Shared Password Protection

Whether you're using your HelpDocs internally to train staff, or just because they're not ready for the limelight yet, there's a load of reasons you might want to password protect your HelpDocs.

Shared Password

HelpDocs makes it super simple to add a shared password that visitors will need to enter before they get to your docs.

Log in to HelpDocs at <your-subdomain>.helpdocs.io/app

1. Go to Settings > Access > Options
2. Head to Restrict access and toggle Enabled Shared Password on
3. Under Shared Password enter a password of your choice
4. Hit Save Changes

Now when people visit your site they'll need to enter a password before they can read any docs.

Using Team Passwords for Single Sign On

If you're looking to set up docs that only users logged into your app can view, the team password works great. 

Dropping the Cookie

Just load HelpDocs in an iframe on your dashboard when people log in, including the team password in the query string. We have a special URL for you to use, where you can set a duration for users to stay logged in.

The basic URL structure is https://<your-helpdocs>.helpdocs.io/_hd/team_sso?hd_team=<your-team-password>

Here's a snippet to get you started:

<iframe src="https://<your-helpdocs>.helpdocs.io/_hd/team_sso?hd_team=<your-team-password>" width="0" height="0" style="display: none"></iframe>

There's also a few parameters you can customize:

Redirecting Logged Out Users

When a user hasn't visited your site for a while they won't have a cookie set. You'll want to override the default HelpDocs team password login page with a redirect to your own app. Something like this in Settings > Code > Javascript should work:

<script type="text/javascript">
    (function() {
        if (window.location.pathname.indexOf('/team-login') === 0) {
            
            // Parse query string parameters
            var qs = function (a) {
              if (a === '') return {};
              var b = {};
              for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i += 1) {
                var p = a[i].split('=', 2);
                if (p.length === 1) {
                  b[p[0]] = '';
                } else {
                  b[p[0]] = decodeURIComponent(p[1].replace(/\+/g, ' '));
                }
              }
              return b;
            }(window.location.search.substr(1).split('&'));
            var redirectUri = 'https://your-app.your-domain.com'; // Replace this with your login page URL
            if (typeof qs.forward === 'string') redirectUri += '?hd_url=' + qs.forward;
            return window.location.href = redirectUri;
        }
    })();
</script>

If you're a stickler for user experience, your developers can set up a redirect back to the correct HelpDocs article after login by extracting the hd_url query param.

Passing User Data to Your Template

If you want to identify a user later in your docs, you can pass us some data about them in the query parameter of the URL. This works if you're using the URL in an iframe or as a redirect.

The data should be JSON-encoded and sent as a hd_user_data query parameter. e.g.

https://helpdocs.your-custom-domain.com/_hd/team_sso?hd_team=password-here&hd_user_data={"name":"Taylor","user_id":"1"}