How do we decide between groups, tags, countries, and regions?

Harriet can attach several kinds of metadata to knowledge documents. Each serves a different job.

User groups

• Use for: who is allowed to see a document in search.
• Empty or unset group restrictions usually mean “any member of your customer account” can see the document (within normal role limits).
• Best for: confidential handbooks, local policies, or anything that must not appear for the whole company.

Tags

• Use for: organization, reporting, and filtering in the Knowledge Base console.
• Tags help your admins find and maintain content; they can also help Harriet or admins narrow relevant material when configured for your setup.
• Best for: themes like onboarding, benefits, security, or document lifecycle (review-2025).

Countries and US regions

• Use for: geographic relevance on documents—so answers can align with location-specific rules.
• This is separate from “who is in which group”: an employee in the UK might still be in a group that may see US policy documents if you allow it, but geography metadata helps prioritise the right corpus.
• Best for: multi-country handbooks, state-specific leave or tax summaries, and “default to local, allow global” patterns.

Example

You publish a global code of conduct with no group restriction (everyone should see it), tag it conduct, and set no country so it applies everywhere. You publish a California supplement with US + California metadata and restrict it to US employees group if you do not want other regions to see it at all.

Guardrails

• Do not rely on tags alone for strict confidentiality—use groups when access must be enforced in search.
• Keep a small, agreed tag vocabulary so admins do not invent overlapping labels.