Building a Knowledge Base in Salesforce

Learn how to publish your content directly to Salesforce Knowledge Base.

Introduction

Salesforce Knowledge Base is a knowledge management system that you can use to resolve customer queries and queries from external and internal employees. Salesforce Knowledge Base is a self-serve online repository of articles about a product, service, or topic.

In a knowledge base, various authors and contributors well versed in the subject matter, add relevant content in the repository. The content can be of a wide range covering variety of subjects. Typically in a knowledge base, you can find FAQs, manuals, troubleshooting guides, or process workflow documents.

With Salesforce integration, Adobe RoboHelp has extended its publishing capabilities to publish as Knowledge Base, directly to Salesforce Knowledge Base as articles.

Pre-requisites

To create a connection with Salesforce Knowledge Base, you need to set up your account with Lightning Knowledge enabled. For more details, see Set Up Accounts with Salesforce.

Set up the workflow

Following are the steps to configure Salesforce Knowledge Base prior to publishing your output.

Create and configure an output preset.
Configure a publish profile.

Create an output preset

To create an output preset in RoboHelp, do the following:

In an open project, perform one of the following:

Click theOutput tabat the left of the Standard toolbar.
ClickQuick Generate in the upper-right corner of the Standard toolbar and click theEdit Settings icon.

The Output view opens.

In the Output toolbar, clickOutput Presets. The Output Presets panel opens.

In the Output Presets panel, click .

In the New Preset dialog box, specify the following:

Type Use the drop-down list to select Content Only preset type.

NameSpecify a name for the output preset.

Target From the target drop-down, chooseSalesforce Knowledge Base.

ClickDone.

You can access the output preset from theOutput Presets panel in theOutput toolbar. Alternatively, you can access the output preset in theQuick Generate dialog box of the authoring window.

Configure a Salesforce Knowledge Base output preset

You can use the following settings to configure the Content Only output preset:

General

Use the following options to specify basic output settings, such as title, target, output path, encoding, and more:

Title: Specify the title for the generated output.

You can use variables in the title. To do so, type Ctrl+1 and select a variable from the drop-down list, and then press Enter. Note that if you have provided a variable set in the Content tab > Variable Set field, during output generation, the value of the selected variable is picked from the variable set.

Output Path: Specify a location for the output. To select a location, click .

Ensure that the output path is NOT located inside the project folder. If the output path is inside the project folder, the output generation fails. Also the folder you select should NOT have any content that you need. RoboHelp deletes the contents of the folder before generating the output.

Save output path as relative to project: If enabled and you browse to the output path., the path to the output will now be a relative instead of absolute.

Language: Use the drop-down list to select the language for the output.

Post Generation Script: To run your custom script after output generation, select the script .js file from the drop-down list.

Content

Use the following options to specify content-related output settings, such as the settings for Table of Contents, condition expression, and variable set.

Table Of Contents: Use the drop-down list to select a Table of Contents to be included in the output. This drop-down list displays the Tables of Contents available in your project. The first Table of Contents in this drop-down list is selected by default.

The set of files and their references present in the selected Table of Contents appear in the generated output.

Condition Expression: Use the drop-down list to specify the condition expression for your output. This setting allows you to easily include or exclude content depending on the desired type of output or user base. Click to edit the selected condition expression. You can also select None in the drop-down list to not specify any condition expression.

Variable Set: Use the drop-down list to specify the variable set to use in this output. In the drop-down list, you can select <Default Variable Set> to use the project's default variable set. Variable sets allow you to implement output-specific use of variables. For example, you can have different variable sets for generating output for customers and internal users.

Include Expanding Text content: Select this option to include expanding Text in your Content Only output; otherwise, only the Expanding Title goes into the output. However, the Expanding Text will be shown in the expanded form in the output.

Include Drop-down Text content: Select this option to include drop-down Text in your Content Only output; otherwise, only the Drop-down Title goes into the output. However, the Drop-down text will be displayed in the output.

It is important to note that Salesforce does not permit addingJavaScript or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)within the articles, so your publication must not use Drop-down text, Expanding text, or Thumbnail images. However if used, the text that is enclosed is preserved as plain text.

Layout

Use the following option to configure the appearance of your output.

Master Page: Use the drop-down list to select the master page for the output. If the master page is selected, the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) of the master page determines the style definitions.

If set to None, then the CSS styles are taken from CSS files used in the topics.

Salesforce

Publish Profile: Use the drop-down to select among your Salesforce connection profile. To learn how to create a publish profile, see Configure a publish profile.

RecordType: Use the drop-down to select among the page layouts that have been set up in Salesforce as per the visibility settings, based on the user profile. RecordTypes define how your publication is organized and which fields, e.g., title, answer, equation, etc. should be displayed. The topics configured for this preset will be published to the selected Record Type.

Categories: Use the drop-down to select among what has been set up in Salesforce. Categories are like hierarchical trees, used to find and classify Salesforce Knowledge articles. These categories are also based on the visibility settings, based on the user profile.

Convert all styles to inline styles:Select this option to ensure that your styling used in RoboHelp is maintained when you publish your output to Salesforce Knowledge Base.

Upload as draft: If you enable this option, all articles published to Salesforce will be in a draft state.

Upload images: Select this option if you want any images in topics to be included in the published output.

Upload linked documents: Select this option if you want documents like PPT, PPTX, DOC, DOCX, and PDF linked in topics to be included in the published output.

Articles

Choose the topics that you want to publish to Salesforce Knowledge Base. Expand a TOC node and choose the topics that you want to publish.

Configure a publish profile

You must create and configure a publish profile before publishing your output to Salesforce Knowledge Base. To create and configure a profile:

On the toolbar, clickEdit > Publish Profiles.

In the Publish Profiles dialog, to create a profile, click .

In theServer Type drop-down list field, selectSalesforce Knowledge Base.

Populate the following fields:

Name: This field displays the default profile name. Change the name accordingly.
Log in to Sandbox: A Sandbox is a copy of your production site, to which security restrictions can be applied. A Sandbox enables you to publish and test your content as a testing environment, before moving to production. Enable the option if you first want to log in to Sandbox.
Disable SSL verification: Enable the option to turn off SSL verification. After this, when you sign in to the Sandbox, there will not be any SSL verification of the site.
Site URL: A company-specific URL using which you can connect to Salesforce. The beginning of the URL includes your organization's domain. For example, https://yourco.salesforce.com. After entering the URL, log in to Salesforce.

It enables you to publish and test your content as a testing environment, before moving to production.

Click Save.

RoboHelp saves the profile and displays the profile name in the Profiles column.

Edit a profile

To edit a profile, click the profile name, and edit its fields.

Delete a profile

To delete a profile, click near the profile.

Publish to Salesforce Knowledge Base

You can configure Content Only output preset to link to Salesforce, and then publish your content to Salesforce Knowledge Base.

In the toolbar, click the Output tab. You will see a list of pre-defined output presets.

In the Output Presets panel, to edit a preset, double-click an output preset.

After you've configured the preset, you can publish to Salesforce. Click the ellipsis icon (...) near the preset and click Publish.

You can also edit the server information after clicking Edit.

Select the presets to which you want to publish the content.

Click the Generate Preset icon in the Output Presets panel.

You can then view a progress bar next to the selected output preset in the Output Presets panel. Once the output generation is complete, a Success dialog box is visible at the lower-right corner of the screen.

After the output generation is complete, click in the Output Presets panel to view the output.

To publish to the selected profiles (servers), click the output preset, and then click in the standard toolbar. Or, right-click the output preset and click Publish.

RoboHelp pushes the content to Salesforce. After the publishing is completed, Robohelp displays a report of the published content.

To view the published output, click the eye icon to take you to the landing page of the Salesforce Knowledge Base, where you can browse to your article.

Building a Knowledge Base in Salesforce

Source: https://helpx.adobe.com/robohelp/using/publish-salesforce.html