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Workflow and Approvals for Articles
Creating processes where Knowledge experts review, validate, and approve articles for publication is critical to creating a trustworthy knowledge base. Implementing approval processes with Salesforce Knowledge gives you more control over the content and publication of your articles.
Required Editions
| Available in Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience. View supported editions. |
| User Permissions Needed | |
|---|---|
| To view workflow rules and approval processes: | View Setup and Configuration |
| To create or change workflow rules and approval processes: | Customize Application |
Creating workflow rules and approval processes lets your organization automate many of the tasks involved with managing its knowledge base. When implementing Salesforce Knowledge, you can create workflow rules and approval processes for some or all the article types used by your organization.
Workflow rules let you create email alerts, update fields, or send outbound API messages when an article meets certain criteria. For example, you could create a workflow rule that sends an email alert to the article owner when a new article is created from a case. Article type workflow doesn't support tasks.
Approval processes automate the approval of articles. When implemented with Salesforce Knowledge, approval processes give you more control over the content of your articles and the process used to approve them. For example, you can create a process that requires legal and management teams to approve articles containing sensitive information.
Tasks aren't available for article type workflow rules.
- From Setup, enter Workflow Rules in the Quick Find box, then select Workflow Rules to access the workflow rules list page.
- On the workflow rules list page, click New Rule.
- Select the article type from the Select object dropdown list.
- Click Next.
- Enter a rule name. Optionally, enter a description for the rule.
- Select the evaluation criteria, and choose how criteria are met.
- Enter criteria for the rule.
- Click Save & Next.
- Click Add Workflow Action, select the type of action for the rule, and enter the information required by the action.
- Click Save.
- Optionally, add a time-dependent workflow action by clicking Add Time Trigger. Provide time trigger information, and then click Save.
- Click Done.
- From Setup, enter Approval Processes in the Quick Find box, then select Approval Processes.
- Choose the Approval Process Wizard. Two wizards are available to help you through the approval setup process. Choose the one that meets your requirement the best.
- Provide a name, unique name, and description for the process.
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Specify criteria for entering the process.
For example, you can specify that an article published on a public site requires approval: Visible on public site equals True.
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Specify approvers for the process.
Let the submitter choose the approver manually. (default) Prompts the user to select the next approver. Automatically assign an approver using a standard or custom hierarchy field. Assigns the approval request to the user in the field displayed next to this option. You select this field when you configure the approval process. Automatically assign to a queue. Available only for objects that support queues. Assigns approval requests to a queue. Automatically assign to approver(s). Assigns the approval request to one or more specific users, specific queues, or users related to the submitted record. You can add up to 25 per step. -
Select the email template that the process uses to notify approvers.
When an approval process assigns an approval request to a user, Salesforce automatically sends the user an approval request email. The email contains a link to the approval page in Salesforce, where the support rep can approve or reject the request and add comments.
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Configure the approval request page layout.
The approver approves or rejects the article from this page. You can add as many fields to this page as you think your support reps require to reasonably assess an article's content. For example, you could choose to include a summary of the article's content, the product discussed, and the author's name.
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Specify which users are allowed to submit articles for approval.
For example, for articles that require editing before approval, you could create a public group containing editors, and then specify that only members of that group can submit articles for approval.
- Activate the approval process.
Keep the following in mind when creating approval processes for article types.
- You need to be a Knowledge user in order to publish an article as part of the approval process.
- Adding an approval process to an article type lets your organization ensure that the required reviewers approve the article before it's published, as long as it’s not already scheduled. Articles scheduled for publication before being sent for approval are published regardless of the approval status. When an approval process is enabled for an article's article type, the Approval History related list displays on the article details page.
- When creating an approval process, change the final approval action to “Unlock the record for editing” to allow support reps to publish the article.
- Articles aren't published automatically at the end of an approval process. Support reps must click Publish... to make the article available in the publishing channels.
- When an approval process is associated with an article type, support reps with the “Manage Articles” permission could see both the Publish... and the Submit for Approval buttons on an article's detail page. (Permissions and article actions determine which buttons they see.) These support reps can publish an article without submitting it for approval. To prevent this scenario from affecting many users, assign the “Publish Articles” article action to a limited group of users instead of giving it to all users with the “Manage Articles” permission. Ensure that the users with direct publishing capability know which articles need approval before publication.
- 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.
- Workflow rules and approval processes apply to the “Draft to Publication” portion of the
article publishing cycle. Workflow rules aren’t available for archiving. Approval processes
aren’t available for translation or archiving.
Note When an article is published from the edit page, the article is first saved and then published. Workflow rules apply to the saved draft article but not the published article. - A user who only has read access to an article type can publish a draft article of that type if there is an approval process associated to the article type and the approval process is complete but the article has not been published.
- Create Workflow Actions for Knowledge
Knowledge actions are templates that link a workflow action to an article type. When knowledge actions are enabled, you can use them to link article types to specific workflow article actions, such as publishing. For example, if you want each FAQ to publish as a new version when it completes the approval process, you can create a knowledge action that links an FAQ article to the Publish as New action. Then, when you create an approval process for FAQs, select the new Knowledge action.
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