Personalization in Action: Building Separate Cloud Knowledge Bases with AC Knowledge Management Enterprise
Delivering the right knowledge to the right audience is one of the more practical challenges in customer experience and self-service. When all users see the same knowledge base regardless of who they are or what they need, content either becomes too broad to be useful or requires constant manual filtering on the user’s part.
AC Knowledge Management Enterprise addresses this by allowing organizations to build separate, targeted knowledge bases within Salesforce Experience Cloud, each scoped to a specific audience, department, or use case. This article covers how to set that up, and what product capabilities help you improve search, article management, self-service, and case deflection along the way.
The Power of Personalization in Salesforce
Personalization lies at the heart of Salesforce, revolutionizing the way businesses engage with their customers. By customizing interactions and tailoring experiences, organizations can enhance customer satisfaction, foster loyalty, and drive revenue growth. The platform gives organizations the infrastructure to use customer data meaningfully segmenting audiences, controlling what different users see, and tailoring interactions based on context. In knowledge management, this translates directly to better self-service: users find answers faster, agents spend less time redirecting people, and the knowledge base itself becomes easier to maintain because content is organized around real user needs.
What AC Knowledge Management Enterprise Enables
AC Knowledge Management Enterprise is a knowledge management solution built for Salesforce Experience Cloud. It integrates with Salesforce’s native knowledge infrastructure and extends it with the tooling needed to create structured, audience-specific knowledge experiences, including separate knowledge bases, advanced search, article contribution workflows, case deflection, and analytics.
The core value is control: control over who sees what, how content is organized, how users interact with it, and how well it’s performing.
How to Establish Separate Cloud Knowledge Bases
Setting up distinct knowledge bases for different audiences involves configuring a few layers within Salesforce and Experience Builder. The process is straightforward once the logic is clear.
Step 1: Assess Your Audience
Start by identifying the user segments, departments, or regions that need their own knowledge base. The goal is to define who gets access to what before touching any configuration.
Step 2: Define Knowledge Categories
Create data categories to classify articles by topic, product line, or any other structure that maps to your audiences.
- Go to Setup → Data Category Setup
- Click New and fill in the required fields
- Build out category groups, parent categories, and child categories as needed.
Step 3: Assign Access Permissions
Category-level visibility controls determine which users see which knowledge base. Configure this at the category group level first, then refine it per audience using permission sets.
- Go to Setup → Data Category Visibility
- Click Edit next to the relevant category group
- Select the Custom option in the Category Group Visibility tab and assign which categories will be visible to all users by default and which ones will not.
To set up audience-specific access:
- Go to Setup → Permission Sets → Data Category Visibility and click Edit next to the appropriate category group.
- Assign the categories that will be visible to this particular group of users and those that will not.
We strongly recommend using Permission Sets, not Profiles, as Salesforce is switching to the Permission Set approach only for data access and user permission management. Starting Spring ‘26 release, permissions that are currently assigned to profiles will be phased out and will only be available through permission sets.
Permission Sets vs Profiles Salesforce: A Practical Migration Guide
Step 4: Customize Article Templates
Different knowledge bases often need different article structures. Use record types and field sets to match each knowledge base’s content requirements.
- Go to Setup → Object Manager → Record Types
- Create different record types according to your needs
- In the Field Sets tab, create field sets with the same names as your record types and add the relevant fields for each article type
Step 5: Populate Knowledge Bases
Populate each knowledge base with relevant articles, ensuring accuracy and consistency. Build out a dedicated page in Experience Builder for each knowledge base.
- Go to Home → New Page → Standard Page → New Blank Page and choose a layout
- Place the AC Knowledge Advanced Navigation component and any other relevant components on the page
- Enter the Category Group or Category Unique Name in the component’s property panel to pull in the appropriate articles for that page
Step 6: Test and Refine
Once the bases are set up, test them with actual users from each audience segment. Validate that visibility rules are working as expected, categories are displaying correctly, and the navigation feels intuitive. Refine based on feedback.
Features That Improve Knowledge Experience and Self-Service
Beyond the structural setup, AC Knowledge Management Enterprise includes a set of features that improve how users interact with content and how teams manage it.
- Create Article in the community. Community members and internal champions can contribute knowledge directly from within the community using the AC Create Article component. Articles submitted this way are saved as drafts until reviewed and published by a knowledge manager, keeping quality control in place while opening up content creation to a wider group.
- Advanced filtering and search. Users can filter articles using responsive, multi-criteria filtering. Selected filters persist when navigating to an article detail page and back, so users don’t lose their context. A “Clear All Filters” option lets them reset quickly when needed.
- Article sorting. Articles can be sorted by Most Rated, Date, or Most Viewed, giving users the flexibility to surface content in the way that’s most useful to them at that moment.
- Labels visibility. Article type labels can be shown or hidden depending on your knowledge base’s design and audience needs.
- Voting options. Voting can be enabled or disabled per knowledge base. When enabled, you can choose between thumbs up/down or star ratings. Switching between the two formats converts existing votes automatically (stars below 3 convert to dislikes; stars above 2 convert to likes; likes become 5 stars, dislikes become 1 star), so there’s no data loss when changing the format.
- Case Deflection. AC Knowledge Management Enterprise includes structured Case Deflection functionality, allowing you to build a question hierarchy that guides users to relevant articles and resources before they submit a case. Questions can be nested with parent-child relationships and a configurable sort order. Article links within Case Deflection questions can also be set to update automatically when new article versions are published.
- Case Deflection Analytics. The platform provides visibility into how the knowledge base is being used: user visits, questions viewed, and article value. You can also configure articles to require a vote before the user can close the article pop-up. It’s a useful mechanism for gathering consistent feedback and evaluating content quality.
Benefits for Teams and End Users
When knowledge is organized around audience needs rather than internal convenience, the impact shows across the board:
- Users find answers faster, reducing frustration and support volume
- Self-service becomes genuinely useful because content is scoped to what each user actually needs
- Agents spend less time on routine questions, with case deflection handling a portion of incoming requests
- Knowledge managers get clearer feedback, through voting and analytics, on which content is working and which needs updating
- Teams can scale knowledge management without the chaos of a single, undifferentiated knowledge base growing in every direction
Final Take
Separate cloud knowledge bases aren’t just a configuration exercise; they’re a practical way to make knowledge delivery work better for everyone who uses it. AC Knowledge Management Enterprise gives teams the structure to build audience-specific bases within Salesforce Experience Cloud, and the tooling to manage content, support self-service, and measure effectiveness over time.
If you’d like to explore how this fits your organization’s setup, reach out to the Advanced Communities team.
