What is an Article in Salesforce Knowledge?

An Article is a Knowledge document that provides information to help agents resolve Cases and customers self-serve.

What are the main states in an article's publishing lifecycle?

Articles move through draft, published, and archived states as part of their lifecycle.

In Lightning Knowledge, how are different types of articles modeled?

Lightning Knowledge uses Record Types on a single Knowledge object, which is simpler than the Classic Knowledge model of separate Article Types.

Article

Service🟡 Intermediate

Definition

An Article in Salesforce Knowledge is a document that contains information to help service agents and customers find answers to questions. Articles are created using Knowledge Article Types (or Record Types in Lightning Knowledge), go through a publishing lifecycle (draft, published, archived), and can be made available on internal apps, customer portals, and public Knowledge bases.

Real-World Example

a customer success manager at CloudNine Solutions recently implemented Article to streamline support operations and reduce the backlog of unresolved customer issues. With Article in place, the team routes cases to the best-qualified agents, tracks SLA compliance automatically, and provides self-service options that deflect 30% of incoming volume.

Why Article Matters

Articles are the content records that live inside Salesforce Knowledge. Each one contains fields for title, summary, body content, keywords, and any custom fields the org has added (like product category or article type). Articles follow a publishing lifecycle with three main states: draft (being worked on), published (visible to audiences), and archived (retired but preserved). They can be translated into multiple languages, have multiple versions over time, and be targeted to specific audiences through channel settings.

In Lightning Knowledge, all articles live on a single standard Knowledge object, and different article types are modeled using Record Types. This is a simplification from Classic Knowledge, which used separate Article Types as independent objects. The Lightning model makes reporting, list views, and sharing significantly easier because everything lives in one object with shared metadata. Articles can be surfaced to agents inside the Service Console, to customers through Experience Cloud sites, and to the public through public Knowledge bases.

How Organizations Use Article

•CloudNine Solutions — Built a library of around 500 Articles covering their most common support scenarios. Agents attach relevant Articles to Cases as they work, which both resolves the current issue faster and improves the searchable knowledge base for future Cases.
•ShieldGuard Security — Publishes security advisory Articles to a public Knowledge base so customers can find them without logging in. New advisories are authored in draft, reviewed by the security team, and published on a scheduled release.
•Wanderlust Travel — Uses Articles in their Experience Cloud customer portal to deflect common booking and cancellation questions. About 30% of customer support volume is now resolved through self-service article views before a Case is ever created.