Enable Communities and Set Permissions

Introduction

Ursa Major Solar, Inc., a growing supplier of solar components and systems based in the Southwest US, recently opened a second sales and distribution center in a neighboring state. 

The owners of Ursa Major Solar realize they need a way for their customers to engage beyond the company’s social media platforms. They need to (solar) power up customer engagement and start a customer community. Customer communities give customers an easy way to interact with a company whenever and wherever they are. They can search for articles, ask questions, and get crowd-sourced answers. 

This is where you come in. As Ursa Major Solar’s admin, you’re in charge of creating the company’s first online community. 

Enable Communities

Start by turning on the communities functionality in your org. 

1. Click the setup cog  and select Service Setup.
2. Enter Communities Settings in the Quick Find box and select Communities Settings.
3. Select the Enable communities checkbox.
   Note: If communities is already enabled for your org, skip the remaining steps of Enable Communities and go to the Use the Knowledge Setup Flow section.
4. In the domain name field enter your domain name—your initials and today’s date (mm-dd-yy).
5. Click Check Availability.
6. Click Save.
7. Click OK on the confirmation message.
8. If prompted, click Open on the popup box to navigate to this page.

Use the Knowledge Setup Flow

Now that the communities functionality is turned on, enable Salesforce Knowledge. Salesforce Knowledge lets you create and manage a knowledge base with Ursa Major Solar's information, and securely share it when and where it's needed. Your Salesforce Knowledge base is built from knowledge articles, which are documents of information on anything from processes (like how to reset the solar inverter to its default) to frequently asked questions (like where to place a solar panel for maximum effectiveness). The Ursa Major Solar community can leverage these knowledge articles to assist customers.

Enabling Salesforce Knowledge and assigning Lightning Knowledge author access is done through the Knowledge Setup flow. 

1. From Service Setup, click the Home tab.
2. Click View All in the Recommended Setup section.
3. Enter Knowledge Setup in the search bar and click Knowledge Setup.
4. Click Start.
5. Ensure your name is selected as a Lightning Knowledge Author.
6. Click Next.
7. Enter Solar Installation and Maintenance under Enter a Data Category Group.
8. Enter Solar Panels under Enter a Data Category.
9. Click Add Another Data Category.
10. Enter Inverters.
11. Repeat the previous two steps and add Charge Controllers and Batteries data categories.
    Note: Data categories are used to help classify and find articles, questions, or ideas.
12. Click Next.
13. Click Finish.

Create a Permission Set

Now that the community has been enabled, set the proper access permissions by creating the Customer Support Community Pilot Group permission set.

1. From Service Setup, enter Permission Sets in the Quick Find box and select Permission Sets.
2. Click Knowledge LSF Permission Set.
3. In the Apps section, click App Permissions.
4. Click Edit.
5. In the Knowledge Management section, enable View Archive Articles and View Draft Articles.
   
6. Click Save and then click Save from the confirmation window.
7. Click Clone.
8. Delete current Label Name and enter Customer Support Community Pilot Group
9. Delete current API Name and enter Customer_Support_Community_Pilot_Group
10. Delete the text in the Description.
11. Click Save.

Enable Topics for Objects

There are many ways to organize content. With topics, you can classify and search Knowledge articles by assigning specific topic areas. Without enabling Salesforce Knowledge, articles can’t be displayed outside of your org. 

This meets Ursa Major Solar's needs nicely, as they want to center conversations and knowledge articles around common topics. Over time, they want to give the community more control in determining those topics. But to start, they want to launch their community with a few topics they’ve decided are important. First, you have to enable topics for the Knowledge Object. This has to be done in Salesforce Classic. 

1. Click your profile icon in the upper right.
2. Click Switch to Salesforce Classic.
3. Click Setup.
4. Enter Topics for Objects in Quick Find, then select Topics for Objects.
5. Under Object, select Knowledge.
6. Click Enable Topics.
7. Click Save.

You come back to topics later when you’re configuring your community. In the meantime, return to Lightning Experience by clicking Switch to Lightning Experience at the top of the page.

Create the Community

Communities functionality is enabled and permissions have been set. The next step is to create the Customer Support Community and add a few images.

1. Download this zip file to access images you will use for this community project.
2. From Service Setup, enter Communities in the Quick Find box and select All Communities.
3. Click New Community.
4. Click the Customer Service template.
5. Click Get Started.
6. In the name field, enter Customer Support Community.
7. In the Optional box, enter customersupport.
8. Click Create.

The next step is to set which profiles and permission sets will have access to this community. 

1. Click the Administration tile.
2. Click Members.
3. From the Select Profiles search picklist, click All.
4. In the available profiles list, hold down CTRL/Command and select: Custom: Support Profile and Customer Community User.
5. Click Add to the right of the list.
   Note: There should now be three profiles listed in Selected Profiles: System Administrator and the two just added.
6. In the Available Permission Sets list, select Customer Support Community Pilot Group.
7. Click the Add button to the right of the list.
8. Click Save.

Now that permissions have been set, it’s time to adjust what users will see when logging in or registering.

1. Click Login & Registration.
2. Next to Logo File, click Choose File and navigate to the UrsaMajorSolarAssets folder you just downloaded (be sure to unzip the folder).
3. Select the UrsaMajorLogo.png file and click Open.
4. For Footer Text, enter Ursa Major Solar.
5. Click Save.

Next, adjust some of the community wide settings. 

1. Click Preferences.
2. Check the following boxes:
   • General
     • Show nicknames
     • Give access to public API requests on Chatter
     • Show all settings in Workspaces
   • Community Management
     • Allow members to flag content
     • Enable setup and display of reputation levels
     • Exclude contributions to records when counting points toward reputation levels
3. Uncheck the following boxes:
   • General
     • Enable direct messages
   • Community Management
     • Show number of people discussing suggested topics
4. Click Save.

Organizing Content with Topics

Use topics to structure your community content or highlight key discussions. Topics expose Knowledge articles in a community. With topics, you can classify and search Knowledge articles by assigning specific topic areas.

1. Click Administration in the upper left and select Content Management.
2. At the top of the page, click the Topics tab.
3. Click Navigational Topics.
4. Enter the following information in the Enter a navigational topic... box (click Add after each entry):
   • Solar Panels
   • Inverters
   • Batteries
5. Click the book icon  to the right of each topic.
6. For each category, click the corresponding set of articles, then click Add Articles & Close Window. For Example, click All > Solar Panels. 
7. Click Save.
8. Click Featured Topics.
9. Click in the Select a topic text box.
10. Click Batteries and then click Add.
11. Repeat for Inverters and Solar Panels.
    
12. Click Save.

You successfully created a new community, adjusted the permissions, and added topics for content organization. In the next step, customize the look and feel of the community to fit Ursa Major Solar’s needs.