Salesforce Knowledge – A Step By Step Guide to Getting Started

With Salesforce Knowledge, you can give your service agents, customers, partners and website visitors the ultimate support tool. Create and manage a knowledge base with your company information, and securely share it when and where it’s needed.

By default, all internal users with read permissions, can read knowledge articles. But in order to publish, archive, delete, and manage articles, you need additional permissions. Salesforce Knowledge is available in Essentials and the Unlimited Edition with Service Cloud and is available for an additonal cost in other editions

It is based on Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) methodology. It is KCS v6 verified. Maintaining a Knowledge base is a continuous process. It involves stages such as Capture, Structure, Reuse and Improve.

Salesforce Knowledge also lets you

• Import existing Knowledge Base/ Content in Salesforce using Import Articles tool
• Approve articles before publishing 
• Improve article search with various features such as synonyms, promoted search terms, topics, Case keywords etc.
• Translate articles in multiple languages 

Lastly, if you have been using Knowledge for a while in Salesforce Classic then you can use Lightning Knowledge Migration Tool to convert your Classic Knowledge articles into Lightning.

Salesforce Knowledge in itself is a vast topic. This was just a summary of what Knowledge can do. For the purpose of this blog post here’s what we’ll be covering in this step by step guide. After going through it, you will learn how to:

• Enable Knowledge
• Configure Knowledge Settings
• Create Data Categories
• Customize Knowledge Object
• Create Knowledge Articles
• Publish Knowledge Articles
• Grant Users Access to Knowledge Articles
• View Relevant Knowledge Articles On Cases 
• Create New Version of Knowledge Articles
• Archive Knowledge Articles
• Knowledge Reports & Dashboards

Use this step by step guide to learn how to configure and use Salesforce Knowledge in less than 45 minutes and add yet another Salesforce skill to your arsenal

NOTE: Certain sections of the guide will appear as locked in the free preview. You can download the unlocked version of the guide in PDF format by subscribing to our “All Access” Pass through the link below.

Once you have implemented Salesforce Knowledge, you may also want to import articles rather than creating it manually in Salesforce. Importing knowledge articles is not as staightforward as importing records in standard/custom objects. But don’t worry. I have you covered there also with my another blog post Step By Step Guide to Importing Articles in Salesforce Knowledge

And if you would also like to know how to surface Knowledge articles in Communities, here is another step by step guide on how to get started with Salesforce Communities from Scratch

References & Useful URLs

• Set Up Salesforce Knowledge – Trailhead Project – (95 mins) – https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/projects/set-up-salesforce-knowledge
• Build Your Knowledge Base in Lightning Experience – Help Article (15 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=knowledge_lightning_parent_admin.htm&type=5
• Create Data Categories – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=category_parent_admin.htm&type=5
• Further Setup for Salesforce Knowledge – Help Article (15 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=knowledge_further_setup.htm&type=5
• Import External Content into Salesforce Knowledge – Help Article (15 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=knowledge_article_importer.htm&type=5
• Improve the Article Search Experience – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=knowledge_search_improve.htm&type=5
• Support Articles in Multiple Languages – Help Article (10 mins) – https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=knowledge_translation_overview.htm&type=5