Article-Type Template
An Article-Type Template was the Classic Knowledge setting that decided how a published article's sections rendered to readers in each channel.
Definition
An Article-Type Template was the Classic Knowledge setting that decided how a published article's sections rendered to readers in each channel. You picked one per channel on the Article Type: Tab, Table of Contents, or a custom Visualforce page. Tab turned each layout section into a clickable tab. Table of Contents stacked every section on one page with jump links.
The setting is retired with the Classic Knowledge data model. Salesforce enforced the Lightning Knowledge migration release update on June 1, 2025, and end of support followed on March 1, 2026. Article types became standard record types, and presentation moved to page layouts and Lightning components.
In plain English
“Think of a printed manual with five chapters. One setting decided whether readers clicked through five tabs or scrolled one long page with links at the top. Salesforce removed that setting.”
Worked example
A regional internet provider ran Classic Knowledge with a Troubleshooting__kav article type whose layout had four sections: Symptoms, Diagnostics, Fix, and Escalation. The App channel used Tab, so console agents clicked between sections instead of scrolling. The Pkb channel used Toc, so a customer arriving from search got one page with anchor links. The Csp channel used Page, pointing at a Visualforce page named BrandedOutageArticle. After migration, Troubleshooting__kav became a record type on Knowledge__kav, its four sections became page layout sections, and BrandedOutageArticle had to be rebuilt from scratch.
How the setting worked and where it went
Five channels, one picker each
The setting lived in the ArticleType metadata type under articleTypeChannelDisplay. Its channel field took App, Pkb, Csp, Prm, and AllChannels, covering the Articles tab, the public knowledge base, the Customer Portal, and the partner portal. A custom Visualforce template only showed up in the dropdown when its standard controller matched the article type's API name.
Template and layout were not the same thing
Admins mixed these up constantly. The Article-Type Layout controlled what an author saw while writing, meaning which fields sat in which section. The template controlled what a reader saw afterwards. Leave the template alone and you got the channel default, which is how the internal and public versions of one article quietly drifted apart.
What replaced the per-channel picklist
Lightning ships no equivalent picklist. Section grouping sits on ordinary page layouts, and read-time presentation comes from the Knowledge component in Lightning App Builder, or an Experience Builder page on a public site. So the per-channel choice became a per-page design decision. One article type once carried four channel settings. Now you build a page per audience.
The metadata type still sits in current docs
Here is the trap. The Metadata API Developer Guide for Summer '26, API version 67.0, still documents ArticleType and its template values. A documented metadata type is not a supported feature. People find that page, assume the setting is configurable, and go hunting Setup for a picklist that no longer renders anywhere.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Article-Type Template.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Article-Type Template.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
+5 pts / dayQ1. What did the Article-Type Template control in Classic Knowledge?
Q2. In the ArticleType metadata type, which three values could the template field take?
Q3. What took over the job of article-type templates after Classic Knowledge reached end of support?
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