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Kristian_D
Contributor ⭐️
May 5, 2026
Solved

Will AI Answers Respect Custom Roles

  • May 5, 2026
  • 6 replies
  • 104 views

Hi all,

We are currently considering implementing the AI Answers functionality in our community. However, our community is private and heavily reliant on access to forums and other areas regulated by custom roles.

Will AI Answers respect the community‑defined boundaries and permissions when providing answers to users?

Best regards,
Kristian

    Best answer by Larry

    Great question! Thank you ​@mitchell.gordon for jumping in. I’ll add to the platform side. 

    Yes, AI Answers (inside and outside of our platform) respects your community's permission boundaries. Content gated behind custom roles or restricted categories will not surface in responses for users who don't have access to those areas.

    6 replies

    mitchell.gordon
    mitchell.gordon
    Expert ⭐️
    May 5, 2026

    Hello! I can try and help answer this one. AI bots learn from scraping sites. If the site isnt public, AI wont be able to view the content to learn from it. The answer to the question about custom roles and permissions is yes! The system will respect a location that is gated behind permissions. 

     

    You can also toggle this switch on in admin under the content category. 

     

    Hiding the category from platform search should help a smidge as the category wont be fully indexed but this will impact users native search on your platform.

      Larry
      LarryAnswer
      Helper ⭐️⭐️
      May 6, 2026

      Great question! Thank you ​@mitchell.gordon for jumping in. I’ll add to the platform side. 

      Yes, AI Answers (inside and outside of our platform) respects your community's permission boundaries. Content gated behind custom roles or restricted categories will not surface in responses for users who don't have access to those areas.

      Larry Imgrund || Senior Product Manager & Community Nerd
        Kristian_DAuthor
        Contributor ⭐️
        May 7, 2026

        Really appreciate the responses. Thank you!

        lwackertn
        Helper ⭐️⭐️
        May 18, 2026

        ​@Larry  Gainsight made an update to the AI search results today. Results are now pulling from all content, not gating content based on roles. We have had to turn the AI search off because of this. 

        Larry
        Larry
        Helper ⭐️⭐️
        May 18, 2026

        ​@Larry  Gainsight made an update to the AI search results today. Results are now pulling from all content, not gating content based on roles. We have had to turn the AI search off because of this. 

        File a support ticket for this in case you haven’t. I’m escalating and will make sure to get an update in this thread once I have one from the team. I appreciate your report and am very sorry for the inconvenience.

        Larry Imgrund || Senior Product Manager & Community Nerd
          Graeme Rycyk
          Gainsight Employee ⭐️
          Graeme Rycyk
          Gainsight Director of Product
          September 4, 2026

          Hey ​@lwackertn,

          Sorry for the delay in a reply here. AI Answers and Search should always respect the user permissions, only surfacing content in the AI Answers sources or in the search results based on the content that user has permission to access.

          I would like to ask if could you enable AI Answers again today, and loop back to me when it is enabled (feel free to email me directly graeme.rycyk@gainsight.com or just reply to me here, which ever is easier) and I will personally have my engineering team take a look right away to ensure you are not still having this issue and can make sure you are able to make full use of our Search and AI Answers features.

          Kind regards,

          Graeme Rycyk

          Director of Product | AI & Search
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