Knowledge Basics for Lightning Experience

Get Started with Lightning Knowledge

• A lightning knowledge base is a giant library that contains notes about commonly accessed information regarding a company’s products or services.
  • The knowledge base is accessible to agents, customers in communities, or even customers searching on a public website.
• With a knowledge base, agents don’t have to research every question from scratch. The knowledge base accumulates over time. Every time an agent answers a question, the agent records the answer in an article. The next time it is asked, any other agent can find the article in the knowledge base and have that answer ready.
• See if an org has Service Cloud User feature licenses available via: Setup » Company Settings » Company Information
• A knowledge base is a single repository for storing helpful organizational information.
• A knowledge base improves productivity by capturing and consolidating important information in one place.

Prepare the Knowledge Base for Success

Best practices

• Create a record type for each different type of information (Examples: FAQs, procedures, product manuals, guidelines).
• Use Knowledge Import tool to bring articles in from a different knowledge base.
• Use Lightning Knowledge Migration tool to move Salesforce Classic Knowledge into Lightning Knowledge.
• Determine fields on support cases you want to use to filter suggested articles (Examples: Product family, product region, type of issue). Define data category groups for each type of search filter.
• If articles require approval due to sensitive information, add an approval process to a record type so required reviewers approve that type of article before it is published.
• Different audiences are called “channels.” Set the channel on an article to determine which types of users can view the article.
• To track article feedback, users can give articles a thumbs up or thumbs down.
• To track article effectiveness, monitor how closely an article is attached to cases.

Organizing Info

• Data Groups are a means of categorizing info at a high level, so that people only find info relevant to their particular job function. Example groupings: teams for which it is pertinent.
• Within those Data Groups, it is possible to further sort the info into Data Categories. Example categories: product types.
• Each article has a specific lifestyle including the following steps:
  • Create, Publish, Update, Archive, Delete
• Different users have different permissions to perform each of those steps. Examples:
  • Readers Only: Read articles only.
  • Contributors: Read, Create, Edit, and Publish articles.
  • Knowledge Admin: Same as Contributors, + Archive and Delete.
• To ensure that the best articles are suggested as agents solve cases, create descriptive data categories for your cases and article types.
• The permissions and article actions that article contributors need include the ability to manage article permission and Read, Create, Edit, and Publish article actions.

Set Up a Simple Knowledge Base

• All internal users can read Knowledge articles without a special license.
• Orgs using Service Essentials include Lightning Knowledge User licenses.
• Assign Knowledge User licenses to users via: Setup » Users » Select a User » Edit » Knowledge User checkbox
• Enable Knowledge for the Org via: Setup » Quick Find » “Knowledge Settings” » Knowledge Settings » Enable Lightning Knowledge
  • One-time decision. Once turned on, Knowledge cannot be turned off.
• To use the Knowledge Setup Flow walkthrough for guidance during the setup process, access it via: Setup » Service Setup » View All under Recommended Setup » Knowledge Setup
• Create Articles via: Service Console » Knowledge tab » New » Select record type » Complete remaining fields.
  • Publish the article (or set up a review and approval process) once written.
• You can set up Lightning Knowledge authors and Data categories using the Lightning Knowledge Setup flow.
• The article summary appears in the search results for articles.