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Sharing Considerations for Lightning Knowledge
Sharing gives you control and flexibility to set access to articles with organization-wide defaults, owner-based sharing, and criteria-based rules. Sharing is just one piece of the puzzle. It works with object permissions, app permission such as viewing draft articles, administrator access, and whether the article is available internally, externally, or publicly. Keep these considerations in mind when you plan your sharing model.
Required Editions
| Available in Lightning Experience. View supported editions. |
Where possible, we changed noninclusive terms to align with our company value of Equality. We maintained certain terms to avoid any effect on customer implementations.
How Do Data Categories Fit In?
When you switch to standard sharing, data categories are still used for classifying, filtering, and searching for articles. With standard sharing enabled, data categories no longer control access, so check whether you can simplify or remove any data categories. If you previously created groups of data categories primarily to control access, not filter articles, consider whether to remove or deactivate those groups. For example, sharing rules that use the article’s language or record type can replace groups of categories matching the article’s language, region, or record type.
Article Access with Salesforce Sharing
Changing the sharing model requires you to rethink your permissions and access strategy. Instead of data categories assigned to user profiles, standard sharing uses ownership, defaults, and rules to determine who can see and edit articles.
Sharing and article versions
Sharing works at the level of the article version (the Knowledge__kav object) and not the primary article (the Knowledge __ka object). You can configure rules and settings so that a support rep or user can access some versions but not others. In contrast, because category sharing affects the primary article, versions always have the same category-based access as that of the primary version. This difference applies to language-based versions and consecutive versions.
For example, changing the value in a record between versions can change the result of a sharing rule and therefore grant or remove access. In addition, a user can view only published articles unless their profile has the permissions to view draft and archived articles.
Object and app permissions
Knowledge object permissions to Create, Read, Edit, and Delete articles, granted via profile permissions, control baseline access. Sharing settings refine access, but they can’t give access to articles the user can’t otherwise view or edit. Currently, object-level View All Records and Modify All Records don’t grant more access.
Similarly, app permissions for Knowledge, such as View Draft Articles and View Archived Articles, are enforced regardless of sharing.
When
the user doesn't have access to the Knowledge__ka
object, any code involving Knowledge__kav throws an
error. Before you implement anything related to Knowledge__kav, use the Schema describe
methods to check if the user has access to the Knowledge__ka object. For example, Schema.sObjectType.Knowledge__ka.isAccessible()
Learn More About Enforcing Object and Field
Permissions
Article owners and translations
The user who creates a knowledge article is the owner of the primary article and, by default, all versions. The user who submits an article for translation is the owner of the translation version. When your knowledge base contains translations, make sure that your sharing settings provide translators with access to translations and primary-language article versions. For example, if the sharing for a primary-language article is set to Private, it can prevent translators from accessing the primary-language articles.
Access for article authors
Setting the organization-wide default to Public Read Only prevents non-owners from performing authoring actions such as editing or restoring archived articles. Write access granted via sharing is required to use these actions: Edit, Publish, Delete Draft, Assign, Edit as Draft, Archive, Submit for Translation, Restore, and Delete Archived Article. Admin users with Modify All Data permission, which overrides sharing, can still edit articles.
Fields Available for Sharing Rules
You can create rules using custom fields and most standard fields as criteria. But you can’t use the following fields in sharing rules:
- Article Type
- Assignment Date
- Assignment Due Date
- Assignment Note
- File fields
- Is Latest Version
- Is Master Language
- Publication Status
- Translation Completed Date
- Translation Exported Date
- Version Number
The Article Type field differentiates articles in Knowledge for Salesforce Classic, while Lightning Knowledge uses Record Type.
Limitations
The following Sharing features aren’t available for Knowledge.
