Hi All,

Any idea how to add KA category as merge field in a (HTML/text) mail template?

Thanks all.

Anybody out there know if  Salesforce Knowledge search indexes attachment metadata? Such as PDF keywords and custom properties? Users sometimes use those to improve search-ability. In my experience so far, Salesforce Knowledge is not indexing metadata correctly. Expected? 

I have created a 'before insert' trigger for the case object.  I have turned on the 'enable suggested articles'.  I have modified the subject so that the stop words are removed, words with _ are double quoted, and all remaining terms are and'ed.  THe result for the article search is quite nice.  Rather than getting hundreds of irrelevant results, I get a set of results that are related to the subject entered by the customer.   So for example, when I create a case with this subject: 

I get a Probe distribution fails error: inst_execute failed: permission denied

and based on the work I do in the trigger, here is what appears in the search textbox:

Probe and distribution and fails and error: and "inst_execute"" and failed: and permission and denied

ANd I get only the article result set that I expect to see for these keywords.

The problem is, I can't leave the subject like that.  I have tried some other triggers to revert the subject to the original value, but no luck.  What I would really like is the ability to choose the field that would be used for the search so rather than using the search field for my manipulations, I would use an independent field and then use that field (through some magic) for the search, leaving the original subject alone.

Anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish this?

We're working with the newly released Public Knowledge Base, found on the appexchange here: http://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000059QxXEAU

It's great, but I can't get article pages to render the way I need. We want to embed videos (and other raw HTML), and I was provided with a "How to Embed Videos" guide for the old knowledge base. I can make these exact steps work for the new knowledge base. But these steps create a new VF page for the Articles which doesn't have the new features such as Related Articles, email/facebook buttons, the Feedback component at the bottom of the page, etc.

I want to make the off-the-shelf article page display and render my custom fields correctly, and not develop an entirely new page for the articles.

What I'm stumbling with is the ability to call custom fields on Artilces. On the pkb_Template VF page that comes with the Public Knowledge Base, I can call standard article fields by doing the following:

{!theKad.Id} calls the Knowledge Article ID
{!theKad.Summary} calls the summary
{!pkbCon.theAV.Title} calls the Title (and shows different syntax for accessing fields)

However, when I try to call our custom field Article_Body__c, this is what happens:

{!theKad.Article_Body__c} generates Error: Unknown property 'pkb_Controller.KnowledgeArticleData.Article_Body__c'
{!pkbCon.theAV.Article_Body__c} generates the same error.

I've searched lots of forums, and the API developer guide. No clear answer. I've also filed a support case, but wanted to see if anyone had any thoughts. If I get an answer from SFDC, I'll make sure to include it in this thread for others to see.

Any thoughts on what should I do now?

Hey,
I have a question about article version used on Case.
As far as I'm aware, the CaseArticle table stores the CaseId and ArticleId. The ArticleId is in fact the Article Id, not Article Version Id.
How to then get the information which version was used ? I can't see a specific column for this ...

I could have sworn I heard or saw this somewhere, but I haven't been able to find anything on it. Does anybody out there know if knowledge search results are weighted based on analytics? That is, if articles that are linked to more cases or have higher ratings are floated more towards the top of results. Some details on this would be awesome. I seem to recall this was going into pilot, or perhaps it's already live, but there's just no documentation I can find on it.

Thanks!

<knowledge:articleList articleVar="article"  	        				  
hasMoreVar="hasMore" pageSize="10"
articleTypes="Samples_and_Demos__kav, How_To__kav"
categories="Topic:Applications,Topic:Desktop">

 I'm trying to specify more then one articleType and category as filters for the VF tag "articleList".

The documentation doesn't specify how to do this.

For ArticleType, seperating by a comma works fine as listed. If I do the same thing for "categories", I only get results from the 2nd category specified, instead of from both. In this example, I only get results from Topic:Desktop and not Topic:Applications

Is there a different syntax for specifying multiple categories or is this a bug?

thanks!

Hi,

I have noticed that when running a SOSL FIND via the PHP Toolkit against Knowledge objects.

FIND {tourism} RETURNING FAQ__kav
    (Id, Title WHERE PublishStatus='archived')
    WITH DATA CATEGORY Geography__c AT Iceland__c

  The knowledge dashboards do not reflect / update stats like "Recently Searches", "Unsuccessful Search Terms" etc.  Am I missing something here?

Thanks in advance

Peter

Anybody have the final word on what binary types are indexed for Knowledge attachments? I tested Word docs and PDFs. Things seem to work for Word docs just fine, but not PDFs. According to this, both should work:

https://sites.secure.force.com/success/ideaView?c=09a30000000D9xtAAC&id=08730000000BrJlAAK

A definitive list of what's supported would be nice. The documentation is somewhat ambiguous:

"Text content in a File field attachment is searchable."

I am setting up custom VF templates to display our SF Knowledge articles. I have included the VF component knowledge:articleCaseToolbar and set up the parameters for caseID and articleID. The component renders correctly with the case information but the "Attach" and "Attach and Return Case" toolbar is not being rendered.

I am using the given template from the VF documentation and have tried a variety of IDs associated with the article:

<knowledge:articleCaseToolbar rendered="{!$CurrentPage.parameters.caseId != null}" caseId="{!$CurrentPage.parameters.caseId}" articleId="{!$CurrentPage.parameters.id}"/><br/>

Page is a standard controller for article type "Solution__kav" and I have a articleRendererToolBar on the page that renders fine with the Solution__kav.KnowledgeArticleid as the "articleID" parameter.

I have tried setting "articleID" to:

• $CurrentPage.parameters.id
• Solution__kav.KnowledgeArticleid
• Solution__kav.MasterVersionID

I even tried passing in a static article ID to no avail.

Does anyone have any information on setting up this tag, if the Attach buttons are even standard functionality as part of this VF tag, or if I am going something wrong with my setup?

Thanks!

Hello,

Can anyone tell me :

Am I missing something or it's not possible to create a lookup relationship to Articles ?

Thats something i definitely need.

So, at this point, should I create something like a String field on my Custom Object that will store the article id and make another SOQL query to fetch it every time additionally ?

Kind regards

Hello,

In my project we are using suggested articles (as a part of Service Cloud Console).

The question is : 

- Can the search for suggested articles by configured in any way ? For example, my client does not like, that he has to write full words in order for that to work (eg. when you type 'Salesfor' it will not find any Salesforce articles, but 'Salesforce' and 'Salesfor*' will find it). My client would like it to work as if the asterisk (*) was always there at the end of the subject

- Can we in any way customize what fields from the case should be used for search? As far as I notice currently only the Subject field is used.

- And the least important : can we customize the in any way the Suggested Articles columns? We would like to not have the 'New' column.

Knowledge looks promising for my client, but these are the limitations for now. I could probably somehow hack into the mechanism - in the HTTP requests i see what is going on and could probably mimic this behaviour with custom buttons and programming, but my client does not really want that.

Best regards

Hello guys,

Can anyone tell me what kind of files can be indexed when added to an article ?

I mean I added a field of type 'File'.

I upload an attachment to article. What kind of files will be indexed to allow full text search ?

I know that *.doc will work, but what else ?

Best regards,

Lukasz

I am performing sosl queries to return knowledge articles similar to this.

find {test} IN ALL FIELDS RETURNING KnowledgeArticleVersion ( id,title, urlName where publishStatus='online' and language='en_US')

How can I find out what type of article each result is? 

I don't want to have the sosl return a seperate list for each article type as I would like to keep the articles ranked based on the search term as stronly as possible. I'm only interested in a max of 5 returned records and I have 5 article types.

I can't find a good solution to this. Two possible solutions

1) for each id returned, query each article type to see if a record is returned

SELECT count() FROM faq__kav where id = 'ka4S0000000CaTSIA0'

...

SELECT count() FROM documentation__kav where id = 'ka4S0000000CaTSIA0'

So if I'm returning 5 records in my sosl, I could have up to 25 soql queries if I have 5 article types.

2) query knowledgeArticleVersion and the individual article Types in sosl. Take the list of knowledgeArticleVersions and then iterate through the other lists to see which articleType list it belongs to.

find {test} IN ALL FIELDS RETURNING KnowledgeArticleVersion ( id,title, urlName where publishStatus='online' and language='en_US'), faq__kav (id), documentation__kav(id)...

Is there a better way that I'm missing?

Thanks,.

When I publish a knowledge article, it shows an article number like 000001500 in the article management view. This number is searchable in the public knowledge base and will return the correct article number.

When I am displaying the article using a custom VF page, w/ the article type as the controller, as in.

standardcontroller="How_To__kav"  

How do I reference this article number to display to the user?

It does not appear to be exposed in the schema that I can find.

thanks!

Is it possible to enable fields for a Knowledge article that is previewed when PublishStatus='Draft' ?

I have the following link where hardly any of the fields are populated for the Article preview.  The exception being lastmodified date I believe.

https://tapp0.salesforce.com/knowledge/publishing/articlePreview.apexp?id={id}&popup=true&pubstatus=d&preview=true

When I change the link to include an online article instead, the fields populate fine.

https://tapp0.salesforce.com/knowledge/publishing/articlePreview.apexp?id={0}&popup=true&pubstatus=o&preview=true

Why are certain fields hidden from draft articles in preview state vs. online articles?  Can I get around this, or will I be forced to implement a custom VF solution?

Thanks.

I am working on installing Sample Public Knowledge Base for Salesforce Knowledge from Appexchange in a dev org . I followed all instructions in the pdf (https://na10.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_pkb_implementation_guide.pdf) but the I am getting the error message :

'Configuration error - your user is not allowed to view knowledge'

The above error is on a public site created in Salesforce using sites (The application automatically creates this page). The user is a Guest user license and does not have “Knowledge user” checkbox on their profile. Do guest users have the ability to view public knowledge or not? If so, how can I go about doing this.

Please help me out with this.

Thanks

-Aditya

I am new to salesforce and have been implementing a public knowledge base. 

Is there anyway to batch update the channel that articles belong to? I have about 800 articles that I need to be added to the "Public Knowledge Base" channel. I'd like to avoid getting someone to manually go through them all if possible!

Thanks and Sorry if this is obvious. 

I'm trying to use the articleRendererToolBar as per the documentation

 <knowledge:articleRendererToolBar
              articleId="{! $CurrentPage.parameters.id}"
          />

Nothing gets displayed, but I do find some html elements are created. I can go through the stylesheet and remove entries that are hiding these elements and I can see the stars. There is no functionality though. Rolling mouse over results in javascript errors

1. Uncaught ReferenceError: mouseoverStar is not defined

Problem # 1 is that sortBy attribute of the articleList component stops working after a keyword is specified. For instance, the code below renders the same result regardless of the sorting method:

<apex:page >
	<knowledge:articleList articleVar="article"
				sortBy="title"
				keyword="yourKeyword"
			>
				<li >
				<a href="{!URLFOR($Action.KnowledgeArticle.View, article.id) + '&popup=true'}" target="_blank">
				{!article.title}</a>
				</li>
				<apex:variable var="isArticlesResult" value="true"/>
						</knowledge:articleList>
	<br/>
	<knowledge:articleList articleVar="article"
				sortBy="mostViewed"
				keyword="yourKeyword"
			>
				<li >
				<a href="{!URLFOR($Action.KnowledgeArticle.View, article.id) + '&popup=true'}" target="_blank">
				{!article.title}</a>
				</li>
				<apex:variable var="isArticlesResult" value="true"/>
			</knowledge:articleList>
	<br />
	<knowledge:articleList articleVar="article"
				sortBy="lastUpdated"
				keyword="yourKeyword"
			>
				<li >
				<a href="{!URLFOR($Action.KnowledgeArticle.View, article.id) + '&popup=true'}" target="_blank">
				{!article.title}</a>
				</li>
				<apex:variable var="isArticlesResult" value="true"/>
	</knowledge:articleList>                   
</apex:page>

Whereas if keyword is removed sorting starts working.

Problem # 2 is that when keyword is specified, it is unclear what sorting criteria is used (it's not one of the 3 documented)

Hi, is it not possible to batch knowledge article object?

See this batchacble class for example, this gives internal salesforce.com error whenever i try to run this.

public class EnumerateExpiredArticles
	implements database.Batchable<sobject> {
    public Database.QueryLocator start(Database.BatchableContext BC) {
    	// Access initialState here         	
    	return Database.getQueryLocator([SELECT  Title, Summary, OwnerId FROM Knowledge_Article__kav WHERE PublishStatus = 'Online' AND Language = 'en_US' AND LastPublishedDate = LAST_N_DAYS:180]);
  	}

  	public void execute(Database.BatchableContext BC,  List<sObject> batch) {
  		for (Knowledge_Article__kav ka : (List<Knowledge_Article__kav>) batch) {
  			//send notification to owner
  		}    	
    }

  	public void finish(Database.BatchableContext BC) {
  		   
	}		
}

But if replace the object with something else (i.e. case, account, etc), it goes fine.

any help?

thanks

Hi All,

Any idea how to add KA category as merge field in a (HTML/text) mail template?

Thanks all.

Hi,

I am new to Salesforce Knowledge base. I am unable to see Translations Tab in View area of Article management Tab.

From the url : https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=knowledge_article_manage.htm&language=en_US

in the Choosing Articles to View  section, I have not found any Translations Tab.

Please help me out.

I'm trying to implement a public knowledge base that can be accessed via our web site. I followed the instructions in the Creating a Public Knowledge Base with SFDC Knowledge implementation guide. I created a Force.com site making sure to adhere to the notes about what not to configure prior to installing the PKB 2 app from the AppExchange. The next step in the implementation guide is to configure the PKB Site Set-up Object, however this object is not showing up. The only PKB object options I see are PKB 2 Settings, PKB Article deflection and PKB Featured. I can't go any farther with this set-up until I can access and configure the PKB Site Setup Object. What am I doing wrong here?

Also, I want to be sure that PKB is set-up on the Force.com site, and my users have access.  The site says login not allowed, perhaps I missed something.

We have just rolled out salesforce knowledge in our org, but for some reason, the detach button does not work from the case page layout. Is there any way that I can attach/detach articles manually via Apex? I never looked into this functionality as we used the out of the box functionality for creating articles from the case. Thank you all!

Michael

Can We Subscribe/follow to Knowledge Articles Within Community?

I am able to Subscribe/follow to Knowledge Articles as an Internal User, but can I Subscribe/follow to Knowledge Articles as a Community user.

Which fields, either standard or custom, are searchable in Knowledge Artciles?  I think the following are:

• Title 
• Summary
• Attached Word files

Anything else?  What about text custom fields?

Thx,

Hamayoun

Hi Everyone,

I want to display the article rating stars available in salesforce articles in the customer portal...but didnt get any way to display them in customer portal in order to make customers to rate our articles.

As per the salesforce knowledge overview document....

Rating Articles: Internal app, Customer Portal, and partner portal users can rate articles on a scale of 1 to 5 stars and view the average rating for an article. Average ratings are not static. Every 15 days, if an article has not received a new vote, its average moves up or down according to a half-life calculation. This change ensures that over time, older or outdated articles don't maintain artificially high or low ratings compared to newer, more frequently used articles. Articles without recent votes trend towards an average rating of 3 stars. The Articles tab also allows users to compare the ratings for different articles and sort the list view according to highest or lowest rated articles.

I've done everything..like gone through the profile settings, user settings, provided additional permission sets..but still didnt work for me...

Note: I've used Public Knowledge Base App to display the articles in the customer portal..

They have provided a answer in the below link...http://success.salesforce.com/questionDetail?qId=a1X30000000IVX7EAO....PKB2 doesnot support this..but requirement is on my head. I want to display that at any cost.

So please someone help me in this regard and make me to display the article rating stars in the customer portal website.

I tried regular .Query and Straight Blob retrieval nothing works. We have a custom rich text field  that I need to pull using REST API. Anyone have a clue to how this is done? Thanks.

Hi All,

I have added a new data category to my sfdc knowledge. Now I need to update all exisitng artcles with new data category variables. 

It's not possible to go to each article and update its data category. How can I do a bulk update?

Regards,

R

I set up Approval Processes for Knowledge Base articles. The merge fields I set-up in the Approval Assignment Email Template that goes out to the Approver are pulling in fine. I also created email templates to go out to the Article submitter that let's them know the status of their Article Approval request. However with the exception of the first two merge fields, none of the other merge fields populate in the email. 

Merge Fields

Approval Process: {!ApprovalRequest.Process_Name}

Process Step: {!ApprovalRequest.Process_Step_Name}

Submitted by: {!ApprovalRequest.Process_Assignee}

Approver: {!ApprovalRequest.Process_Approver}

Approval Status: {!ApprovalRequest.Status}

Comments: {!ApprovalRequest.Comments}

Status Email to Article Submitter field population (fields not populating in italics)

Approval Process: Technical Review

Process Step: A

Submitted by: 

Approver: 

Approval Status: 

Comments: 

I also tried creating WorkFlow rules with email alerts, however there is no way to pull the Article Type merge fields into an email template. Can this be possible? It seems like such basic functionality to allow Article Type merge fields in email templates. 

Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Hi,

      I extended the Article Type object and Added a Field of type File. Filed name is Files_to_attach__c. I trield to Access the Field in SOQL as Follows 

Select b.Files_to_attach__c,b.Author__c,b.ArticleNumber,b.Title,b.status__c from Book__kav b
                                where PublishStatus = 'Online' and Id =:ApexPages.currentPage().getParameters().get('id') ; 

But I got an Error :

Error: ArticleDetailsController Compile Error: No such column 'Files_to_attach__c' on entity 'Book__kav'. If you are attempting to use a custom field, be sure to append the '__c' after the custom field name. Please reference your WSDL or the describe call for the appropriate names. at line 101 column 31. 

After that I found the File Field has subfields Files_to_attach__Name__s (type is Text)

Files_to_attach__ContentType__s (type is picklist)

Files_to_attach__Length__s (type Number 9,0)

Files_to_attach__Body__s (type Text area).

     SOQL allowing to query the subfields . I want to know How to retrieve the File id for the Field Files_to_attach__Name__s so that when Im clicking on the File name I can down load the File.

Please share with me if any other approaches are available.

Thanks in Advance.

Regards

SureshKumar.C

<knowledge:articleList articleVar="article"  	        				  
hasMoreVar="hasMore" pageSize="10"
articleTypes="Samples_and_Demos__kav, How_To__kav"
categories="Topic:Applications,Topic:Desktop">

 I'm trying to specify more then one articleType and category as filters for the VF tag "articleList".

The documentation doesn't specify how to do this.

For ArticleType, seperating by a comma works fine as listed. If I do the same thing for "categories", I only get results from the 2nd category specified, instead of from both. In this example, I only get results from Topic:Desktop and not Topic:Applications

Is there a different syntax for specifying multiple categories or is this a bug?

thanks!

I am trying to update an article type using the API, but anytime I try to update the save result contains an error which reads: "entity type cannot be updated: KBA".  The status code is: "CANNOT_INSERT_UPDATE_ACTIVATE_ENTITY".  Is it not possible to update articles, or is this just a permission issue that I am overlooking?

All,

Because of a problem in a migration of knowledge base articles from a 3rd party system, we need to update a few thousands articles. Unfortunately, Salesforce doesn't allow to programmatically update the article objects, whether through the API or Apex.

The solutions seems to be either update manually the solutions (which is hardly feasible considering the number) or wipe all the solutions and start the migration again (except we've already started using some articles).

An alternative I'm investigating is to write a program that would generate a huge Windows PowerShell script that would create an Internet Explorer instance and control it to log in and programmatically modify each article, one at a time. But before going that route I was wondering if people have other suggestions.

Thanks,

Laurent

Hello,

Can anyone tell me :

Am I missing something or it's not possible to create a lookup relationship to Articles ?

Thats something i definitely need.

So, at this point, should I create something like a String field on my Custom Object that will store the article id and make another SOQL query to fetch it every time additionally ?

Kind regards

We're interested in automating the article assignment process via Apex.

How can we access the "Assigned To" and "Assigned By" fields (if they are fields) for articles in a draft status? We can't see these fields on the KAV object, or really anywhere in the ERD (http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/Content/sforce_api_guidelines_knowledge.htm).

Can we read or write this parameter?