Build a Community with Knowledge and Chat

Launch Your Trailhead Playground

  • Community Cloud is being rebranded as Experience Cloud, because the product lets you build more than just communities:
    • Portals, help centers, forums, sites, mobile apps, and other means of managing your content.
  • The goal of the project is to introduce you to Community Cloud and Service Cloud
  • This project involves creating a community. It includes:
    • Knowledge articles,
    • Online chat, powered by Chat Agent,
    • Ability to create a support case,
    • Ability to ask questions in the community,
    • Personalized profile page for the community,
    • Customizable branding with text logos, images, colors, etc.

Enable Chat Agent and Communities

  • Enable Communities via: Setup » Service Setup » Quick Find » “Communities” » Communities Settings » Enable Communities. Add Domain.
    • Once the domain name has been set, it cannot be changed without calling Salesforce.
    • Once enabled, communities cannot be turned off.
    • Follow the remaining prompts
  • Starting point for Community setup is: Service Setup » Channels » Communities

Other Important Setup Steps Covered on Trailhead

  • Run the Chat Agent Guided Setup Flow
  • Modify the Chat Agent Chat Window Title
  • Create a Chat Agent Skill
  • Create a Chat Agent Configuration
  • Add Chat Agent to the Service Console

Enable and Configure Lightning Knowledge

  • Lightning Knowledge Author: to access knowledge, your user needs certain permissions set up.
    • Set up via: Service Setup » Home » View All » Knowledge Setup » Start » Ensure your name is selected as a Lightning Knowledge Author.
    • After this step, Knowledge will be accessible as its own object in the object manager.
  • There are many ways to organize Knowledge content. One way is By Topic. Configure via: Profile Icon (top right) » Switch to Salesforce Classic » Setup » Quick Find » “Topics for Objects” » Topics for Objects » Object » Knowledge » Enable Topics » Check Text and Title » Save.
  • After its enabled, access knowledge via: App Launcher » Quick Find » “Knowledge” » Knowledge »

Add Knowledge to the Community Using Topics

  • Access Communities via: Setup » Service Setup » Quick Find » “All Communities” » All Communities » Workspaces
  • Set Navigational Topics via: Workspaces » Content Management » Topics » Navigational Topics
  • Associate articles to topics via: Workspaces » Article Management » Pencil next to each article » Enter into topics section » Save

Add Branding and Components to the Community

  • Add Branding and Components via: Community Selector » Builder
  • Adjusting various items relating to the look and feel of the community page are possible:
    • Headline, Theme, Navigation, Chat Snap-In, Content Security Policy
      • Content Security Policy is a web standard that defines rules to control the source for content that can be loaded on a page.

Try Out Your New Community

  • Make yourself available for chat via: Service Setup » Quick Find » “Service Console” » Service Console » Omni-Channel (lower left) » Dropdown » Available - Chat
  • Access a work-in-progress community by selecting Preview from the Builder screen