Article Manager
Article Manager is the Salesforce surface that Knowledge authors and managers use to find, create, edit, publish, archive, restore, and delete Knowledge articles across their full lifecycle.
Definition
Article Manager is the Salesforce surface that Knowledge authors and managers use to find, create, edit, publish, archive, restore, and delete Knowledge articles across their full lifecycle. In Lightning Experience it is the Knowledge tab, also called Knowledge home, paired with list views filtered by publication status, data category, record type, and author. The same surface that lets a new author open their drafts also lets a manager review content archived three years ago.
The page is the day-to-day control center for a Knowledge program. From a list view you can search, sort, select records, and run authoring actions on one article or a batch at once. It folds in the work that Salesforce Classic handled on the separate Article Management page. The capabilities carry over, but in Lightning Experience they live inside the standard Knowledge tab rather than a dedicated screen.
How the Knowledge tab runs the article lifecycle
List views are the primary surface
Article Manager is organized around list views on the Knowledge tab. A dropdown at the top of the page switches between views such as Draft Articles and Published Articles. Authors filter to their drafts to find what they are writing. Reviewers filter to articles awaiting validation. Managers build custom views for content that needs attention, such as articles that are old, uncategorized, or rarely viewed. The list view is the central organizing element, so getting the filters right is most of what makes a large Knowledge base usable. You can sort search results by relevance, by publish date for published articles, by last modified date for drafts, and alphabetically from A to Z or Z to A. Each list view shows the columns an admin configures, which lets a team see publication status, data category, record type, and owner at a glance without opening a record. Because the views read from the same Knowledge object, a number you see in a list matches the number a report counts. That shared data is what keeps the daily working view and the program health report consistent with each other.
Authoring actions on one article or a batch
From a list view you can act on articles without opening each one. Lightning Knowledge supports publishing, archiving, restoring, deleting, submitting for translation, and editing a published article as a new draft. Select one row to act on a single article, or select several rows to run the same action across a batch. Mass archive is the common pattern: open the Published Articles list view, select the articles, click the dropdown arrow, and choose Archive. Mass publish follows the same shape after a quarterly bulk update. This is how a manager retires or republishes a set of articles after a taxonomy change without touching each record individually. One limit worth knowing is that mass archiving through Data Loader is not supported, so batch archiving runs through the list view in the interface. Which actions appear depends on the article's current state and on the running user's permissions. A draft offers Publish and Delete, while a published article offers Archive and Edit, so the available buttons change as an article moves through its lifecycle.
Publication status drives every workflow
Three publication status values shape the work. A draft is under development and needs writing, review, or approval. An online or published article is live and serves agents and customers. An archived article is retired but preserved, removed from active circulation while its record stays in the system. When an article is first created its publication status reads Draft, and publishing updates that field to the published state. The status filter on a list view narrows the page to whichever workflow the user is doing right now. Restoring moves an archived article back into circulation, and deleting removes it for good. Treating these states as a pipeline, draft to online to archived, is the simplest way to reason about where any article sits and what action comes next. The status is a field on the article, so reports and list views read the same value, which means a manager and an author looking at the same article always agree on its state.
Search inside the Knowledge tab
The Knowledge tab includes search across article titles and bodies, scoped by the active list view. Authors use it to locate a specific draft. Managers use it to find every article on a topic before archiving or merging. The search runs against the standard Salesforce search index, so the wildcard and operator rules from global search apply here too. A useful habit is to treat search no-results as a signal. The phrases agents and customers search for but cannot find point straight at the gaps a Knowledge program should fill next. Search also helps avoid duplication. Before an author writes something new, a quick search shows whether an article already covers the topic, which keeps the base from growing two answers to the same question. Combined with list view filters, search turns a large catalog of articles into something a single person can work through in a focused session rather than scrolling an endless sorted list.
Permissions and data category visibility
Article Manager respects Knowledge user permissions together with data category visibility. Authors need the Knowledge User feature license and the object and field permissions for the article record types they work with. Data category visibility then decides which slice of the catalog each person sees. An author whose visibility is scoped to the Product category sees only those articles in their list views. A manager with full visibility sees the whole catalog. This matters most for archived content, which many orgs deliberately scope to a narrower group than published content. Getting visibility right prevents a common failure, where an author who cannot see an existing article recreates it and the base ends up with duplicates. Visibility is set through data category visibility on roles, permission sets, or public groups, so the same article can be visible to one team and hidden from another. The actions a user can run also depend on permissions, so two people viewing the same list may see different buttons.
Custom list views keep large programs operational
Beyond the default Draft and Published views, admins build custom list views for any filter combination the team needs. Examples include drafts older than thirty days, online articles never viewed, or articles of a specific record type owned by a specific author. These saved views are what keep a growing Knowledge base manageable, because the default sorted list becomes unusable once article counts climb into the thousands. A practical setup gives each role its own views on day one: a writing queue for authors, a review queue for reviewers, and an archive-candidate view for managers. Because list views support inline column sorting and configurable columns, a single view can double as a lightweight dashboard for a daily standup. The goal is that anyone on the team can open one named view and immediately see the work in front of them, rather than rebuilding a filter every time they sit down. Custom views are the difference between a Knowledge base that scales and one that stalls.
Reporting alongside the Knowledge tab
Article Manager shows the current state of the base, while reports show trends over time, and a healthy program uses both. The Knowledge tab answers what needs action today. Reports answer how the base is changing across weeks and quarters. Common Knowledge reports include articles published per quarter, archive rate, top-viewed articles, lowest-rated articles, and articles attached to cases. Because reports and the Knowledge tab read the same underlying data, the list a manager works from and the aggregate a report rolls up stay in sync. A manager might keep an archive-candidate list view for daily triage and a published-per-quarter report for the steering meeting, knowing both reflect the same articles. Salesforce also offers Knowledge-specific report types and dashboards in Service Cloud for this purpose. The pairing is simple to state: use the Knowledge tab to do the work and use reports to see whether the work is moving the base in the right direction.
Manage Knowledge articles from the Knowledge tab
Article Manager is the Knowledge tab in Lightning Experience. Here is how to use it to find, publish, and archive articles, including a mass archive. You need Lightning Knowledge enabled and the Knowledge User license plus the right object and data category permissions.
- Open the Knowledge tab
In the Service app, click the Knowledge tab to reach Knowledge home. This is the surface that older orgs knew as the Article Management page in Salesforce Classic.
- Choose a list view
Use the list view dropdown at the top of the page to switch between views such as Draft Articles and Published Articles. Sort by publish date, last modified date, or alphabetically to find what you need.
- Select the articles
Select one row to act on a single article, or select the checkboxes for several rows to run the same action across a batch.
- Run an authoring action
Click the dropdown arrow and choose the action: Publish, Archive, Restore, Delete, or Edit as a draft. To mass archive, open Published Articles, select the articles, click the dropdown arrow, and choose Archive.
Narrows the page by publication status, data category, record type, or author so you act on the right subset of articles.
The Draft, online, or archived state of an article. Drafts can be published or deleted; published articles can be archived or edited.
Controls which slice of the catalog a user sees in their list views, set through roles, permission sets, or public groups.
A saved filter combination, such as drafts older than thirty days, that gives each role a ready-made working queue.
- Mass archive runs from the list view in the interface. Archiving Knowledge articles through Data Loader is not supported.
- A mass publish or mass archive across hundreds of articles is not undone with one click, so confirm the selection before you run it.
- The actions that appear depend on an article's current state and the running user's permissions, so two users may see different buttons on the same list.
- Scope archived content visibility deliberately. Authors who cannot see existing or archived articles sometimes recreate content that already exists.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Article Manager in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Article Manager.
- Publish Articles and TranslationsSalesforce
- Archive Articles and TranslationsSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Article Manager.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What is the Article Manager interface used for in Salesforce Knowledge?
Q2. Which Article Manager capability is essential for keeping a large Knowledge base operational?
Q3. Who typically works inside the Article Manager workspace?
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