Article channel visibility for internal, customer, partner and public audiences
Key Takeaway
For anonymous visitors to read an article on a public site, the article needs "Visible in Public Knowledge Base" selected. Read permission for the guest user profile doesn't publish an article to the public. "Visible in Internal App" publishes it to Salesforce users, not to anonymous visitors.
Channel visibility decides which audiences can see a Salesforce Knowledge article: internal users, customers, partners or anonymous visitors to a public knowledge base. Authors set it with four visibility fields that admins add to the article page layouts. Published articles can then appear in customer sites, partner sites and public websites, or be shared in social posts and emails. Data categories, permissions and field-level security narrow access further.
The four audience channels
Not every audience sees every article. Some articles are internal only, while others are also visible to partners or to customers in communities. Proprietary or confidential information stays internal.
Four fields set an article's audience, one for each channel. An author can select several of them on the same article.
| Field | Channel | Who it publishes to |
|---|---|---|
| Visible in Internal App | Internal App | Salesforce users |
| "Visible to Customer" | Customer | Customers in communities and customer sites |
| "Visible to Partner" | Partner | Partners in partner sites |
| Visible in Public Knowledge Base | Public Knowledge Base | Anonymous visitors to a public knowledge base |
Knowledge reports include the four visibility fields. Reports on article views, votes and searches also have a "Channel" field with the values All Channels, Internal App, Customer, Partner and Public Knowledge Base, so you can measure activity for each audience.