While building the taxonomy for a portfolio Employee Center Portal (Brazil PDI, Employee Center version 44.4.2), I created four level 1 topics and connected one item to each.
As admin, all four showed up:
When I impersonated one of my test employees, only three did. The Passwords and signing in topic was missing from both Help center and Popular topics:
I’ve seen a lot of unresolved threads with this symptom, so here’s what caused it and how to find it quickly.
Why the topic disappears
Employee Center only shows a topic to a user if they can see at least one item of its connected content. My topic had a single connected item, the demo Password Reset catalog item. If the user can’t see that item, the whole topic is hidden from them, with no error or message.
So the real question isn’t “why is my topic hidden?”, it’s “which content can this user not see, and why?”
Finding the cause with User Criteria Diagnostics
Instead of impersonating users and guessing:
- In the navigator (All), go to User Criteria Diagnostics.
- Select the user and the catalog item.
- Click Diagnose.
The result showed straight away that the item was only Available for “Users with ‘cmdb_read’ Role”. My test employee has no roles at all, so she didn’t match. That’s leftover demo configuration, but you’ll find similar restrictions on real instances, especially on items that have been copied or reused over the years.
The fix: add criteria, don’t remove
Two rules about user criteria are worth remembering:
- Available For entries are combined with OR. A user who matches any one of them can see the item.
- Not Available For always wins. If a user matches it, they’re blocked regardless of Available For.
So I didn’t need to remove or change the existing criteria. I created a reusable user criteria record, AshbiaNow employees (Company = AshbiaNow), and added it to the item’s Available For list. Running the diagnostics again showed Can View.
One more thing: give it a moment
In my case, the quick link to the item reappeared immediately, but the topic took longer to come back for the user I’d already been impersonating. Topic visibility appears to be cached. Ending impersonation, clearing the cache (cache.do) and impersonating again sorted it. Before deciding the fix didn’t work, refresh the session.
Summary
- A topic is hidden from users who can’t see any of its content.
- User Criteria Diagnostics tells you exactly which criteria block a given user and item.
- Available For is OR’d, so you can grant access by adding criteria, without touching existing ones.
- Clear the cache and start a fresh session before re-testing.
Has anyone found other common reasons topics go missing? I’d be interested to hear what else catches people out.
#Employee Center
