Departments & access levels

Every document in Zahen has two pieces of access control: a department and an access level. Together they determine which users can read the document — and therefore which users can receive answers grounded in it.

Access is enforced before search. Zahen filters the candidate documents by the reader’s role and department before it runs the retrieval query, so a user can never receive an answer drawn from a document they’re not permitted to read. Choosing the right combination when you upload is how you control who sees what.

Access levels

Access level	Who can read it
Public	Anyone signed in.
Employee	All employees who can see its department, and everyone when it is organisation-wide (no department). The usual default.
Department	Only people in that document’s department.
Restricted	Administrators only.

Department

Most documents belong to a specific department — for example, HR, Finance, or IT. A user sees organisation-wide documents plus those for their own department. They do not see other departments’ documents.

A department admin can only upload and manage documents within their own department. A platform admin can assign any department, or none: a document with no department is organisation-wide, and every department sees it.

Choosing the right combination

Think about the narrowest group that legitimately needs this information:

• A company-wide travel policy → Employee access and no department (organisation-wide), uploaded by a platform admin.
• A department-specific process guide → Department access, set to that department.
• A draft or sensitive document for admins to review → Restricted.

Caution

Setting access too broadly means users receive answers from documents they shouldn’t see. Setting it too narrowly means users asking legitimate questions get no answer — or the wrong one. Review the department and access level carefully before uploading, and update them if a document’s audience changes.

What users experience

Users never see a list of all documents; they only ever see information the system retrieved for their specific question. If a user asks about something covered only in a document they can’t access, the assistant tells them it doesn’t have a policy that answers the question. See Why you can’t see some documents for the user-facing explanation.