CREATING WORKFLOW RULES AND APPROVAL PROCESSES
Creating workflow rules and approval processes lets your organization automate many of the tasks involved with managing its knowledge base. When implementing Salesforce Knowledge, you can create workflow rules and approval processes for some or all of the article types used by your organization.
Workflow rules let you create email alerts, update fields, or send outbound API messages when an article meets certain criteria. For example, you could create a workflow rule that sends an email alert to the article owner when a new article is created from a case. Note that tasks are not supported by article type workflow.
Approval processes automate the approval of articles. When implemented with Salesforce
Knowledge, approval processes give you additional control over the content of your articles and the process used to approve them. For example, you can create a process that requires legal and management teams to approve articles containing sensitive information.
Creating Workflow Rules for Article Types
EDITIONS
Available in:
•
Enterprise
•
Performance
•
Unlimited
•
Developer
USER PERMISSIONS
1. From Setup, enter
Workflow Rules
in the
Quick Find
box, then select Workflow
Rules to access the workflow rules list page.
2. On the workflow rules list page, click New Rule.
3. Select the article type from the
Select object
drop-down list.
4. Click Next.
5. Enter a rule name. Optionally, enter a description for the rule.
6. Select the evaluation criteria.
7. Choose criteria are met
8. Enter criteria for the rule.
9. Click Save & Next.
10. Click Add Workflow Action and select the type of action for the rule.
11. Enter information required by the action.
12. Click Save.
13. Optionally, add a time-dependent workflow action by clicking Add Time Trigger.
14. Provide time trigger information and then click Save.
15. Click Done.
Note: Tasks aren't available for article type workflow rules.
For more information about creating workflow rules, see “Create a Workflow Rule” in the Salesforce Help.
To view workflow rules and approval processes:
•
“View Setup and
Configuration”
To create or change workflow rules and approval processes:
•
“Customize Application”
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Creating Workflow Rules and Approval Processes
Creating Approval Processes for Article Types
The following is an overview of the steps involved in creating an approval process. For detailed instructions, see “Create an Approval
Process” in the Salesforce Help.
1. Choose the Approval Process Wizard. Two wizards are available to help you through the approval set up process. Choose the one that better meets your requirements. See “Choose the Right Wizard to Help You Create an Approval Process” in the Salesforce Help for more information.
2. Provide a name, unique name, and description for the process.
3. Specify criteria for entering the process. For example, you could specify that if the article will be published on a public site it requires approval:
Visible on public site equals True
.
4. Specify approvers for the process. You can allow the submitter to choose an approver, or have the process assign an approver based on your organization's role hierarchy, or to an approval queue, or to a specific user or set of users. For example, you could specify that articles that appear on public sites require review by a member of the legal department.
5. Select the email template that the process will use to notify approvers. When an approval process assigns an approval request to a user, Salesforce automatically sends the user an approval request email. The email contains a link to the approval page in Salesforce, where the user can approve or reject the request and add comments.
6. Configure the approval request page layout. The approver approves or rejects the article from this page. You can add as many fields to this page as you think your users will need to reasonably assess an article's content. For example, you might choose to include information such as a summary of the article's content, the product discussed, and the author's name.
7. Specify which users are allowed to submit articles for approval. For example, for articles that require editing before approval, you could create a public group containing editors, and then specify that only members of that group can submit articles for approval.
8. Activate the approval process.
Tips for Creating Approval Processes
Keep the following in mind when creating approval processes for article types.
•
Before you create an approval process, determine which approval process wizard to use.
•
Adding an approval process to an article type lets your organization ensure that the required reviewers approve the article before it's published. When an approval process is enabled for an article's article type, the Approval History related list displays on the article details page.
•
When creating an approval process, change the final approval action to “Unlock the record for editing” to allow users to publish the article.
•
Articles aren't published automatically at the end of an approval process. Users must click Publish... to make the article available in the publishing channel(s).
•
When an approval process is associated with an article type, users with the “Manage Articles” permission might see both the Publish... and the Submit for Approval buttons on an article's detail page. (Which buttons they see is determined by both permissions and article actions). These users can publish an article without submitting it for approval. To prevent this from affecting many users, assign the “Publish Articles” article action to a limited group of users instead of giving it to all users with the “Manage Articles” permission. For more information, see “Assigning Article Actions to Public Groups” in the Salesforce Help. You'll still want to make sure that the users with direct publishing capability know which articles need approval before publication.
•
Article approvers require the “Manage Articles” permission and at least the “Read” permission on the article type associated with articles they review. These permissions let them access the article in a draft state. Without these permissions, approvers can reassign but not approve articles.
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Creating Workflow Rules and Approval Processes
•
Workflow rules and approval processes apply to the “Draft to Publication” portion of the article publishing cycle. Workflow rules aren’t available for archiving. Approval processes aren’t available for translation or archiving.
Note: When an article is published from the edit page, the article is first saved and then published. Workflow rules apply to the saved draft article but not the published article.
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