Enable and Configure Lightning Knowledge

Knowledge Is Power

Having a quality supply of knowledge articles on your self-serve site can do wonders for case deflection, customer satisfaction, and agent productivity. Currently the hard-working support agents at Category 1 Biking rely on FAQs taped to office walls and cash registers. Time to upload those FAQs to a site!

Lightning Knowledge Author

To access Knowledge, you need permissions on your user record.

1. From Service Setup, click the Home tab.
2. Click View All and then search for and select Knowledge Setup.
3. Click Start.
4. Ensure your name is selected as a Lightning Knowledge Author.
5. Click Next, Next, then Finish.

Configure Lightning Knowledge

You can create record types to distinguish types of Knowledge articles and custom fields to store different types of information. Category 1 Biking is starting with a simple FAQ record type. Since you used the Knowledge Setup guide, the FAQ record type has been created for you by default. To view the new record type:

1. Click the Object Manager tab.
2. Select Knowledge from the list of objects.
3. Click Record Types.
4. Ensure that the FAQ record type has been created.

Now make the custom field. You should still be on the Knowledge object page.

1. Click Fields & Relationships.
2. Click New.
3. For Data Type, select Text Area (Long) and click Next.
4. Enter these details..
   • Field Label: Text
   • Length: 32,768
   • Visible Lines: 3
   • Field Name: Text
5. Click Next.
6. Select Visible for all profiles, and click Next.
7. Leave Add Field selected for the Knowledge Layout and all other default selections as is.
8. Click Save.

Finally, update the page layout to put the text field in the right spot on the page. Again, you should still be on the Knowledge object page.

1. Click Page Layouts.
2. Click the down arrow next to Knowledge Layout, and select Edit.
3. In the Information section, drag the Text field underneath the Title field.
4. Click Save.
   

Enable Topics for Objects

There are many ways to organize content. With topics, you can classify and search Knowledge articles by assigning specific topic areas. Without enabling Salesforce Knowledge topics, articles can’t be displayed outside of your org. 

This meets Category 1 Biking’s needs nicely, as they want to center conversations and knowledge articles around common topics. Over time, they want to give the community more control in determining those topics. But to start, they want to launch their site with a few topics they’ve decided are important. First, you have to enable topics for the Knowledge Object.

1. Click the setup gear and select Setup. Note: Ensure you select Setup and not Service Setup.
2. Enter Topics for Objects in Quick Find, then select Topics for Objects.
3. Under Object, select Knowledge.
4. Click Enable Topics.
5. Check Text and Title.
6. Click Save.

You come back to topics later when you’re configuring your site. 

Create Knowledge Articles

Now that you have your basic setup in place for knowledge, create a few sample articles for Category 1 Biking.

1. Click the App Launcher and enter Knowledge in the Search apps and items... box and select Knowledge.
2. Click New.
3. For Title, enter When is the T-800 coming out?
4. Click in the URL Name field to generate the URL Name from the title.
5. For Text, enter Hopefully this summer!
6. Under Properties, select Visible to Customer.
7. Click Save & New.

Follow the same steps to publish two additional knowledge articles.

Create this article:

1. Title: How can I find local bike groups?
2. Text: Check out Social Groups topic to find local meetings.
3. Under Properties, select Visible to Customer.
4. Click Save & New.

And create this article, too:

1. Title: When will my bike arrive?
2. Text: Most shipments arrive within 7-10 business days. You will receive an email confirmation with tracking information once your bike ships.
3. Under Properties, select Visible to Customer.
4. Click Save.

Time to publish the articles:

1. Click the *When will my bike arrive? tab [1] at the top and change the list view to Draft Articles [2].
   
2. Check the box next to all three article titles and then click Publish.
3. Ensure Publish Now is selected.
4. Select No, my changes do not affect existing translations.
5. Click Publish.

Remember, you need to have selected English as the default language for the knowledge base in order to pass this step.

Now it’s time to configure your site. You’ll start that in the next step.