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Set Up Lightning Knowledge with a Guided Setup Flow
The Lightning Knowledge setup flow is a quick way to get your knowledge base started. Whether it’s a secure customer portal or integrated into a public Experience Cloud site, your knowledge base is an extension of your service website. Turn on Lightning Knowledge, select article authors, and make a few data category groups. Build the momentum by configuring page layouts, record types, and processes.
Required Editions
| Available in Lightning Experience. View supported editions. |
You can embed Lightning Knowledge in the console so that your service reps can easily find, access, and deliver the right answers to customers. Reps can also contribute to the knowledge base so best answers are always accessible to the whole team.
Where to Access the Setup Flow
This flow is available from Service Setup in Lightning Experience. You can get to Service Setup by clicking the gear icon and selecting Service Setup. Service Setup isn't available in orgs created in Spring '26 or later. If you don't have access to it, set up Knowledge in Salesforce Go instead.
In Service Setup, you can find recommended setup flows, content, and tips based on what you’ve set up already. If you don’t see the setup flow you’re looking for, you can click View All to see the full list.
Select the tile to open the flow.
What Does This Flow Do?
In this setup flow, we walk you through:
- Enabling Lightning Knowledge
- Selecting knowledge article authors
- Creating data categories and data category groups, which help you classify and find articles. You can use data categories to control access to a set of articles, questions or ideas.
We also turn on several things in the background during the setup flow.
- Enabling Lightning Knowledge
We enable Lightning Knowledge during the flow, which can’t be undone. Don’t worry about this if you’ve never used Knowledge before and you’re ready to dive in on Lightning Experience.
Lightning Knowledge is different from Salesforce Knowledge in Salesforce Classic, so if you already use Salesforce Classic, some planning is required. Make sure that you know and understand what changes and what works differently when you switch.
- Default Page Layouts and Record Types
A default FAQ page layout and record type is auto-enabled in the setup flow. The page layout determines how the articles are shown. This step associated the page layout and record types. After completing the flow, you can go to the Object Manager to create or modify your page layouts.
Note If you created a page layout and record type before starting the Lightning Knowledge setup flow, we preserve your initial settings and don’t create new ones in the flow. - Knowledge Permission Sets
Your selected authors get full read, write, and publishing access through the Knowledge LSF permission set, and access to the Knowledge Object.
The setup flow auto-enables the page layout and record type for these profiles. Everyone whom you designate an author gets a Knowledge User License.
The setup flow grants data category visibility to profiles selected on the Choose Author screen.
See Also
Lightning Knowledge Setup Flow: What’s Next?
After completing the setup flow, you have a budding Knowledge base that’s ready to be filled with great articles for your customers.
Review Your Data Categories
Look at the data categories and data category groups you created during the flow. Your customers can use these categories and groups to help find articles, so make sure they’re clear and that they cover everything you want to cover. If you didn’t create any during the flow, go ahead and create some.
Write and Publish Articles
Now that you’ve set up Lightning Knowledge it’s time to start writing and publishing articles. You can write and publish articles from Knowledge home in Lightning Experience, in the Knowledge tab in Salesforce Classic, or in the Article Management tab in Salesforce Classic.
Check It Out in the Console
Add the Lightning Knowledge component to one of your Lightning console apps and see suggested articles while you browse your team’s cases. You can also search and sort articles, attach and remove articles from cases and chats, and follow and unfollow articles.
