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Classic Knowledge User Access
Specify which support reps in your company are Classic Knowledge users and give them access to article actions. Create user profiles with the user permissions they need, and then assign them to these profiles.
Required Editions
| Available in Salesforce Classic. View supported editions. |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To create or edit users: | Manage Internal Users |
| To create article types and article actions: | Customize Application AND Manage Salesforce Knowledge |
To maintain access to Knowledge, you or your admin must run the Lightning Knowledge Migration Tool before June 1, 2025. All orgs are required to migrate from Classic Knowledge to Lightning Knowledge.
By default all internal users can read articles. However some licenses like the Knowledge Only User licenses, require the “AllowViewKnowledge” permission on the user’s profile. To give a user the “AllowViewKnowledge” permission on their profile, activate the permission on a cloned profile and assign the cloned profile to the user.
- From Setup, enter Users in the Quick Find box, then select Users.
- Click Edit next to the user's name or click New to create a user.
- If you are creating a user, complete all the required fields.
- Select the Knowledge User checkbox.
- Click Save.
User permissions control access to different tasks in Classic Knowledge. We recommend using permission sets or custom profiles to grant users the permissions they need. For example, you can create a permission set called “Article Manager” that includes the permissions to create, edit, publish, and assign articles.
Refer to this table for details on permissions associated with Classic Knowledge tasks. Refer to Lightning Knowledge User Access on permissions associated with Lightning Knowledge.
| Salesforce Knowledge Task | User Permissions Needed |
|---|---|
| To create article types: | “Manage Salesforce Knowledge” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) |
| To manage article actions: | “Manage Salesforce Knowledge” This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile. |
| To create articles from cases using the simple editor: | “Read” and “Create” on the article type |
| To create articles from cases using the standard editor: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read” and “Create” on the article type |
| To search articles from cases and attach articles to cases: | “Read” on the article type |
| To create articles from answers: | “Read” and “Create” on the article type |
| To search for and read articles from the Article or Knowledge tab: | “Read” on the article type |
| To create or edit articles from the Article Management tab: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Create”, and “Edit” on the article type |
| To edit draft articles from the Article Management tab: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read” and “Edit” on the article type |
| To delete articles from the Article Management tab: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Edit”, and “Delete” on the article type AND A delete article action, set on the Article Actions Setup page. |
| To publish articles from the Article Management tab: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Create”, “Edit”, and “Delete” on the article type AND A publish article action, set on Article Actions Setup page |
| To assign articles for the Article Management tab: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read” and “Edit” on the article type |
| To edit published or archived articles: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Create”, and “Edit” on the article type AND A publish or archive article action, set on the Article Actions Setup page |
| To archive articles from the Article Management tab: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Create”, “Edit”, and “Delete” on the article type AND An archive article action, set on the Article Actions Setup page |
| To submit articles for translation: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Create”, and “Edit” on the article type AND A translate article action, set on the Article Actions Setup page |
| To delete translated articles: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Edit”, and “Delete” on the article type AND A delete article action, set on the Article Actions Setup page |
| To publish translated articles: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Create”, “Edit”, and “Delete” on the article type AND A publish article action, set on the Article Actions Setup page |
| To edit translated articles: | “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Create”, and “Edit” on the article type AND A translate article action, set on the Article Actions Setup page |
| To import articles: | “Manage Salesforce Knowledge” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Manage Articles” AND “Manage Knowledge Article Import/Export” AND “Read”, “Create”, “Edit”, and “Delete” on the article type |
| To import and export translated articles: | “Manage Salesforce Knowledge” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Manage Knowledge Article Import/Export” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.) AND “Read”, “Create”, “Edit”, and “Delete” on the article type |
| To create data categories | “Manage Data Categories” permission. This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile. |
To enable service reps to perform their specific tasks, create public groups for each role and assign only the necessary article actions to those groups.
- Scott: The Reader
- Scott Jackson is relatively new to the company, so he’s a basic service rep of the knowledge base. Currently, he has read-only access to articles, so he can search and view articles. Readers don’t author or publish, so he won’t belong to a public group or need to submit articles for approval. He needs the following permissions to perform his job.
- Amber: The Candidate
-
Amber Delaney is a candidate-level support rep and can create and publish articles with statuses of either Work in Progress or Not Validated. If Amber works on an article with a different validation status, she must send it to a queue for approval before it’s published.
Amber is part of the KCS Candidate public group and submits the articles she can’t publish to the Publishing External queue. She needs the following permissions to perform her job duties.
- Anne: The Contributor
-
As a contributor, Anne Murphy is a more advanced Knowledge user. She understands the standards for articles in the organization and can create articles and publish articles with Validated Internal status. She can also work on articles authored by other users if they have either Work in Progress or Not Validated statuses, and can change them to Validated Internal. Since she doesn’t have permission to publish articles to an external audience, she must submit those customer-facing articles to the Publishing External queue.
Note In Salesforce Classic, if you don't have the "Manage Articles" permission, you don't see draft articles. However, you can still approve draft articles by going to the Knowledge approval page.Anne is a member of the Contributor public group and she needs the following permissions to perform her job duties.
- Pat: The Publisher
- Pat Brown is Knowledge domain expert and is responsible for reviewing and publishing articles to an external audience. He is a member of the Publisher public group. Pat also belongs to the Publishing External queue. He needs the following permissions to perform his job duties.
- How they all work together
- Each user profile defines a service rep's permission to perform different job duties
and functions. To enable service reps to perform these functions, you create public groups for each role and assign only the necessary article actions
to that group. The criteria you create in the approval process
defines which validation
status can be automatically approved and published and which article must be
approved and published by a domain expert.
For example, Anne, the Contributor, can create a Validated External article, but based on the article actions assigned to her public group, the approval process sends her article to Pat, the Publisher, to be published. Pat, as a Publisher, can publish his own articles without submitting them to a queue.
The following table lists the job functions that each role needs to perform on articles in the organization
Job Function Reader Candidate Contributor Publisher Create and publish Work in Progress No Automatically approved and published Automatically approved and published Yes Create and publish Not Validated No Automatically approved and published Automatically approved and published Yes Create and publish Validated Internal No Needs approval Automatically approved and published Yes Create and publish Validated External No Needs approval Needs approval Yes Update and publish Work in Progress No No Automatically approved and published Yes Update and publish Not Validated No No Automatically approved and published Yes Update and publish Validated Internal No No Automatically approved and published Yes Update and publish Validated External No No Needs approval Yes
- Create Public Groups for Knowledge
Salesforce Knowledge uses public groups as a way to assign users to specific tasks related to articles. When you assign article actions to a public group, you can grant users in that group the ability to do things like publish articles with a specified validation status. Public groups are also used in approval processes to manage the publishing workflow. - Assign Article Actions to Public Groups
Article actions let support reps participate in the article publishing process. By default, all article actions are assigned to users with the “Manage Articles” user permission. Support reps can complete an action as long as they have the correct article type permission. You can control article action access by assigning public groups to article actions and adding support reps the relevant public groups. To further restrict actions like publishing, you can create approval processes that allow support reps to publish only those articles that have specific validation statuses. For example, many contributors can write many articles but you can create an approval process so no articles are published until they are reviewed and validated by a qualified author.
