You can have both types of content in the same External KB simultaneously. The visibility setting is configured per product collection, so you have precise control over what each audience can see.
</Note>

## What Your Customers Will See

When a customer visits your External KB, they land on a clean home page that lists every SaaS product you've published content for. Selecting a product takes them into that product's article collection, where articles are grouped into the categories you've defined — for example, *Getting Started*, *Configuration*, *Troubleshooting*, and *Integrations*.

Each individual article opens in a focused reading view: a title, a breadcrumb trail showing which product and category it belongs to, and the article body. Code blocks, screenshots, and step-by-step instructions render exactly as they appear in your editor. A table of contents on the right side lets customers jump to any section of a long article without scrolling.

At the top of every page, a search bar lets customers type a question or keyword and get results from across all products they have access to. Results show the article title, a short excerpt, and the product it belongs to, so customers can tell at a glance whether a result is relevant before clicking.

<Info>
  If you embed the KB widget in your product or support portal, customers see a condensed version of the same experience — a search field and a list of contextually relevant articles — without leaving the page they're on.
</Info>

## Next Steps

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Add a SaaS Product" icon="plus" href="/external/saas/adding-a-product">
    Register a SaaS product in your External KB and configure its article space, slug, and display settings.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Configure Access" icon="shield-halved" href="/external/access/sharing-and-permissions">
    Set visibility levels for your KB and individual product collections, and manage customer permissions.
  </Card>
</Columns>