Set Up Lightning Knowledge for KCS Users

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• List recommended KCS roles and responsibilities for agents.
  
• Add custom fields to user records to set a user’s KCS role and KCS Coach.
  
• Define validation rules to make sure that only the appropriate agents can change an article’s state.
  

Clarify KCS Responsibilities

Now that Ursa Major is using KCS methodology, its agents have different responsibilities. Remember how an article moves through different stages to indicate how confident the team is that it’s correct? KCS training for agents is a lot like that.

Ada gives Maria a list of specific KCS roles and responsibilities for her team at Ursa Major. Agents start out as Candidates and progress through the roles as they receive more training and gain experience.

• KCS Candidate. A KCS Candidate can create articles and flag existing ones. They can save articles as Work in Progress or Not Validated. The articles they change are only visible to internal users. When they finish changing an article, they tag it as Not Validated. A KCS Contributor, KCS Publisher, or a KCS Coach can then validate these articles.
  
• KCS Contributor. KCS Contributors need more training to verify that they’re ready to create or edit articles. They, too, use the Work in Progress and Not Validated tags. But, when they're finished changing an article, they can tag it as Validated if they’re confident in the article’s accuracy. Their articles are also only published internally. In some organizations they can also publish to customers and partners, but not publicly (for unauthenticated access).
  
• KCS Publisher. KCS Publishers do everything that KCS Candidates and KCS Contributors do and more. Publishers require extra training and must show that they’re properly executing the KCS methodology consistently. When they’re trained, they can publish new and changed articles to external sources like communities for customers and partners. Ursa Major intends to train most of its agents to become KCS Publishers.
  
• KCS Coach. The KCS Coach helps everyone to understand KCS methodology, the new processes, and their new responsibilities. KCS Coaches are KCS Publishers and also review articles to provide feedback to KCS Candidates and Contributors. KCS Coaches evaluate multiple agents, and it’s important to link each agent to their KCS Coach.
  

Support KCS Roles and Responsibilities

To implement these new KCS roles and responsibilities, Maria’s first thought is to create a profile for each KCS role on Ada’s list. Profiles define how users access objects and data, and what they can do within the application. But Maria has already set up profiles for her agents, and slotting them all into new profiles takes too much time.

Instead, she creates custom fields on the user record used for all agents. She creates one field to show their KCS role (which isn't to be confused with their Salesforce role) and one to display their Coach. KCS Coaches can move agents into different KCS roles, such as from KCS Candidate to KCS Contributor.

First, Maria creates custom fields to display the KCS role and KCS Coach. Both fields are picklists.

1. Click and select Setup.
   
2. Click Object Manager and select User.
   
3. Click Fields & Relationships.
   
4. Click New.
   
5. Select Picklist as the Data Type and click Next.
   
6. Define the field values. Maria defines the following.
   

• Field label: KCS Role
• Select Enter values, with each value separated by a carriage return to put it on a new line.
  
• Enter the picklist values, each on a new line: KCS Candidate, KCS Contributor, KCS Publisher, and KCS Coach.
  
• Select Restrict picklist to the values defined in the value set.
  
• Description: Each item is a KCS role to assign to the user.
• Help: Select the KCS role.

7. Click Next.
   
8. To determine who can see this field, establish field-level security.
   Maria selects Visible next to the Agent profile (one she previously created for all Ursa Major support agents) and the System Administrator profile.
   
9. Click Next.
   
10. Add the field to the correct page layouts. Maria selects User Layout.
    
11. Click Save.
    

Maria repeats this process to create the KCS Coach field. For the picklist values, she enters the name of the team’s KCS Coach, Zhang Wei, and None. If Ursa Major adds new Coaches to its team, Maria can add the names here. (Learn more about Zhang and his role as a Coach in a later unit.)

After the fields are set up, she adds them to correct section in the user page layout.

1. Click and select Setup.
   
2. Click Object Manager and select User.
   
3. Click User Page Layouts.
   
4. Click User Layout.
   
5. Create a section for the KCS fields. Maria drags a new section under the Additional information section.
   
6. Name the section and select the layout. Maria names it KCS and selects 1-column for Layout.
   
7. Click OK.
   
8. Drag KCS Role and KCS Coach into the KCS section.
   
9. Click Save.
   

Maria goes to Ada Balewa’s user record and selects her KCS role (KCS Publisher) and KCS Coach (Zhang Wei). Maria sets up the other agents on Ada’s list, too.

Want to Get Hands-on with Lightning Knowledge?

In this module, we show you the steps to create custom fields and define validation rules in Lightning Knowledge. We don’t have any hands-on challenges in this module. If you want to practice and try out the steps, you can register for a free Service Cloud trial with sample data. A Trailhead Playground can use Lightning Knowledge, but the trial org has the right data to make it easy to follow the instructions. Here’s how to get the free trial edition now.

1. Sign up for a free 30-day Service Cloud trial.
   
2. Fill out the form completely.
   

• For Email, enter an active email address that’s unknown to Salesforce. The email address you provide becomes the username in this new trial org. Usernames must be globally unique across all instances of Salesforce, so you must use an email account that is unknown to Salesforce or your installation won’t work.
  

3. After you fill out the form, click Start my free trial. A confirmation message appears.
   
4. When you receive the activation email (this might take a few minutes), open it and click Verify Account.
   
5. Complete your registration by setting your password and challenge question.
   

Tip: Write down your username, password, and login URL for easy access later.

You're logged in to your trial org.

Define Validation Rules

Remember when Maria created fields to control an article’s state? Only agents with the correct KCS role can change the values in those fields. For example, a KCS Candidate can’t change an article’s validation status to Validated but a KCS Coach can.

Maria creates validation rules to determine who can save or publish an article depending on which state is selected on the article. First, she asks Ada questions about who can use each setting.

She starts with the rules for article confidence.

• Who can set an article’s validation status to Validated? KCS Contributors, Publishers, and Coaches. But not KCS Candidates.
  

Then she asks about the rules for article governance.

• Who can set an article’s governance to compliance-based? KCS Publishers and Coaches. But not KCS Candidates and Contributors.
  
• Who can set an article’s governance to experience-based? Everyone.
  

Finally, she asks questions about article visibility.

• Who can set an article’s visibility to external? For Ursa Major, KCS Publishers, but with conditions. But never KCS Candidates and Contributors. This may be different for other organizations.
  
• When can a KCS Publisher set the visibility to external? If the validation status is set to Validated.
  

Now Maria has what looks like the rules for a logic puzzle. She uses the answers from her questions to make a table with all the information required to create the validation rules.

AND(
         ISPICKVAL($User.KCS_Role__c,
         "KCS Candidate"),
         ISPICKVAL(ValidationStatus,
         "Validated")
         )

AND(
         ISPICKVAL($User.KCS_Role__c,
         "KCS Candidate"),
         ISPICKVAL(Article_Governance__c,
         "Compliance Based") )

AND(
         ISPICKVAL($User.KCS_Role__c,
         "KCS Contributor"),
         ISPICKVAL(Article_Governance__c,
         "Compliance Based") )

AND(
         ISPICKVAL($User.KCS_Role__c,
         "KCS Candidate"),
         OR((IsVisibleInCsp = true),
         (IsVisibleInPrm = true) ,
         (IsVisibleInPkb = true)
         )
         )

AND(
         ISPICKVAL($User.KCS_Role__c,
         "KCS Contributor"),
         OR((IsVisibleInCsp = true),
         (IsVisibleInPrm = true) ,
         (IsVisibleInPkb = true)
         )
         )

AND(
         ISPICKVAL($User.KCS_Role__c,
         "KCS Publisher"),
         OR( AND(
         ISPICKVAL(ValidationStatus, "Work in Progress"),
         ( IsVisibleInCsp = true)),
         AND(ISPICKVAL(ValidationStatus, "Work in Progress"),
         ( IsVisibleInPrm = true)),
         AND(ISPICKVAL(ValidationStatus, "Work in Progress"),
         ( IsVisibleInPkb = true)),
         AND(ISPICKVAL(ValidationStatus, "Not Validated"),
         ( IsVisibleInCsp = true)),
         AND(ISPICKVAL(ValidationStatus, "Not Validated"),
         ( IsVisibleInPrm = true)),
         AND(ISPICKVAL(ValidationStatus, "Not Validated"),
         ( IsVisibleInPkb = true))
         )
         )

Maria creates her first validation rule.

1. Click and select Setup.
   
2. Click Object Manager and select Knowledge.
   
3. Click Validation Rules.
   
4. Click New.
   
5. Enter the properties of the validation rule. Maria uses the values from her table.
   
6. To check the formula for errors, click Check Syntax.
   
7. Click Save.
   

Maria is one step further along her journey in supporting KCS methodology at Ursa Major. She made sure that everyone is assigned the correct KCS role. Then she ensured that everyone’s KCS role determines the actions they can take to change the state of an article.

Resources

• Trailhead project: Set Up Salesforce Knowledge
• Salesforce Help: Lightning Knowledge User Access
• Salesforce Help: Profiles
• Salesforce Help: Define Validation Rules
• Salesforce Help: Validation Rules