Article Publication
Article Publication is the Salesforce Knowledge lifecycle event that moves an article version from Draft into Online status, making it visible to the channels assigned to that article.
Definition
Article Publication is the Salesforce Knowledge lifecycle event that moves an article version from Draft into Online status, making it visible to the channels assigned to that article. Publishing sets the PublishStatus field to Online on the KnowledgeArticleVersion record. The new version replaces the previously Online version, and the content becomes searchable and visible across the Knowledge component, the agent sidebar, Experience Cloud help sites, and any other surface that reads the Knowledge index.
Publication can be triggered by a person who clicks Publish in the Knowledge app, by a scheduled job tied to a future publish date and time, or programmatically through Apex and the REST API. Each path produces the same result. A new article version goes Online, the prior Online version moves to version history, and the article reaches its configured audience. Before publication the article exists only as a working draft, so publication is the moment the content actually starts helping agents and customers.
How publication moves an article Online
The publish action and what it changes
Publishing flips PublishStatus from Draft to Online on the KnowledgeArticleVersion record. If a prior version was already Online, that version is moved into history and the new version takes its place. The swap is atomic, so visitors never see a half-published state. Right after publish, the search index refreshes and the article appears in the Knowledge component, the agent console sidebar, and any Experience Cloud help center that the article is shared to. The URL Name field stays stable across versions, so inbound links and bookmarks to the article keep resolving even though the underlying version changed. PublishStatus is the field that drives all of this behavior. Draft means a working copy, Online means live, and Archived means retired but kept for reference. An author cannot edit an Online version directly. Editing creates a fresh Draft version that sits alongside the live one until it is published in turn. That separation is deliberate. It lets a team revise content without disturbing what customers currently see, then promote the revision in a single controlled step when the new copy is ready.
Manual publication versus scheduled publication
Manual publication is the common path. An author opens the article, finishes the draft, and clicks Publish. A confirmation lets them choose whether to also publish completed translations at the same time. Scheduled publication suits content that should go live on a fixed date, such as documentation aligned to a product release. The author sets a future publish date, and since the Spring 22 release in Lightning Experience, a specific publish time as well. A platform job then promotes the draft to Online at that moment without anyone needing to be online. This avoids the awkward window where a help article describes a feature that has not shipped yet. Scheduling is set per article version, so different drafts can be queued for different dates. One practical caution applies. A scheduled draft still has to clear any approval process first, so the schedule does not bypass review. If the article is stuck in approval when its scheduled time arrives, it will not publish until the approval completes. Teams running release-day content usually finish approvals a day or two ahead to leave margin.
Approval workflows that gate publishing
Mature Knowledge programs rarely let authors publish freely. They route drafts through an approval process first. An author submits the draft, one or more reviewers approve it, and only then does the publish step run. Salesforce supports this with the standard Approval Process feature, and the publish itself is often wired as a final approval action so that approval and publication happen as one motion. The gating keeps low quality or pre release content off customer facing surfaces, and it produces a record of who approved what and when. In regulated industries that approval trail is not optional. Auditors expect to see that published guidance passed a defined review. Approval steps can branch by data category, article type, or author, so legal content can demand a compliance reviewer while routine FAQs take a lighter path. The cost is latency. Every approval hop adds time between a finished draft and a live article, so teams balance rigor against speed by reserving heavy approval chains for high risk content and letting routine updates move faster. Picking the right gate for each content type is the core design choice here.
Versioning and what a publish replaces
Every publish creates a new article version and preserves the one it replaced. The previous Online version is not deleted. It drops out of search and out of the channels, but it stays in version history as a complete record of what was live during that period. This is what lets a Knowledge manager roll back. Republishing an older version makes it the current Online version again, which is the fastest fix when a fresh publish introduces an error. Version history is also the audit answer to the question of which version was live on a given date, which compliance and customer success teams eventually ask after a complaint or a dispute. Because versions are discrete, a team can keep a draft revision in progress for weeks while the current version stays live and untouched. When the revision is ready, publishing it swaps the live content in one step and pushes the prior version into history. Knowledge managers should treat each publish as a deliberate, logged event rather than a casual save, because the history they create is the trail others will rely on later.
Channel visibility decides who actually sees it
Publishing exposes an article only to the channels selected on that article version. The standard channels are Internal App for agents, Customer for authenticated customers, Partner for partner users, and Public Knowledge Base for anonymous public visitors. An article that is missing the Customer channel still publishes, but it goes live only to internal agents and stays invisible on the public help center. This is the single most common publication mistake, and it is silent. Nothing errors. The article simply does not appear where someone expected it, and the gap is usually found only when a customer or agent complains. Channel selection is per article and per version, so a revision can change visibility, and republishing an old version can change it back. Data Categories add a second visibility layer on top of channels by mapping categories to audiences through category group visibility settings, so even a Customer channel article can be hidden from a category a given user cannot see. The practical habit is to confirm the channel checkboxes and a real preview in the target audience right after every publish, before assuming the content is reaching anyone.
Publishing translations alongside the master
Multilingual Knowledge ties each translated article to its master article through a language code. The master is the source of record, and translations are versions in their own right with their own PublishStatus. When you publish a master article, Salesforce offers to publish completed translations at the same time, so a fully localized article can go live in every language in one action. Translations can also lag. A common pattern is to publish the master first to get the primary language live, then publish each translation as the localization is finished. The translation queue tracks which languages are drafted, in progress, or complete, and a translation that is still in draft simply will not appear in that language until it is published. Because translations carry independent versions, a single language can be revised and republished without touching the master or the other languages. That independence matters for global support. A correction filed in one market can ship to that market quickly while the rest of the languages stay on their current versions, and the master version history still records the canonical content that every translation was derived from.
Programmatic publishing and post publish signals
Publication is not limited to clicks. The PublishStatus field can be set through Apex and the Knowledge REST API, which is how external systems push finalized content into Salesforce. Translation management tools and content management systems commonly draft and approve content outside Salesforce, then call the API to publish the resulting article version Online. This keeps Salesforce as the customer facing surface while authoring happens elsewhere. Publishing also fires the platform automation hooks tied to Knowledge, so Flows and Apex triggers can react to a new version going live, for example to notify a channel or stamp a field. Once an article is Online it starts accumulating signal. View counts, votes, search clickthrough, and the number of cases that linked to it all begin to grow. The first thirty days after publish is the highest signal window for whether an article will succeed. Reports that track how quickly views arrive and how the article performs in its first week let a Knowledge team spot pieces to promote, revise, or archive early, instead of letting a weak article sit unread in the catalog.
How to publish a Knowledge article
Publishing a Lightning Knowledge article promotes a finished draft to Online so it reaches the channels assigned to it. You publish from the article record after the draft content is complete and any required approval has cleared.
- Open the draft article
From the Knowledge app or the Article Manager list, open the article whose draft version you want to publish. Confirm you are viewing the Draft version, not an existing Online one.
- Confirm channels and categories
Check the channel selections (Internal App, Customer, Partner, Public Knowledge Base) and the Data Categories on the article so it will be visible to the intended audience once live.
- Click Publish
Select Publish on the article. Choose to publish now or set a future publish date and time, and decide whether to publish completed translations at the same time.
- Verify the live article
After publishing, confirm PublishStatus shows Online and preview the article in the target channel to make sure it appears where the audience will look for it.
The article headline shown in search results and the article header.
The stable URL identifier that persists across versions so inbound links keep resolving.
At least one channel (Internal App, Customer, Partner, or Public Knowledge Base) so the published article has an audience.
The category values that scope visibility and help users find the article through category filters.
- A missing Customer or Partner channel publishes the article to agents only and leaves it invisible on the public help center, with no error.
- A scheduled publish still waits on approval; if the article is stuck in an approval process at its scheduled time, it will not go live until approval completes.
- Editing an Online article creates a new Draft version; the live version does not change until you publish that draft.
- Translations have their own PublishStatus, so a published master does not make an unpublished translation visible in its language.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Article Publication in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Article Publication.
- Publish Articles and TranslationsSalesforce
- Workflow and Approvals for ArticlesSalesforce
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Article Publication.
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.
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Q1. What does Article Publication do in Salesforce Knowledge?
Q2. To which channels can a Knowledge Article be published?
Q3. What does scheduled Article Publication let a Knowledge admin do?
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