Salesforce Service Cloud Knowledge Base Best Practices

In this comprehensive guide, you’ll gain insights into optimizing the management and dissemination of knowledge within your organization through best practices in handling Knowledge Articles. Here’s what you’ll discover:

• Strategies for identifying and filling knowledge gaps to enhance your database’s value.
• Techniques for selecting the right authors and ensuring the accuracy and relevance of knowledge articles before publication.
• Tips for increasing article visibility and engagement across both internal and external channels.
• Key considerations for importing articles into Salesforce, including data cleansing and field mapping to ensure a smooth integration process.
• Effective use of Data Categories for organizing and accessing knowledge articles, enhancing the overall search and retrieval experience.

Let’s get started!

Implement Best Practices when working with Knowledge Articles

Knowledge Lifecycle – Best Practices

• Awareness – Understanding current gaps within the business and the database. By identifying this, you will be able to recognize the changes required in your existing Knowledge database.
• Knowledge – Identify the users having relevant experience as authors of knowledge articles. Provide access to record types, page layouts, and fields to such users.
• Review – Ensure the accuracy of knowledge articles by implementing a review process before publishing the articles.
• Audience – Knowing whom you intend to expose the knowledge article to. Can the article be categorized based on your product or your intended audience?
• Implement – Share your Knowledge Article to both internal and external channels, and encourage voting and feedback to allow for awareness of gaps.

Search Accessibility

• Record Types – Use record types, page layouts, and field-level security to only display articles relevant to the user.
• Channels – Configure the Knowledge articles to be shown on the relevant channels to avoid unrelated articles being shown.
• Data Categories – Use data categories to group your articles hierarchy and display articles based on roles or profiles.

General Best Practices

• Ensure your knowledge articles have engaging content and allow your audience’s feedback, comments, and votes to contribute to the article’s effectiveness.
• Use the audience’s comments, votes, and feedback to analyze and be aware of any modifications that need to be done.
• The most crucial step is to ensure that your knowledge articles are constantly updated to provide the best and latest solution to the user. 

Best Practices When Importing Articles

• Articles should have been data cleansed before importing in Salesforce.
• Ensure each field on the data import file can be mapped to a field in Salesforce.
• Test a sample set before importing the full data import.
• Know what features of a Knowledge Article can be imported.
• Verify that the fields receiving imported data have edit access in field-level security.

Best Practices when Using Data Categories

• Shortcuts – Use the keyboard shortcuts when creating and maintaining data categories.
• Visibility – Use the category group visibility rules when creating or updating data categories.
• Save – Save as you go to ensure your actions are updated.

Use Case

A service agent who is a super user has been tasked to import knowledge articles into Salesforce. The user has verified the field mapping and has access to edit and create articles. The user still gets an error when importing a small sample set. What access should the consultant check to resolve this issue?

Solution: Edit access at the field level

Reason: The consultant should verify that the user has edit access in field-level security on the fields receiving imported data. The access should be checked for all the fields in which data is being imported.

Conclusion  

In conclusion, mastering the art of knowledge article management is not just about keeping your database updated; it’s about empowering your organization to leverage collective wisdom effectively. By implementing these best practices, you ensure that your knowledge base is not only a repository of information but a dynamic tool that grows with your business, enhances user engagement, and improves decision-making.

Ready to take your Salesforce skills to the next level? Sign up with saasguru for a free trial and gain access to over 18 Salesforce Certification Courses, 50+ Mock Exams, and 50+ Salesforce Labs for hands-on learning. Start your journey to becoming a Salesforce expert today and unlock the full potential of your knowledge articles.