--- schema_version: "1" id: dce692dfb9fddb169bc6b2774bcf92b01fb1abc642b9ced7749a8542f88701bb title: Give Customers Access to Your Knowledge Base Through Help Center collection: admin version: current locale: en-us portal_url: https://docs.salesforce.com/admin/current/en-us/experience/264-0-0/networks_help_center_intro.md canonical_url: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.networks_help_center_intro.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 source_site: help.salesforce.com content_type: documentation content_hash: 26f76a2b52a2a86c7529537af43ceccf5885dcb0fe5d2f6b90c1eaa11c4dfd35 description: A help center is a public-access, self-service site that makes it easy for people to find answers for themselves. Instead of filing cases through customer support, visitors find the information they need from the articles that you make available from your knowledge base. You reduce the load on your customer support team, and folks get the satisfaction of finding their own solutions. products: - Experiences release: "264" --- # Give Customers Access to Your Knowledge Base Through Help Center A help center is a public-access, self-service site that makes it easy for people to find answers for themselves. Instead of filing cases through customer support, visitors find the information they need from the articles that you make available from your knowledge base. You reduce the load on your customer support team, and folks get the satisfaction of finding their own solutions. ### Required Editions
Available in: Essentials, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions
Use the new Help Center template to create a help center in minutes. When your help center is in place, use a guided setup to step through help center configuration. The guided setup offers links that take you to relevant locations in the help center’s user interface. ![Tip](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-experience-communities-264-0-0-production-enus/bf7df212-91a1-4fa3-a007-4d6f3e3b470b/images/icon_tip.png) Tip If your needs change, you can move from a help center template to another kind of customer portal. [A process is available](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.networks_help_center_change_template.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Changing from a help center template to another template type is a simple process in itself. But the complexity increases with the things you must consider and actions you must take before you make the change. The complexity of a template change varies according to how much original help center content and configuration you want to preserve in the new template. Keep in mind that Salesforce partners have considerable experience with making template changes and can assist you with this process.") in the Administration Workspace for making the switch. ## Before You Begin Here are some facts to help in your decision to select the Help Center template. - Help Center offers limited support for standard components. For a list of supported components, see [Which Components Can I Use with Each Template?](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.rss_component_reference_table.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Aura site templates, such as Customer Service and Partner Central, are each composed of pages, which in turn are made up of customizable components. Consult this table to find out which Aura template each component can be used in, and when the component became available.") - Help Center is a public-only template, which doesn’t include the site login page. - Only specific object pages are fully supported, but the template lets you create other standard and custom object pages. For a list of supported pages, see [Help Center Template Pages](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.networks_help_center_template.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "The Help Center template offers a public-facing, self-service portal where guest users can search your knowledge base for answers to their questions. It reduces the load on your customer support staff and gives customers the satisfaction of finding their own solutions."). Before you create your help center, there are a few actions you can take to prepare the way. **Enable Salesforce Knowledge in Your Org** Before you can create a help center, Knowledge must be enabled for your org, and you must enable the Knowledge org preference. It’s also useful to have a robust collection of Knowledge articles with a focus on solutions to common problems. Ideally, you already have Knowledge enabled along with a large collection of helpful articles. The main purpose of your help center is to give the public easy access to this useful information. **Plan your knowledge base and set up visibility for your data categories** The simpler your data is structured, the easier your help center is to navigate. Make the right content available to the public. You can choose the types of articles to make public so nothing sensitive or proprietary is at risk. **List the topics you intend to cover in your help center** Topics are the foundation of your help center. They make it easy for customers to discover all the information that you provide about a given subject. Talk to your customer support team about the things people ask about most. Base your Featured Topics selection on the most frequently asked questions. If you like, your topics can have a hierarchical structure—for example, you can set up topics with subtopics. **Set up an article layout specifically for your help center** The way an article is laid out can affect how easy it is to access the article’s data. Don’t hide the lead. Consider offering a summary section at the top so customers can get to basic information quickly. ![Note](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-experience-communities-264-0-0-production-enus/bf7df212-91a1-4fa3-a007-4d6f3e3b470b/images/icon_note.png) Note In Summer ’18, we increased the limits on articles and translation languages for some editions. It’s useful to know for your help center planning. - Essentials: 500 Articles, 1 Language - Enterprise: 50 K Articles, 5 Languages - Unlimited 150 K Articles, 10 Languages **Gather your resources** Upload the text and image files you plan to use in your help center to your org. - For the Featured Topics component, upload 250-by-250-pixel images—one for each featured topic. You can have up to 25 featured topics, but consider using fewer to keep your help center easy to navigate. - Upload images for your help center's logo, login page background, and page header. Your help center images are a branding opportunity, so make them attractive and representative of your brand. The header can be a GIF, JPG, or PNG file with a maximum file size of 20 KB. - Upload an HTML file for your page footer. ![Note](https://sf-zdocs-cdn-prod.zoominsoftware.com/tdta-experience-communities-264-0-0-production-enus/bf7df212-91a1-4fa3-a007-4d6f3e3b470b/images/icon_note.png) Note Your default view of the help center includes the footer: Powered by Salesforce. You can easily delete it or replace it with your own footer content. #### See Also - [Knowledge Settings](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.knowledge_settings.htm&type=5&language=en_US) - [Create a Help Center](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.networks_help_center_create.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Set up a help center to give guest users access to the knowledge articles that you choose. Help users find solutions, and give them a way to contact you when the answer isn’t available. This topic is for you if your org uses Classic Knowledge.") - [Organize Experience Cloud Sites with Topics](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.networks_topics_overview.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Navigational, featured, and content topics are a fantastic way to organize information and content in an Experience Cloud site and boost SEO for your articles. Use topics to structure your site’s content or highlight key discussions. You can create topics or use the topics that organically emerge from site member posts.") - [Set Up Featured Topics](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.networks_topics_featured.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Featured topics highlight current, popular conversations in your Experience Cloud site. Change them regularly to keep members up-to-date and engaged.") - [Automatically Assign Topics to Articles](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.networks_topics_automatic_topic_assignment.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Transport all your hard work of organizing Salesforce Knowledge in your Experience Cloud site, and boost SEO for your Knowledge articles, by mapping topics to data categories. All articles published with a specific data category are tagged with the topics you specify. Articles added to the data category in the future are also tagged. All articles with assigned topics are included in search results.") - [Contact Support Form](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.rss_contact_support_form.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "The Contact Support Form allows guest and authenticated users to create cases from a site. It works with the Case Deflection component to help site members find articles and discussions to answer questions as text is being entered into the form.") - [Configure Digital Experiences Settings](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=experience.exp_cloud_settings.htm&release=264.0.0&type=5 "Manage settings that apply to all sites built on Experience Cloud.") - [Salesforce Knowledge Help and Resources](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.knowledge_map.htm&type=5&language=en_US) - [Plan Your Knowledge Base in Salesforce Classic](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.knowledge_customizing.htm&type=5&language=en_US) - [Configure the Guest User Profile](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=platform.rss_config_guest_user_profile.htm&type=5&language=en_US) - [Knowledge Article Types](https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=service.knowledge_article_types_manage.htm&type=5&language=en_US)