Learn how to grant access to only selected chapters, for each user separately.
You can limit access to your users, to only select chapters. In the table of contents, your users will not be able to click on unrestricted chapters, and also won't be able to navigate to them using the Next and Previous buttons.
Restricting chapters to your users can be done in two ways.
- Using Kotobee Author
- Using the User Management API (advanced)
Restricting access to chapters requires a cloud ebook or library license.
Restrict Access from Kotobee Author
After having Kotobee Author opened and logged in with your serial, go to the Users section of your cloud ebook or library.
Click on the user's Permissions button to display his current permissions. You must first provide access to the book in question. For more information on how to achieve this, read: Give a User Access to Selected Books or Categories.
Click on the three dots to the right of the book name. This will toggle visibility of the chapters field.
In this field you will specify the chapters that the user can access. If this is blank the user receives access to the entire book. Enter either the name of the chapter (wrapped in quotes), or the chapter index. If you will enter multiple chapters, separate them with commas. The following section will explain more how to specify chapters. Once you are done hit Save. This will take effect immediately and the user will only be able to access the specified chapters.
Specifying Chapters Using Chapter Name
Using the chapter name as a reference is useful if you are planning to rearrange the chapter or add new chapters before it. It doesn't become useful if you're planning to change the chapter name later.
You can get the chapter name easily from the table of contents in Kotobee Author. Note: chapter name is case-sensitive.
In the case above, you will enter "My Chapter Name" (with the quotes) in the Restrict chapter access field.
If you give access to a parent chapter (with nested chapters underneath), only the parent chapter will receive access.
Giving Access to Nested Chapters Using Chapter Name
If you would like to give access to the entire tree (all nested children), you will append "[*]" to the chapter name. So in the previous case, it will look like the following.
Now the user will receive access to Parent Chapter, Child Chapter 1, Child Chapter 2, and Child Chapter 3.
Specifying Chapters Using Chapter Index
Using the chapter index as a reference is useful if you're not fully decided yet on the chapter name, but are certain that the chapter order and arrangement won't change. The chapter index gets affected by its order in the table of contents.
You can get the chapter index for any chapter in Kotobee Author by clicking on the Chapter Properties button at the bottom.
Unlike the chapter name, the chapter index is entered directly without wrapping with quotes. You can use a combination of chapter name and chapter indexes as following.
Giving Access to Nested Chapters Using Chapter Index
To provide full access to a chapter's nested children chapters, the [*] selector can't be used as in chapter names. The workaround however, is to change the numeric index into a string, prefixed with "index::". As an example, chapter index 2, would become "index::2". Both would give the same result. Now you can add [*] like so: "index::2[*]".