Data Category Visibility

Note Since the Summer '20 release, standard Salesforce sharing for Lightning Knowledge is available. Switching to standard sharing changes how you work with data categories and how users can access Knowledge articles. The View All Records permission works only when standard sharing is enabled for Knowledge. See Sharing Considerations for Lightning Knowledge.

Three types of visibility are available. With custom data category visibility, you can see only the data categories permitted by their role, permission sets, or profile.

• All Categories: All categories are visible.
• None: No categories are visible.
• Custom: Selected categories are visible.

Visibility Setting Enforcement

To ensure a wide range of relevant information, category group visibility is broadly interpreted. Setting a category as visible makes that category and its entire directly related family line—ancestors, immediate parent, primary children, other descendants—visible to users. For example, consider a Geography category group with continents such as Asia and Europe at the top level, various countries at the second level, and cities at the third level. If France is the only visible category selected, then you can see articles classified with Europe, France, and all French cities. In other words, you can see categories that have a direct vertical relationship to France but you can’t see articles classified at or below Asia and the other continents.

Note Only the first-level categories in the category group are visible on the Answers tab. In the Geography example, only the continent categories appear on the Answers tab; therefore, if France is the category selected as visible in category group visibility settings, zone members can see questions classified with Europe.

Category group visibility settings are enforced on the Answers tab, Article Management tab, Articles tab in all channels (internal app, partner portal, Salesforce.com Community, and Customer Portal), and the public knowledge base. In the following areas, users only see the categories that their visibility settings allow:

• On the Article Management tab, when creating or editing articles
• On the Article Management tab and the Articles tab, the category dropdown menu for finding articles
• On the Answers tab, the categories listed below the zone name

Initial Visibility Settings

If role, permission set, or profile data category visibility hasn’t been set up, all users can see all data categories. However, if data category visibility is set, users with no data category visibility by role, permission set, or profile, only see uncategorized articles and questions unless you make the associated categories visible by default. Role, permission set, and profile visibility settings restrict default visibility settings. For example, if a data category is visible by default, it isn’t seen by a user whose role restricts access to that data category.

Note

If data category visibility is defined with roles, permission sets, and profiles, Salesforce uses a logical OR between the definitions to create a visibility rule for each user.

Role-Based Visibility Setting Inheritance

Child roles inherit their parent role's settings and are kept in sync with changes to the parent role. You can customize and reduce the child role's visibility, but you can’t increase it to be greater than that of the parent role. By default, Customer Portal users and partner portal users inherit the category group visibility settings assigned to their account managers. You can change the category group visibility settings for each portal role. Because high-volume portal users don't have roles, you must designate visibility settings by permission set or profile before these users can view categorized articles and questions.

Categorized Article Visibility

User’s can see an article if they can see at least one category per category group on the article. For example, consider an article that is classified with California and Ohio in the Geography category group and Desktop in the Products category group:

• If you have visibility on Ohio and Desktop (but not California), you can see the article.
• If you don't have visibility on either California or Ohio but do have visibility on Desktop, you don’t see the article.
• If you have visibility on California but not Desktop, you do not see the article.

Revoked Visibility

Data category visibility can be revoked (set to None) for a particular category group. Users in the target role, permission set, or profile can only see articles and questions that aren't classified with a category in that category group. For example, if a user’s visibility for the Geography category group is revoked and has visibility only to the Products category group, the user sees only articles classified under the Products category. You can assign an answer zone to only one category group. So if you assign the Geography category group to the answer zone, and revoke a member's visibility for the group, the member can only see uncategorized questions.

For a detailed example, see Category Group Article Visibility Settings Examples.

• How Category Visibility Differs from Other Salesforce Models
  These settings are unique to articles and questions and differ from other Salesforce models
• Category Group Visibility on Roles
  The Category Group Visibility Settings related list summarizes which categories users in the role can see, according to category group.
• Modify Default Data Category Visibility
  You can edit the default data category visibility.
• Edit Category Group Visibility
  You can edit your data category visibility.
• Category Group Article Visibility Settings Examples
  Review examples of category group settings for article visibility permissions.