Develop with Salesforce Knowledge. salesforce Knowledge

Salesforce Knowledge is a powerful tool that can help you create and manage your company's knowledge base. It can be used to provide support to customers, partners, and service agents. The Salesforce Knowledge Developer Guide provides information on how to develop with Salesforce Knowledge.

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CHAPTER 1 Develop with Salesforce Knowledge

In this chapter ...

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Set Up a Knowledge

Development

Organization

Salesforce Knowledge gives your website visitors, clients, partners, and service agents the ultimate in support. You can create and manage your company information and securely share it when and where it is needed. Most features are declarative and let you point-and-click your way to a successful implementation. However, with the Force.com platform, you can also code your way to case deflection, happier customers, and more productive support agents.

Articles capture information about your company's products and services that you want to make available in your knowledge base. Articles in the knowledge base can be classified by using one or more data categories to make it easy for users to find the articles they need. Administrators can use data categories to control access to articles.

Articles are based on article types, which rely on:

• Article-type layouts to organize the content in sections.

• Article-type templates to render articles.

Every article is managed in a publishing cycle.

Article Type

All articles in Salesforce Knowledge are assigned to an article type. An article's type determines the type of content it contains, its appearance, and which users can access it. For example, a simple FAQ article type can have two custom fields,

Question

and

Answer

, where article managers enter data when creating or updating FAQ articles. A more complex article type can have dozens of fields organized into several sections. Using layouts and templates, administrators can structure the article type in the most effective way for its particular content. User access to article types is controlled by permissions. For each article type, an administrator can grant “Create,” “Read,” “Edit,” or “Delete” permissions to users. For example, the article manager can allow internal users to read, create, and edit FAQ article types, but let partner users only read FAQs.

Article-Type Layout

An article-type layout enables administrators to create sections that organize the fields on an article, as well as choose which fields users can view and edit. One layout is available per article type.

Administrators modify the layout from the article-type detail page.

Article-Type Template

An article-type template specifies how the sections in the article-type layout are rendered. An article type can have a different template for each of its four channels. For example, if the Customer Portal channel on the FAQ article-type is assigned to the Tab template, the sections in the FAQ's layout appear as tabs when customers view an FAQ article. For the Table of Contents template, the sections defined in the layout appear on a single page (with hyperlinks) when the article is viewed. Salesforce provides two standard article-type templates, Tab and Table of Contents. Custom templates can be created with Visualforce.

Channel

A channel refers to the medium by which an article is available. Salesforce Knowledge offers four channels where you can make articles available.

• Internal App: Salesforce users can access articles in the Articles tab depending on their role visibility.

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge

• Customer: Customers can access articles if the Articles tab is available in a community or Customer

Portal. Customer users inherit the role visibility of the manager on the account. In a community, the article is only available to users with Customer Community or Customer Community Plus licenses.

• Partner: Partners can access articles if the Articles tab is available in a community or partner portal. Partner users inherit the role visibility of the manager on the account. In a community, the article is only available to users with Partner Community licenses.

• Public Knowledge Base: Articles can be made available to anonymous users by creating a public knowledge base using the Sample Public Knowledge Base for Salesforce Knowledge app from the

AppExchange. Creating a public knowledge base requires Sites and Visualforce.

Publishing Cycle

Salesforce Knowledge Articles move through a publishing cycle from their creation to their deletion.

The publishing cycle includes three different statuses:

Draft

is the stage when a new article is being created or an existing one is being updated. Articles with the Online status are draft articles that have been published and are now available to their different channels. Eventually, when a published article is at the end of its life, it can be moved to the

Archived

status or sent back to

Draft to be updated in a subsequent version.

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Set Up a Knowledge Development Organization

Set Up a Knowledge Development Organization

To develop with Salesforce Knowledge, first enable Knowledge in your development organization.

To build a Knowledge base, you can follow the steps in this guide or get a badge while you’re at it with the Knowledge Basics Trailhead module .

IN THIS SECTION:

Enable Salesforce Knowledge

Get Knowledge turned on in your development organization.

Edit the Default Article Type

Article types, such as FAQs and procedures, provide a format, or structure, for agents to compose quality articles. An article-type is created for you to get started, but it has no fields for content. Add a custom field to the default article type.

Create an Article

Create articles from the Knowledge tab to build your knowledge base.

Publish an Article

Create articles from the Knowledge tab to build your knowledge base.

Enable Salesforce Knowledge

Get Knowledge turned on in your development organization.

1. From Setup, click Manage Users > Users.

2. Click Edit next to your name.

3. Select the Knowledge User checkbox.

4. Click Save.

Assigning a Knowledge User license makes the Knowledge pages show up in Setup.

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge

5. From Setup, type

Knowledge

into the

Quick Find

box.

6. Click Knowledge Settings.

7. Read the information on enabling Salesforce Knowledge in your org.

8. Check Yes, I understand the impact of enabling Salesforce Knowledge .

9. Click Enable Salesforce Knowledge.

Enable Salesforce Knowledge

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Edit the Default Article Type

Edit the Default Article Type

1. From Setup, type Knowledge into the Quick Find box.

2. Click Knowledge Article Types.

3. Click Knowledge in the Label column.

4. Click New in the Fields section.

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Edit the Default Article Type

5. Select Text Area (Rich).

6. Click Next.

7. Name your new field

ArticleBody

8. Click Next.

9. Here’s where you can hide this field from user profiles to add more security. Since your profile is System Administrator, the field is visible to you by default. For now, let’s leave the default settings and click Next.

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Edit the Default Article Type

10. You must connect the article-type to a page layout. By default, the field is added as the last field in the first section, the information section. Let’s again go with the default settings and click Save.

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Create an Article

The new field, ArticleBody, is added alphabetically to the article type detail page in the Fields section.

Create an Article

Create articles from the Knowledge tab to build your knowledge base.

The more articles you have the more realistic your development knowledge base. You can import multiple articles with

.csv

files; one for each article type. For information on importing articles, see https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=knowledge_article_importer.htm

1. Click the Knowledge tab.

Note: You may need to click the plus sign at the end of your tabs and find the Knowledge tab in the list of all tabs available.

You can add the Knowledge and Article Management tabs to an app.

2. Click Create Article.

3. Select the Knowledge article type.

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Publish an Article

4. Create a title for your article, such as “Our company address.”

5. Write a description, this goes under the title in the search results.

6. Put your company address in the rich text area field you created in the last unit. Notice that the article is available by default to your internal users.

7. Click Save.

Publish an Article

Create articles from the Knowledge tab to build your knowledge base.

You must publish the articles after creation or import. Non-published articles do not display on your public channels: customer and partner communities or public websites.

1. If you’ve navigated away from the article you created, you can find it in either tab, Knowledge or Article Management, under My

Drafts.

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge

2. Click the Our company address draft. Notice that the article now has an article number and a publishing status.

3. Click Publish.

Publish an Article

4. Determine if you want to publish now or at a scheduled time in the future. Let’s stick with the default once again and publish now.

5. Click OK.

Salesforce Knowledge takes you back to the Knowledge tab and your article is at the top of the list!

Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Publish an Article

Key features

Create and manage knowledge base
Provide support to customers, partners, and service agents
Use data categories to classify articles
Control access to articles
Publish articles in different channels
Use SOAP and REST APIs to manage knowledge

Frequently asked questions

Salesforce Knowledge is a knowledge management system that helps you create and manage your company's knowledge base. It can be used to provide support to customers, partners, and service agents.

To enable Salesforce Knowledge, you need to go to Setup > Knowledge Settings and follow the instructions on the page.

Data categories are used to classify articles and make them easier to find. You can create data category groups and assign categories to articles. For example, you could create a data category group for products and then assign categories such as "Phones", "Computers", and "Printers" to articles.

To publish an article, you need to create a draft article, fill in the required information, and then click the Publish button. You can choose to publish the article immediately or schedule it for later publication.

You can use SOAP and REST APIs to create, update, delete, and retrieve articles. You can also use these APIs to manage data categories and other knowledge settings.