Getting started as a Collection Owner or Author

Guru is a powerful tool that connects subject matter experts (that's you!) and the essential information you create with the teams that need this knowledge right where everyone works, whether that's in the web browser, Slack, or Microsoft Teams. Everyone relies on Guru's smart suggestions and enterprise search capability to quickly find the answers they're looking for.

Collection owners and authors overlap in roles and responsibilities. An author is a subject matter expert: someone who knows a lot about their particular area of the business or their industry. If you’re using Guru as a wiki, these are the people who will be tasked with creating and verifying responsibilities. A Collection owner can do everything an author can do, plus they can allow users to see specific content within a Collection. A Collection owner will add authors to a Group applied to a Collection.

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Access Required

Not sure what role you hold? Do you see the "Create a Card" button at the top of Guru's web app or the "⊕" in the Guru extension? If not, you're a read only user, and the Quick start guide for read only users is for you. If you think there's a mistake, contact one of the users listed on the Admins tab.

Signing in to Guru

After receiving an invitation from a Guru admin to join a Guru workspace, sign in at app.getguru.com using your email and a password, Google authentication, or you'll be told to use a single sign-on (SSO) identity provider like Okta or Azure. See How to join a Guru workspace for more information. Once you're in, you'll see Guru's dashboard, which is completely custom to you.

New workspace setup

Your workspace admin handles Guru's setup, including inviting users, bundling them in Groups, and creating connections to external knowledge sources. They may also create Collections and assign you to them so that you can create folders to hold Cards: the building blocks of knowledge stored in Guru. If you're helping setup the workspace, check out Different ways to create/migrate content into Guru to evaluate what setup works best for your team.

What do Collection owners and authors do?

Depending on your workspace setup, you will:

Manage Collection and folder permissions

Collection owners manage Group Collection permissions and folder permissions in their assigned Collections. If you're not an admin, you'll work with them to manage which users are assigned to what Groups. Only admins can invite new teammates to your workspace and manage which Groups users belong to.

Configure suggested knowledge

Collection owners and authors set up proactive suggestions for specific Groups to see in web-based contexts called Knowledge Triggers.

Interact with teammates

Collection owners and authors answer questions, resolve comments on Cards, and share announcements.

Evaluate analytics

Collection owners and authors use analytics to improve knowledge and user engagement. See Introduction to Guru Analytics for more information. 

Keep knowledge trustworthy

Collection owners and authors ensure the accuracy and trustworthiness of Cards by verifying them at regular intervals. Automated notifications and a dedicated task queue simplify this process. Collection owners also control auto archive settings for their assigned Collections.

Create new knowledge

Collection owners and authors create Cards using Guru's web app, browser extension, or Slackbot. Utilize features like Card templates and generative AI prompts to speed up the content creation process. Duplicate detection helps prevent redundancy, plus you can archive and delete Cards to ensure your team only sees what you want them to see.