Collection types and sharing

Every knowledge collection is one of three kinds:

Type	What it is
Personal	A collection you created and manage yourself
Shared	A collection someone else has shared with you
Chat	Created automatically from files you upload straight into a conversation

Personal and Shared are two sides of the same thing: a collection you own is Personal to you and appears under Shared for everyone you’ve given access to. Chat collections are made for you — see Attachments and web search for what happens to a file you attach to a message.

Keep a Chat collection

A Chat collection belongs to the conversation it was created in. If the documents in it are worth more than that one thread — something you’ll want to link to other conversations, or share with colleagues — promote it to Personal. It then behaves like any collection you created yourself, and you can share it from there.

Share a collection

Click Share on a collection to invite specific people by email or group, choosing a role — Admin, Member, or Viewer. The creator is always the collection’s Owner, which isn’t an assignable role.

To share with everyone in your organization at once, use the Share with entire organization toggle in the same dialog, instead of inviting people one by one.

You can also make a collection available to a whole team at once by assigning it to a folder — see Knowledge in folders.

People are notified about collection access

Sharing a collection notifies the people you shared it with — as does changing someone’s role on it, or removing their access.

What each role can do

Action	Owner	Admin	Member	Viewer
Open the collection and read its documents	✅	✅	✅	✅
Hide / unhide the collection (just for you)	✅	✅	✅	✅
Upload documents	✅	✅	✅	—
Remove documents	✅	✅	✅	—
Run a web crawl into the collection	✅	✅	✅	—
Sync a connected SharePoint source	✅	✅	✅	—
Rename the collection	✅	✅	—	—
Add / edit the description	✅	✅	—	—
Share the collection	✅	✅	—	—
Manage who it’s shared with	✅	✅	—	—
Connect / remove a SharePoint connector	✅	✅	—	—
Assign the collection to a folder	✅	✅	—	—
Remove it from its folder	✅	—	—	—
Leave the collection	—	✅	✅	✅
Delete the collection	✅	—	—	—

These are the same four tiers you’ll recognize from folders, and they behave the same way.

An Admin can do everything the Owner can except the two things that take the collection away from everyone else — deleting it, and removing it from the folder it’s assigned to.

The Owner is the only person who can delete a collection, and the only one who can’t leave it. If a collection has been shared with you and you no longer want it, leave it; if you just want it out of your way, hide it instead.