Knowledge Articles are reusable, versioned answers stored in Salesforce Knowledge — the platform’s knowledge-base feature. Agents attach articles to resolve cases faster, customers find them via self-service portals and the public web, and bots/Einstein use them as the corpus for AI-driven recommendations.
What a Knowledge Article is
Each article is a record on the Knowledge__kav object (the “Knowledge Article Version” object). Standard fields:
- Title, URL Name, Summary, Article Body (rich-text)
- Article Number (auto), Version Number
- Publication Status — Draft, Online (published), Archived
- Language, Translation links
- Validation Status — Approved, Out of Date
- Data Categories — taxonomy for filtering
- Topic — flexible tagging
- Channels — Internal, Customer, Partner, Public Knowledge Base — controls visibility per audience
How versioning works
Knowledge is strictly versioned. When you edit a published article, Salesforce creates a new draft version. The currently-published version stays online until you publish the draft, at which point the prior version is archived. You can revert to any prior version at any time.
Article Types (Classic Knowledge)
In Classic Knowledge, you could create Article Types (FAQ, How-To, Known Issue, Release Notes) — each with its own fields and templates. Lightning Knowledge replaced this with a single Knowledge__kav object plus Record Types for the same effect.
Data Categories
Data categories are a hierarchical taxonomy used to filter articles in search and to control visibility. A Category Group like “Geography” might have categories “Americas / EMEA / APAC” — agents see articles relevant to their region, customers in the EMEA portal see EMEA articles only.
Channels (audience control)
| Channel | Who sees |
|---|---|
| Internal | Internal Salesforce users (agents) |
| Customer | Authenticated customers in Experience Cloud |
| Partner | Authenticated partners |
| Public Knowledge Base | Anyone on the public web |
A single article can be exposed to one or more channels at publish time.
Where Knowledge appears
- Service Console — the Knowledge component on Case lookups, surfacing relevant articles
- Experience Cloud / Help Center — customer-facing portal
- Public Knowledge Base — published site for SEO and self-service
- Einstein Article Recommendations — pushes articles to agents based on the live Case
- Einstein Search / Lightning Search — federated search across Knowledge + records
Linking to a Case
When an article resolves a Case, the agent attaches it from the Knowledge component. Salesforce records the link in CaseArticle, increments the article’s “Attached to Cases” count, and (optionally) inserts the article into the customer email reply.
Multi-language
Knowledge has first-class translation. You define a base language, mark articles for translation, and translators see a queue of work. Each translation is its own version; publication is per-language.
Article ratings / feedback
Customers can rate articles (helpful / not helpful, star rating). Those signals feed into Einstein Search ranking and a “Top Articles” report so editors know what’s working.
Common follow-ups
- Knowledge vs Solutions? — Knowledge is the modern, versioned, multi-language replacement.
- Can I version-control article body in Git? — Not natively; teams export to CMS or use AppExchange tools.
- Lightning Knowledge vs Classic Knowledge? — Lightning is the supported path; Classic is in legacy maintenance.
Verified against: Salesforce Help — Salesforce Knowledge. Last reviewed 2026-05-17 for Spring ‘26.