Data category visibility
Key Takeaway
Making a data category visible also makes its ancestors and all its descendants visible, so users see articles classified anywhere in that family line but not in unrelated branches.
Data category visibility controls which Salesforce Knowledge articles and questions a user can see, based on the data categories the articles and questions are classified with. You set it for each category group through roles, permission sets, permission set groups, or profiles, plus a default setting for all users. Unlike most Salesforce access, it starts open and you restrict it.
What data category visibility controls
Data category visibility decides which data categories a user can see. Because articles and questions are classified with data categories, visibility also decides which categorized articles and questions the user can see.
You set visibility for each category group on roles, permission sets, permission set groups, or profiles. The "Default Data Category Visibility" setting applies to all users.
On a role, permission set, or profile, each category group gets one of three settings:
- "All Categories": every category in the group is visible.
- "None": no categories in the group are visible.
- "Custom": you select which categories are visible.
Salesforce joins the visibility defined on roles, permission sets, and profiles with a logical OR to build each user's visibility rule, so seeing a category through any one of them is enough.