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Full Category Group for Articles entry
How-to guide

Set up a Category Group for Knowledge articles

You configure a Category Group for Articles in Setup, then activate it and link it to Knowledge so authors can tag articles. Plan the dimensions and the tree before you start, because reshaping a live group means retagging existing articles.

By Dipojjal Chakrabarti · Founder & Editor, Salesforce DictionaryLast updated Jun 16, 2026

You configure a Category Group for Articles in Setup, then activate it and link it to Knowledge so authors can tag articles. Plan the dimensions and the tree before you start, because reshaping a live group means retagging existing articles.

  1. Open Data Category Setup

    From Setup, enter Data Category in the Quick Find box and select Data Category Setup. This is the home for every Category Group in the org.

  2. Create the group

    Add a new Category Group, giving it a Group Name and a user-facing Label. Pick a name that names one clean dimension, such as Products or Geography.

  3. Build the category tree

    Click the group name and add Data Categories under the All node, nesting child categories to mirror how users will browse. Keep the tree to around three levels.

  4. Activate and link to Knowledge

    Activate the group, then assign it to the Knowledge object so the category fields appear during authoring. Only active, linked groups affect articles.

  5. Set Data Category Visibility

    Configure visibility by role, profile, or permission set as All, None, or Custom, remembering that a visible category implicitly includes its parents and children.

Active Category Groupsremember

Up to five groups can be active at once; most programs use three or four to keep tagging consistent.

Categories per groupremember

Each group holds up to 100 Data Categories across up to five hierarchy levels.

Categories per articleremember

Authors can tag up to eight categories from one group, and since Spring 20 up to 50 categories across all groups on an article.

Visibility modelremember

Set per role, profile, or permission set to All, None, or Custom selected categories.

Gotchas
  • A group does nothing until it is both activated and linked to the Knowledge object.
  • Making a deep category visible silently exposes its parent and child categories, so audit visibility before launch.
  • Renaming, merging, or splitting categories forces re-tagging of articles already assigned to them.
  • Articles can be left uncategorized, but uncategorized articles drop out of browse filters and category reports.

See the full Category Group for Articles entry

Category Group for Articles includes the definition, worked example, deep dive, related terms, and a quiz.