---
title: "Collections 101 (Creating, Visibility, and Public Help Center Access)"
description: "A collection is a group of Articles that can either be public on your customer facing Brainfish site, or private for internal use."
canonical_url: "https://help.brainfi.sh/articles/collections-101-FTTfDEYDaH"
md_url: "https://help.brainfi.sh/articles/collections-101-FTTfDEYDaH.md"
---
# Collections 101 (Creating, Visibility, and Public Help Center Access)

A collection is a group of Articles that can either be public on your customer facing Brainfish site, or private for internal use.

Collections are an effective way to organize features or essential processes.


:::tip
All Articles must be created within a Collection.

:::

# Adding a new Collection

You can easily add a new Collection from the top right of the **[Articles](/articles/articles-101-TzOviUpU64)** page within Brainfish.

When creating a Collection, you can choose a name, icon (and internal icon color), Access level (Public on your customer facing site, or private).

# Managing Collection Visibility and Permissions

You can control whether a collection is private to your team or publicly accessible through the help center and widgets.

To change a collection’s permissions:


1. Navigate to the **Knowledge** section from the main menu on the left.
2. Click on the data source that contains the collection you want to manage (e.g., **Brainfish Articles**).
3. From the list of collections, select the one you wish to update.
4. At the top of the collection page, you will see a button indicating the current permission status, either **Internal** or **Public**.
5. Click this button to open a dropdown menu.
6. Select **Public** to publish the collection to your live help center and widgets. Select **Internal** to restrict access to team members only.
7. The permission is updated automatically, and a confirmation message, **Collection site permissions were updated**, will appear briefly.

## Troubleshooting: Public Help Center not showing a published collection

### Overview

If articles are published in Brainfish but a collection (for example, `Troubleshooting`) is not fully visible in the public Help Center, the collection’s visibility and access settings are likely misconfigured.

### Symptoms

A collection’s articles can be:

* Published and accessible via a direct Brainfish article link, **but**
* Missing or partially missing when browsing the **public Help Center**.

### Cause

For a collection to appear in the public Help Center, it must meet **both** of these requirements:


1. The collection must be included in **Knowledge Settings at the agent level**.
2. The collection must be set to **Public** and have **Global access**.

Because of current state management, it’s possible to unintentionally remove a collection from public visibility by changing access settings (for example, selecting specific user groups).

### Solution

#### 1) Confirm the collection is included in agent Knowledge Settings


1. Open **Knowledge Settings**.
2. Review the agent-level configuration.
3. Ensure the affected collection (for example, `Troubleshooting`) is added/enabled for the agent.

#### 2) Set the collection visibility and access correctly


1. Open the collection’s settings.
2. Set the collection to **Public**.
3. Confirm the collection has **Global access**.

> Note: Currently, switching a collection to **Public** flips the **Global** access switch as well.

### Additional information / gotchas

* **Gotcha:** A collection can be published but still not display publicly if it is not both (a) added in agent Knowledge Settings and (b) configured as **Public + Global access**.
* **Planned improvement:** The team identified the need for **single state management** to reduce configuration pitfalls. A potential future change is disabling specific user-group selection when a collection is public to prevent accidental removal from the Help Center or agent visibility.

# Deleting a Collection

You can delete a Collection by navigating to the Collection you want to remove from the Articles page, then selecting Delete from the 3 dots in the top right.