Salesforce Knowledge Articles

Salesforce Knowledge Articles is a built-in feature that is your central hub for creating, storing, and managing informative articles. Customers can easily self-serve through a searchable knowledge base, finding solutions to common issues and product inquiries.

Knowledge is a treasure trove of information for support agents. They can access relevant articles to resolve customer cases efficiently and ensure consistent, accurate service. It’s a win-win for both customer satisfaction and agent efficiency – all within your organization’s existing Salesforce platform.

What are Salesforce Knowledge Articles?

Salesforce Knowledge Articles let us create, manage, and securely share our company information when and where needed. The Salesforce Knowledge base is built from knowledge articles, which are documents of information.

These articles can include information on processes, like how to reset your product to its defaults, or frequently asked questions, like how much storage your product supports. Experienced service agents and internal writers (like any individuals with solutions) write these articles.

The articles are then published on various channels: internal databases, customer and partner communities, or public websites so that customers can access the proper solutions to their problems.

To use Knowledge articles, we first have to enable them from the service setup and then add them to the case page layout from the edit page.

Salesforce Knowledge in Classic vs Lightning

Lightning Knowledge has transformed the functionality of Salesforce Knowledge. For instance, the Knowledge component for Lightning Service Console replaces Knowledge One in the Salesforce Classic Service Console and standard record types are used instead of article types.

Let’s compare Salesforce Knowledge in Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience.

FEATURE	CLASSIC KNOWLEDGE	LIGHTNING KNOWLEDGE
Access and permissions	CRUD, profile permissions, page layouts, and custom article actions per public group	CRUD, profile permissions, and page layouts
Search Engine	Relies on standard  Salesforce search functionality.	Enhanced search capabilities, including improved filters and topic-specific searches.
Analytics and Reporting	Limited reporting options are available. It may require additional customization or integration with external tools.	Lightning Knowledge offers advanced analytics and reporting tools to track how articles are viewed, measure engagement metrics, and monitor performance trends effectively.
Files	Files are attached in custom file fields	Files are stored in the standard Files object and attached to the Files-related list.
Object home	Knowledge One and Article Management tab	Knowledge home page with list views
Page layouts	Fields only, per article type and user profile	Fields, actions, and related lists, per record type and user profile
Record home (articles)	Custom record home	Default Record Home and Record Home that is configurable via the Lightning App Builder
Setup	Salesforce Classic Setup	Lightning Knowledge Setup
Sharing	Sharing by data category	Standard Salesforce sharing is also available
Types of articles	Article Types	Standard Record Types
Use Knowledge in the console	Add Knowledge One to the Service Console	Add the Lightning Knowledge component via the Lightning App Builder

Next Topic