CHAPTER 1 Develop with Salesforce Knowledge
In this chapter ...
•
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Enable Salesforce Knowledge
Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Edit the Default Article Type
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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Develop with Salesforce Knowledge Publish an Article
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