salesforce questions portal implementation guide

Salesforce.com: Winter ’13

Chatter Answers Implementation Guide

Last updated: November 22 2012

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Table of Contents

Introduction to Chatter Answers..........................................................................................................................................................2Using this Guide.......................................................................................................................................................................2What is Chatter Answers?.........................................................................................................................................................2Useful Terminology...................................................................................................................................................................4

Planning Your Implementation.............................................................................................................................................................5Implementation Overview.....................................................................................................................................................................8Users Overview......................................................................................................................................................................................9Setting Up Chatter Answers...............................................................................................................................................................11

Enabling Chatter Answers......................................................................................................................................................11Configuring Email Notifications for Chatter Answers...........................................................................................................13Setting Up a Customer Portal.................................................................................................................................................14Configuring a Customer Portal for Chatter Answers..............................................................................................................14Configuring Portal Users for Self-Registration to Chatter Answers.......................................................................................15Setting Up a Force.com Site....................................................................................................................................................15Configuring a Force.com Site for Chatter Answers................................................................................................................16Configuring Cases for Chatter Answers..................................................................................................................................17Setting Questions Tab Visibility.............................................................................................................................................18Assigning Data Categories to Chatter Answers......................................................................................................................18Configuring Salesforce Knowledge for Chatter Answers........................................................................................................19Configuring a Chatter Answers Community..........................................................................................................................20Troubleshooting Chatter Answers Setup................................................................................................................................21

Adding Chatter Answers to Portals....................................................................................................................................................22Adding Chatter Answers to a Customer Portal......................................................................................................................22Adding Chatter Answers to a Partner Portal..........................................................................................................................23

Reporting on Chatter Answers...........................................................................................................................................................25Visualforce Pages for Chatter Answers...............................................................................................................................................26

Customizing Chatter Answers in Portals using Visualforce Pages.........................................................27Adding a Custom Visualforce Page to a Portal.......................................................................................................................27

Implementation Tips and Best Practices.............................................................................................................................................28Limitations..........................................................................................................................................................................................30

Index.................................................................................................................................................31

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Table of Contents

Introduction to Chatter AnswersAvailable in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

Answering your customers’ questions is critical to maintaining your brand’s reputation. A lot of customers, and potentialcustomers, look to the Web to quickly find answers for your products or services, or to connect with others who can help themfind the information they need. With Chatter Answers, you can strengthen your brand by increasing your service and supportpresence online.

Using this GuideUse this guide to perform set up tasks in the following sequence:

1. Familiarize yourself with Chatter Answers features and terminology.2. Prepare your implementation by answering the planning questions.3. Learn about setting up Chatter Answers.4. Learn about Chatter Answers users.5. Set up Chatter Answers.6. Build custom report types so that users can report on questions and replies posted to Chatter Answers.7. Learn about the Visualforce pages used to configure Chatter Answers.8. Review additional implementation tips and best practices.9. Review known feature limitations.

What is Chatter Answers?Chatter Answers integrates Cases, Answers, Force.com Sites, Customer Portal, and Salesforce Knowledge to provide youwith a Web community for your customers. It lets your customers:

• Post, browse, and reply to questions.

• Delete their own questions and replies.

• Flag questions and replies as spam, hateful, or inappropriate.

• Receive emails when their questions are answered or when best answers are chosen for questions they’re following.

• Collaborate publicly or privately with support agents to resolve issues.

• Search and review articles from Salesforce Knowledge.

• Like a post or knowledge article to help determine its popularity.

• Upload photos of themselves to their user profiles.

• View other users’ total number of posts and number of replies marked as best answers by others.

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Introduction to Chatter Answers

1. Search: Customers can search for existing questions before they post their own.2. Reputation: Community members can earn points and ratings that display on hover over their photos in the feed3. Question: Customers can post a question to the community for help.4. Comment: Community members and support agents can comment on the question, and the customer can select a comment

as the best answer.5. Filter: Community members and support agents can view questions and comments by specific topics.

Chatter Answers lets service organizations and support agents:

• Create multiple Web communities.

• Brand and customize communities.

• Respond to customers publicly or privately.

• Automate the creation of cases from questions via an Apex trigger and workflow rules.

• Deflect customer inquiries through community participation.

• Encourage community participation by publicly displaying user statistics.

• Moderate questions and answers from a Questions tab in Salesforce (or from the Service Cloud console).

A customer’s question is typically answered on Chatter Answers using one of these processes:

Question Answered by aKnowledge Article

Question Answered by aSupport Agent

Question Answered by theCommunity

Question Answered by aSimilar Question with a BestAnswer

1. A customer types aquestion or keyword into



1. A customer types aquestion or keyword intoChatter Answers andclicks Ask.

Chatter Answers andclicks Ask.



2. 2.2.2.A similar question with ananswer displays in searchresults.

A similar knowledgearticle with an answerdisplays in search results.

No similar questionsdisplay in search results.

No similar questionsdisplay in search results.

3. 3.The customer signs in toChatter Answers to post apublic question.

The customer signs inChatter Answers to post aprivate question.

4.4. The private question isconverted to a case.

A community member orsupport agent reads thequestion and adds a 5. A support agent reads the

case and adds a privatecomment, which answersthe customer’s question. comment, which answers

the customer’s question.

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Useful TerminologyThe following terms are used when describing Chatter Answers features and functionality.

Answers

Answers is a feature of the Community application that enables users to ask questions and have community memberspost replies. Community members can then vote on the helpfulness of each reply, and the person who asked the questioncan mark one reply as the best answer.

Article

Articles capture information about your company's products and services that you want to make available in your knowledgebase.

Best Answer

When a member of an answers community asks a question and other community members post a reply, the asker canmark one of the replies as the best answer. The best answer then appears directly under the question (above the otherreplies). Identifying the best answer helps other community members with the same question quickly find the mostrelevant, useful information.

Flag

An icon that users can click on a question or reply to report it as spam, hateful, or inappropriate.

Follow

A subscription to a question that lets you receive emails when someone answers or comments on a specific question.

Like

To show support or indicate quality or usefulness for a question, answer, or knowledge article.

Popular

Each question's popularity is based on the number of users who Like it within a certain amount of time.

Question

An issue posted to an answers community. When a community member asks a question, other community memberspost replies to help resolve the question.

Question, Private

An issue posted to an answers community, but marked Private so that only support agents can view and respond to it.

Reply

The response to a question in an answers community. When community members reply to a question, the person whoasked the question can mark one of the replies as the best answer to resolve and close the question.

Topics

The sidebar that lists data categories from which your customers can browse questions and replies. For example, if youhave a community for hardware products, your topics may include laptops, desktops, and printers.

Vote, Reply

In an answers community, a vote means you either like or dislike a reply to a question.

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Planning Your ImplementationBefore you begin setting up Chatter Answers, it's important that you consider the following questions. The answers to thesequestions are prerequisites to completing the tasks in this guide.

Who will implement Chatter Answers for your organization?Chatter Answers integrates Cases, Answers, Force.com Sites, Customer Portal, and Salesforce Knowledge to provide youwith a Web community for your customers. Unlike other Salesforce features, Chatter Answers spans across several areas ofsetup. There isn’t one location in Salesforce where you can update and configure all of the settings related to Chatter Answers.We recommend that advanced Salesforce administrators and developers set up and maintain Chatter Answers, as it involvesseveral Salesforce features. See Implementation Overview on page 8.

Have you purchased enough Chatter Answers User licenses to support yourcustomers?Portal users must have a Chatter Answers feature license to use Chatter Answers. After you set up Chatter Answers as describedin this guide, the feature license is automatically assigned to high-volume portal users who self-register for Chatter Answers.You can manually assign the license to users who don’t self-register by editing a user and clicking Chatter Answer User.See Users Overview on page 9.

Which language do you want your Chatter Answers community to support?Chatter Answers is designed to support one user language for each Web community you create. When you enable ChatterAnswers, the Visualforce pages automatically added to your organization inherit your organization’s default language. However,you can change the language attribute on each Visualforce page. Users who self-register for your community inherit yourorganization’s default language. Guest users view your community in the language specified in the Visualforce pages, no matterthe language chosen for their browsers. See Users Overview on page 9 and Visualforce Pages for Chatter Answers on page26.

Do you want to create more than one Chatter Answers community?You can create a community for each product you want to support. If you create multiple communities, your portal users haveaccess to all of them. Each question a user creates is associated with the community in which it’s posted, and the communityname is added to each question so that users and support agents can see where it originated. Users can view all of the questionsthey’ve posted to your communities by clicking My Questions from any community. You only need one Force.com site andone Customer Portal to support multiple communities. See Setting Up Chatter Answers on page 11 and Configuring a ChatterAnswers Community on page 20.

Do you want to customize the look and feel of your Chatter Answers community?You can customize the appearance of your community to match your company’s branding. Just create or update Visualforcepages and add them to the Force.com Site used to host your community. See the Visualforce Developer's Guide, the Force.comSites Implementation Guide, and, Visualforce Pages for Chatter Answers on page 26.

Is a Customer Portal and Force.com Site set up for your organization?To use Chatter Answers, your organization must set up and maintain a Customer Portal and Force.com Site. A CustomerPortal is used to authenticate users who sign in to your Chatter Answers community, and a Force.com Site is used to host adomain and publicly display some of your Salesforce data, such as questions, replies, and knowledge articles. See “Setting UpYour Customer Portal” and “Creating and Editing Force.com Sites” in the online help.

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Planning Your Implementation

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/index.htm

http://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_platform_portal_implementation_guide.pdf


Do you want your Chatter Answers community to display in your Customer Portalor Partner Portal?You can add your community to a tab on any existing Customer Portal or Partner Portal. If you only want to display ChatterAnswers in your portals, then you don’t need to set up a Force.com site to host Chatter Answers. However, a site lets guestusers access some Chatter Answers data without a login, whereas portals do not. See Adding Chatter Answers to Portals onpage 22.

Do you want Salesforce Knowledge articles to display in your Chatter Answerscommunity?If you want your community’s search results to return knowledge articles, then you must set up Data Categories and SalesforceKnowledge (if you haven’t done so already) and configure them both for Chatter Answers. See the Salesforce KnowledgeImplementation Guide and Configuring Salesforce Knowledge for Chatter Answers on page 19.

Do you want your customers to be able to sign in to your Chatter Answerscommunity with a Facebook© login?Instead of requiring users to create a Chatter Answers account to post and answer questions, you can encourage communityparticipation by letting users sign in with an existing Facebook login. When a user signs in to Chatter Answers with a Facebooklogin, the first name, last name, and the photo associated with the Facebook account is used in posts to your community.Before you can enable this feature, you must define a Facebook authentication provider in your organization’s security controls.See “Configuring a Facebook Authentication Provider” in the Salesforce online help and Enabling Chatter Answers on page11.

Do you want your customers to be able to post questions privately to your supportteam?You can configure your Chatter Answers community so that users have the option to post their questions directly to yoursupport team (and create cases) instead of posting their questions publicly on the Web. See Configuring a Chatter AnswersCommunity on page 20.

Do you want to escalate customers’ questions to cases automatically?Once you enable Chatter Answers, one Apex trigger and two workflow rules for questions are added to your organization sothat you can customize when questions are escalated to cases for your support team to answer. By default, the rule criteria isbased on the number of followers on a question as well as whether there’s a best reply to a question by a specified time. See“Managing Apex Triggers” and “Managing Workflow Rules” in the online help.

When do you want to send your customers email notifications from your ChatterAnswers community?You can choose when to send email notifications to users, such as when other users reply to their questions or when a bestanswer is selected for a question they’re following. See Configuring Email Notifications for Chatter Answers on page 13.

Do you want to customize the look and feel of email notifications sent from yourChatter Answers community?You can customize the headers and footers of email notifications sent from specific communities. For example, you can addyour organization’s branding to the header of every notification sent from one community, and add different branding to thefooter of notifications sent from another community. To begin, simply upload a custom HTML file to your organization’sDocuments tab. See Configuring a Chatter Answers Community on page 20.

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http://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_knowledge_implementation_guide.pdf

http://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_knowledge_implementation_guide.pdf

Do you want your support agents to moderate and review questions posted toyour Chatter Answers community?You can add the Questions tab to your Salesforce organization so that your support team can:

• Review lists of questions.• Answer questions or add replies to questions.• Manually escalate a question to a case.• Delete questions or replies.• Select best answers for questions.• Promote helpful replies to knowledge base articles

See Setting Questions Tab Visibility on page 18.

Do you want to customize reports so Salesforce users can view snapshots of ChatterAnswers data?Use custom report types to define report criteria from which users can run and create reports on questions and replies postedto your Chatter Answers community. See Reporting on Chatter Answers on page 25.

Do you want to review a list of additional Chatter Answers details?Before you begin your implementation, we suggest that you review a list of tips, best practices, and limitations that go beyondthe scope of the questions above. See Implementation Tips and Best Practices on page 28 and Limitations on page 30.

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Implementation OverviewAvailable in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

Note: We recommend that advanced Salesforce administrators and developers set up and maintain Chatter Answers,as it involves several Salesforce features.

Chatter Answers integrates Cases, Answers, Force.com Sites, Customer Portal, and Salesforce Knowledge to provide youwith a Web community for your customers. Before administrators can set up Chatter Answers, their organizations must haveimplemented Data Categories. If you want knowledge articles to display in your Web community, then administrators needto implement Salesforce Knowledge.

Unlike other Salesforce features, Chatter Answers spans across several areas of setup. There isn’t one location in Salesforcewhere you can update and configure all of the settings related to Chatter Answers. For example, configuring Chatter Answersmight require you to update Customer Portal settings by clicking Your Name > Setup > Customize > Customer Portal >Settings, as well as Force.com Site settings by clicking Your Name > Setup > Develop > Sites.

Setting up Chatter Answers also includes customizing or maintaining:

• Cases

• Case assignment rules

• Workflow rules on cases or questions

• Apex triggers on questions

• Visualforce pages

• Customer Portal users

• Organization-wide sharing defaults

• Feature licenses

Note: For comprehensive details on each item above, see the Salesforce online help.

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Implementation Overview

Users OverviewBecause Chatter Answers integrates several features with the Customer Portal, managing Chatter Answers users is similar tomanaging Customer Portal users. Use the following to manage the data and functions that are accessible to Chatter Answersusers:

• Profiles, permissions, and access settings determine a user’s permission to perform different functions, such as addingcomments to a case.

• User licenses define which profiles and permission sets are available to a user, such as the High Volume Customer Portal(Service Cloud Portal User) or Customer Portal Manager Custom license.

• Feature licenses entitle a user to additional Salesforce features, such as Chatter Answers.

• Field-level security defines which fields users can access, such as fields on Salesforce Knowledge articles.

• Sharing sets let you selectively grant record access to defined groups of high-volume portal users.

Chatter Answers excludes some features typically available to Customer Portal users, such as:

• Ideas

• Groups

• Teams

• Reports

• Content

• Page layouts

• Custom objects

• Delegated portal user administration

• Customer Portal role hierarchy (available, but not used)

• Customer Portal sharing rules, except for high-volume portal users

Chatter Answers users can only access the following records from your Web community:

• Cases

• Questions

• Replies (answers)

• Salesforce Knowledge articles

Chatter Answers is designed to support one user language for each Web community you create. When you enable ChatterAnswers, the Visualforce pages automatically added to your organization inherit your organization’s default language. However,you can change the language attribute on each Visualforce page. Users who self-register for your community inherit yourorganization’s default language. Guest users view your community in the language specified in the Visualforce pages, no matterthe language chosen for their browsers.

Note:

• Chatter Answers users can’t change their language, timezone, or locale settings.

• Portal users must have the Chatter Answers User feature license to use Chatter Answers. This feature license isautomatically assigned to high-volume portal users who self-register for Chatter Answers. You can manually assignthe license to users who don’t self-register by editing a user and clicking Chatter Answers User.

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Users Overview

Tip: For information on managing and working with Customer Portal users, see “About Customer Portal UserManagement” and “Working with Customer Portal Users” in the online help.

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Users Overview

Setting Up Chatter AnswersAvailable in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

Before you set up Chatter Answers, see Planning Your Implementation on page 5 to answer common questions related tosetup.

The steps below are general guidelines for setting up Chatter Answers. Chatter Answers integrates several Salesforce features,including features administrators may have implemented already, so each Chatter Answers implementation may be different.Contact salesforce.com for specifics on your implementation.

We recommend that you follow these set up tasks in this sequence:

1. Enable Chatter Answers.2. Configure email notification settings.3. Implement a Customer Portal (if one doesn’t already exist for your organization).4. Configure your organization’s Customer Portal for Chatter Answers.5. Configure high-volume portal users for self-registration.6. Implement a Force.com Site (if one doesn’t already exist for your organization).7. Configure your organization’s Force.com site for Chatter Answers.8. Configure cases for Chatter Answers.9. Set Questions tab visibility.10. Optionally:

• Assign data categories to Chatter Answers.• Configure Salesforce Knowledge for Chatter Answers.

11. Configure one or more Chatter Answers communities.12. Troubleshoot any setup issues.

Important: After you set up Chatter Answers, it may not work properly if you change any of the configurations inthe features mentioned above. If certain configuration issues are detected, Salesforce sends email notifications to theSite Contact user.

Enabling Chatter Answers

User Permissions Needed

“Customize Application”To enable Chatter Answers:

Enable Chatter Answers to set up Chatter Answers communities.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers > Settings.2. Click Edit.

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Setting Up Chatter Answers

3. Select Enable.4. Optionally, select:

DescriptionOption

Lets users filter search results by articles or questions beforethey post a question to any of your Chatter Answers

Optimize Question Flow

communities. Also, adds Title and Body fields to questionsfor easier text input and scanning. This setting is turned onautomatically when you enable Chatter Answers.

Lets you add Chatter Answers as a tab to your CustomerPortal or Partner Portal. If you choose this option, you must

Show Chatter Answers in Portals

add the Chatter Answers tab to each portal and assign theChatter Answers User license to portal users.

If you only want to display Chatter Answers in your portals,then you don’t need to set up a Force.com site to hostChatter Answers. However, a site lets guest users accesssome Chatter Answers data without a login, whereas portalsdo not.

Lets users sign in to your Chatter Answers communitieswith their Facebook logins. If you choose this setting, your

Enable Facebook Single Sign On

communities display an option to Sign in withFacebook next to your communities’ Sign In. When auser signs in to Chatter Answers with a Facebook login, thefirst name, last name, and the photo associated with theFacebook account is used in posts to your communities.

Before you enable this feature, you must define and enablea Facebook authentication provider in your organization’ssecurity controls. See “Configuring a FacebookAuthentication Provider” in the online help.

Lets you choose an existing Facebook authentication providerafter you select Enable Facebook Single Sign On.

Facebook Authentication Provider

You must choose a Facebook authentication provider toimplement Facebook Single Sign On for your ChatterAnswers communities.

Lets community members use the rich text editor to formattext and upload images when posting questions.

Enable Rich Text Editor

Lets users earn points and ratings that display as hover texton their profile pictures. Reputation is enabled across all

Enable Reputation

communities. This setting is turned on automatically whenyou enable Chatter Answers.

5. Click Save.

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After you enable Chatter Answers, several items are automatically added to your organization for use with setting upcommunities:

• Standard permission settings for Questions on user profiles so that you can grant users permissions to questions and replies.

• Visualforce pages that you add to a Force.com site so that users can register, sign in, and view feed items on a community.

• An Apex trigger for questions named chatter_answers_question_escalation_to_case_trigger so thatquestions with specified attributes are automatically escalated to cases.

• A workflow field update named chatter_answers_num_subscriptions_above_ so that when a question is escalatedto a case, Priority on questions is updated.

• Two workflow rules, chatter_answers_no_best_reply_within_time_limit_wf andchatter_answers_num_subscriptions_above_limit_wf, which you can customize and activate so that questionswithout best replies or questions with a specified number of followers are automatically escalated to cases.

Configuring Email Notifications for Chatter Answers


“Customize Application”To configure email notifications for your Chatter Answerscommunities:

Determine when emails are sent to users by configuring the notification settings that apply to all of your Web communities.Each email includes a link to a specific community so that users can easily return to it.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers > Email Notification Settings.2. Click Edit.3. Choose from the following settings:

DescriptionOption

Notify customers when other users reply to their questions.Replies to a question they own

Notify customers when other users reply to questions they’refollowing.

Replies to a question they follow

Notify customers when a best answer is selected for aquestion they’re following.

Selects a best answer on a question theyfollow

Notify customers when customer support responds to theirquestions privately.

Sends a private reply to their question(Customer Support)

4. Click Save.

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Setting Up a Customer Portal


“Customize Application”To set up and update the Customer Portal:

For information on setting up a Customer Portal, see the Customer Portal Implementation Guide or “Setting Up Your CustomerPortal” in the online help.

Configuring a Customer Portal for Chatter Answers



Note: Even if you don’t plan on using a Customer Portal, you must configure one for Chatter Answers to authenticateusers who sign in to your Chatter Answers community.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Customer Portal > Settings.2. Click Edit next to the Customer Portal you want to configure for Chatter Answers.3. Click Login Enabled to let customers sign in to Chatter Answers.4. In From Email Address, type the address from which all email communications from your Chatter Answers community

are sent. For example, [email protected]. In From Email Address Name, type the name associated with the From Email Address. For example, Acme

Customer Support.6. Click Self-Registration Enabled to let customers register themselves for access to Chatter Answers.7. In Default New User License, choose the portal user license that’s automatically assigned to customers who

self-register. We recommend you choose the High Volume Customer Portal license.8. In Default New User Profile, choose the profile that’s automatically assigned to customers who self-register. We

recommend you choose the profile you cloned and customized for self-registration.9. Click Save.10. Assign the profile you selected as the Default New User Profile to your Customer Portal so that users can sign in

to your community:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Customer Portal > Settings.b. Select your portal’s name.c. In the Assigned Profiles section, click Edit Profiles.d. Click Active next to the profile you selected as the Default New User Profile.e. Click Save.

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http://na1.salesforce.com/help/doc/en/salesforce_customer_portal_implementation_guide.pdf

Configuring Portal Users for Self-Registration to Chatter Answers



“Edit Self-Service Users”To manage Customer Portal users:

Configure Customer Portal users for self-registration to your Chatter Answers community.

1. Clone the High Volume Customer Portal profile so that you can customize it:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Profiles.b. Click Clone next to High Volume Customer Portal.c. Type a name for the new profile.d. Click Save.

2. Customize the cloned profile to include permissions to the standard objects on your community:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Profiles.b. Click the name of the cloned profile.c. Click Edit.d. In Standard Object Permissions, click on the following permissions to these objects:

PermissionsObject

Read, CreateCases

ReadContacts

Read, CreateQuestions

e. Click Save.

Setting Up a Force.com Site


“Customize Application”To create and edit Force.com sites:

For information on setting up a Force.com Site, see the Force.com Sites Implementation Guide or “Creating and Editing Force.comSites” in the online help.

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Configuring a Force.com Site for Chatter Answers


“Customize Application”To create and edit Force.com sites:

Configure a Force.com site for Chatter Answers to host a domain and publicly display some of your Salesforce data, such asquestions, replies, and knowledge articles.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Develop > Sites.2. Click Edit next to the name of the site you want to configure for Chatter Answers.3. Click Active to activate the site.

You can activate the site after you’ve finished setting up Chatter Answers.

4. In Active Site Home Page, choose a Visualforce page as the home page for your Chatter Answers community.5. Click Save.6. Click Edit on the Site Visualforce Pages related list.

a. Use the Add and Remove buttons to enable the following Visualforce pages for your site:

• ChatterAnswersAgentView

• ChatterAnswersChangePassword

• ChatterAnswersForgotPassword

• ChatterAnswersForgotPasswordConfirm

• ChatterAnswersHelp

• ChatterAnswersLogin

• ChatterAnswersRegistration

b. Click Save.

7. Click Public Access Settings to grant guest users (unauthenticated, non-Customer Portal users) access to cases, questions,and Salesforce Knowledge articles.

a. Click Edit on the profile for Chatter Answers users.b. In Standard Object Permissions, click Read on Cases and Questions.c. Optionally, if you want articles to display in your Chatter Answers community, click Read on articles types in Article

Type Permissions.d. Click Save.

8. Click Edit next to a category group in the Data Category Group Visibility Settings related list to grant users access to thecategories so that they can browse questions, replies, and knowledge articles.

a. Next to Visibility, click All Categories.b. Click Save.

9. Return to the site and select its name by clicking Your Name > Setup > Develop > Sites.10. Click Login Settings to enable user authentication for the site.

a. Click Edit.

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b. In Enable Login For, choose the Customer Portal you created for Chatter Answers.c. Click Save.

After you configure your Force.com site for Chatter Answers, you can replace the default Visualforce pages that make up yourcommunity with customized ones. The Visualforce pages are automatically set to your site’s URL so that portal users cannavigate to them.

Note: Chatter Answers is compatible with custom URL rewriters for sites.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers > Sites Settings.2. Click Edit next to a site.3. Choose the pages to replace. If you replace the Change Password Page, the Change Password Page for your site

is automatically updated too.4. Click Save.

Note: Internet Explorer 8 users receive a security warning if you customize Chatter Answers with URLs that don'tinclude https://.

Configuring Cases for Chatter Answers


“Manage Users”

AND

“Customize Application”

To set organization-wide sharing defaults:

“Customize Application”To set field-level security:

“Customize Application”To customize fields:

To create assignment rules:

To grant high-volume portal users access to cases:

Configure case features for Chatter Answers so that cases are created, escalated, and accessed by the appropriate users of yourChatter Answers communities.

1. Set your organization-wide sharing defaults to Private on Account, Controlled by Parent on Contact, and Private on Caseto prevent users from accessing each others’ information.

2. Set field-level security on Question on cases to Visible for profiles assigned to your Customer Portal so that users canaccess their private questions.

3. Update Origin on cases with the value in the Question trigger so that support agents can see which cases originated fromChatter Answers.

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4. Create a case assignment rule where Case Origin equals the value of Chatter Answers so that cases created from privatequestions are assigned to support agents.

5. Grant high-volume portal users access to cases so that they can access their private questions on Chatter Answers.

Note: For comprehensive details on each task above, see the Salesforce online help.

Setting Questions Tab Visibility


“Manage Users”To set Questions tab visibility:

Set the visibility of the Questions tab to Default On so that support agents can view, search, filter, and moderate questionsposted to your Chatter Answers community.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Profiles.2. Select a support agent profile.3. Depending on which user interface you're using, do one of the following:

• Enhanced profile user interface—In the Find Settings... box, enter the name of the tab you want and select it fromthe list, then click Edit.

• Original profile user interface—Click Edit, then scroll to the Tab Settings section.

4. Specify the visibility of the Questions tab to Default On.5. (Original profile user interface only) To reset users’ tab customizations to the tab visibility settings that you specify, select

Overwrite users' personal tab customizations.6. Click Save.

Assigning Data Categories to Chatter Answers


“Customize Application”To assign data categories to Chatter Answers:

Assign a data category group to Chatter Answers so that it’s available to all of your Chatter Answers communities. Youconfigure each community with a top-level data category (topic) in which customers and support agents can categorize andfilter questions and knowledge articles.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers > Data Category Assignments.2. Click Edit.3. Select a category group.

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4. Click Save.

Configuring Salesforce Knowledge for Chatter Answers


“Manage Users”To create or edit users:

“Customize Application”

AND

“Manage Salesforce Knowledge”

To create article types and article actions:

“Manage Synonyms”To manage synonyms:

“Manage Data Categories”To create data categories:

To display Salesforce Knowledge articles in your Chatter Answers communities, you must:

1. Implement Data Categories (if you haven’t done so already).2. Implement Salesforce Knowledge (if you haven’t done so already).3. Configure both for Chatter Answers.

You configure each community with a top-level data category (topic) in which customers and support agents can categorizeand filter questions and knowledge articles.

1. Set the Default Data Category Visibility to All Categories so that customers not assigned visibility, can access categoriesthat include questions and knowledge articles.

2. Create one category group for all of your communities so that you’re less likely to reach the limit of three active datacategories. Then add a child category for each community; and add child categories to those categories to provide topics.

3. Activate the category group you want available to Chatter Answers so that users can access it.4. Grant “Read” permissions to specific article types on the profiles of Chatter Answers users so that they can access articles

from your communities.5. Optionally, allow support agents to promote replies to draft articles in the knowledge base so that your support team can

capture useful information quickly.

Note: For comprehensive details on each task above, see the Salesforce online help.

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Configuring a Chatter Answers Community


“Customize Application”To configure a Chatter Answers community:

Configure a Chatter Answers community to integrate the user authentication features of the Customer Portal with the domainand public data features of a Force.com site.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers > Communities.2. Select an existing community, or click New to create a new community.3. Type a name and description for your community.4. Click Active to activate the community for ideas, answers, or Chatter Answers.5. In Portal, choose the Customer Portal in which to authenticate community members.6. Optionally, in Portal Email Notification URL, customize the portal URL that’s included in email notifications

sent from the community.

This field only displays if you’ve chosen to show Chatter Answers in a Customer Portal. The URL is automatically generatedto include your portal’s ID and a question or case ID; but you might want to customize the URL to redirect users to aspecific login page. For example, if you’ve created a login page from which users can access multiple communities, you cancustomize the Portal Email Notification URL to redirect users to that page from email notifications.

7. Click Enable This Community for Chatter Answers to associate the community with Chatter Answers.8. Click Enable Private Questions to let customers post their questions privately to customer support (create cases). Even

if you don’t select this setting, support agents can still initiate private communications with customers.9. In Data Category for Top-Level Topics, choose the top-level topic in which customers and support agents can

categorize and filter questions and knowledge articles.

10. In Site That Hosts Your Community, click and choose the Force.com site on which you want to host thecommunity.

11. In Visualforce Page That Hosts Your Community’s Feeds, click and choose the Visualforce page onwhich questions, replies, and knowledge articles display.

The page you choose must include the chatteranswers:allfeeds component so that the community is linked toyour Force.com site correctly. If you don’t choose a Visualforce page, one is automatically generated when you save yourcommunity. The generated page includes your community’s ID so that topics, questions, and replies are associated withyour specific community and can display on it. The page is named after your community with a suffix of “_main,” forexample, CommunityName_main. The page also includes a language attribute that matches your organization’s defaultlanguage.

12. Optionally, in Header or Footer, click and choose a text or HTML file that incorporates your organization’s brandinginto the headers or footers of email notifications sent from the community.

You can only choose a file that has been uploaded to a publicly accessible folder on the Documents tab and markedExternally Available Image. The files you include in the fields can have a combined size of up to 10 KB.

13. Click Save.

Note: You can create a community for each product you want to support. If you create multiple communities, yourportal users have access to all of them. Each question a user creates is associated with the community in which it’sposted, and the community name is added to each question so that users and support agents can see where it originated.

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Users can view all of the questions they’ve posted to your communities by clicking My Questions from any community.You only need one Force.com site and one Customer Portal to support multiple communities.

Troubleshooting Chatter Answers Setup


“View Setup and Configuration”To view Setup:

“Customize Application”To set up Chatter Answers:

After you set up a Chatter Answers community, you can view a snapshot of all of its configurations on one page so that youdon’t have to visit several pages in setup to diagnose issues.

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers > Sites Settings.2. In the Site Snapshot column, click View next to the Force.com site associated with your community.

3. Click to show or to hide various settings.4. Click Go! to go to a specific page in setup where you can change settings.

For example, you can use a site snapshot to see if the Force.com site hosting your community is marked Active or to verifythe names of the user profiles assigned to your community’s Customer Portal.

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Adding Chatter Answers to PortalsAvailable in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

You can add Chatter Answers to an existing Customer Portal or Partner Portal so that portal users can access Chatter Answerscommunities from one of your established channels. After users log in to one of your portals, they can access Chatter Answersfrom a tab and choose which community to view from a drop-down list. If you only want to display Chatter Answers in yourportals, then you don’t need to set up a Force.com site to host Chatter Answers. However, a site lets guest users access someChatter Answers data without a login, whereas portals do not.

The following occurs to Chatter Answers when it appears in a portal:

• Chatter Answers displays as a tab, which you can rename.

• A drop-down list lets portal users switch between all of your Chatter Answers communities.

• The My Settings link for users is replaced by Enable Emails and Disable Emails.

• Sign In and Sign Up are removed because portal users can only view Chatter Answers after they’ve logged in to your portal.

• Chatter Answers displays a look and feel, which you can’t customize.

• The Need help? link is removed.

To add Chatter Answers to a portal, see:

• Adding Chatter Answers to a Customer Portal

• Adding Chatter Answers to a Partner Portal

Adding Chatter Answers to a Customer Portal


“Customize Application”To add Chatter Answers to a Customer Portal:

You can add Chatter Answers to an existing Customer Portal so that portal users can access Chatter Answers communitiesfrom one of your established support channels.

1. Enable Chatter Answers for portals:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers > Settings.b. Click Edit.c. Select Show Chatter Answers in Portals.d. Click Save.

2. Edit Customer Portal user profiles to support Chatter Answers:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Profiles.b. Click Edit next to a portal user profile.c. In Tab Settings, choose Default On for Chatter Answers.

22

Adding Chatter Answers to Portals

d. In Standard Object Permissions, click Read and Create on Questions.e. Click Save.

3. Add the Chatter Answers User feature license to Customer Portal users:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Users.b. Click Edit next to a portal user.c. Click Chatter Answers User.d. Click Save.

4. Add Chatter Answers as a tab to your Customer Portal:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Customer Portal > Settings.b. Click the name of a Customer Portal.c. Click Customize Portal Tabs.d. Select Chatter Answers and click the Add arrow to move the Chatter Answers tab into the Selected Tabs box.e. Click Save.

5. Optionally, rename the Chatter Answers tab for your Customer Portal:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Tab Names and Labels > Rename Tabs and Labels.b. Click Edit next to Questions.c. Click Next.d. In Other Labels, rename Chatter Answers. You can only rename it as Singular, not Plural.e. Click Save.

Adding Chatter Answers to a Partner Portal


“Customize Application”To add Chatter Answers to a Partner Portal:

You can add Chatter Answers to an existing Partner Portal so that portal users can access Chatter Answers communities fromone of your established partner channels.

1. Enable Chatter Answers for portals:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers > Settings.b. Click Edit.c. Select Show Chatter Answers in Portals.d. Click Save.

2. Edit Partner Portal user profiles to support Chatter Answers:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Profiles.b. Click Edit next to a portal user profile.c. In Tab Settings, choose Default On for Chatter Answers.

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d. In Standard Object Permissions, click Read and Create on Questions.e. Click Save.

3. Add the Chatter Answers User feature license to Partner Portal users:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Manage Users > Users.b. Click Edit next to a portal user.c. Click Chatter Answers User.d. Click Save.

4. Add Chatter Answers as a tab to your Partner Portal:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Partners > Settings.b. Click the name of a Partner Portal.c. Click Customize Portal Tabs.d. Select Chatter Answers and click the Add arrow to move the Chatter Answers tab into the Selected Tabs box.e. Click Save.

5. Optionally, rename the Chatter Answers tab for your Partner Portal:

a. Click Your Name > Setup > Customize > Tab Names and Labels > Rename Tabs and Labels.b. Click Edit next to Questions.c. Click Next.d. In Other Labels, rename Chatter Answers. You can only rename it as Singular, not Plural.e. Click Save.

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Reporting on Chatter AnswersAvailable in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions


“Manage Custom Report Types”To create or update custom report types:

“Modify All Data”To delete custom report types:

You can use custom report types to define report criteria from which users can run and create reports on questions and repliesposted to your Chatter Answers community. Users with the “Create and Customize Reports” permission can click CreateNew Custom Report on the Reports tab to run a report based on any custom report types.

To create custom report types for Chatter Answers:

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Report Types.2. From the All Custom Report Types page, you can:

• Define a new custom report type by clicking New Custom Report Type.

You can't select replies as a primary object.

• Update a custom report type's name, description, report type category, and deployment status by clicking Edit next toa custom report type's name.

• Delete a custom report type by clicking Del next to the custom report type's name. All the data stored in the customreport type will be deleted and cannot be restored from the Recycle Bin.

• Display detailed information about a custom report type and customize it further by clicking a custom report type'sname.

Note: For information on reports and custom report types, see “Custom Report Types Overview” in the online help.

25

Reporting on Chatter Answers

Visualforce Pages for Chatter AnswersAvailable in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

After you enable Chatter Answers, the Visualforce pages below are automatically added to your organization. You can usethese pages to set up and configure Chatter Answers communities.

DescriptionVisualforce page

The Visualforce component that displays questions on casedetail pages when questions are converted to cases. This

ChatterAnswersAgentView

component is optional and offers an alternative to the casedetail page.

The page where users can change their passwords to yourcommunity.

ChatterAnswersChangePassword

The forgot password page for your community.ChatterAnswersForgotPassword

The forgot password confirmation page for your community.ChatterAnswersForgotPasswordConfirm

The online help page displayed to users when they click NeedHelp?.

ChatterAnswersHelp

The login page for your community.ChatterAnswersLogin

The page where users can self-register for access to yourcommunity.

ChatterAnswersRegistration

Note: For more information on Visualforce, see the Visualforce Developer's Guide.

26

Visualforce Pages for Chatter Answers

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/index.htm

Customizing Chatter Answers in Portals using VisualforcePages

Available in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

You can create a Visualforce page that displays a Chatter Answers community in a Customer Portal or Partner Portal. Byusing a Visualforce page, you can add custom widgets to Chatter Answers, such as announcements or ads, which let you extendyour branding and change the community experience for users. The page you create must include thechatteranswers:allfeeds component to display the community. After users log in to one of your portals, they can accessChatter Answers from a tab and interact with that community. When you add Chatter Answers using a Visualforce page,users only see the community that is related to the page; they can’t switch communities as they can when using the standardChatter Answers tab on a portal.

Note: The Visualforce page is visible to portal users only. Internal users can see the Chatter Answers tab, but needto log in through the portal to view the contents of the tab using the portal.

Adding a Custom Visualforce Page to a Portal

Available in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions



To add a custom Visualforce tab to a portal:

1. Click Your Name > Setup > Create > Tabs to display a list of your organization’s Visualforce tabs.2. Click New to create a new Visualforce tab.3. Select the Visualforce page and add details for the other fields on the page.4. Click Next.5. Select which user profiles can see the tab.6. Select the portals that will include the new tab.

27

Customizing Chatter Answers in Portals using Visualforce Pages

Implementation Tips and Best PracticesAvailable in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

Review the following tips and best practices during your Chatter Answers implementation. For more information on any ofthe items, see the Salesforce online help.

Implementation Tips• We recommend that advanced Salesforce administrators and developers set up and maintain Chatter Answers, as it involves

several Salesforce features.• Before administrators can set up Chatter Answers, their organizations must have implemented Data Categories. If you

want knowledge articles to display in your Web community, then administrators need to implement Salesforce Knowledge.• You can customize fields, page layouts, buttons and links, Apex triggers, and validation rules for questions and replies for

Chatter Answers by clicking Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter Answers and choosing the appropriate setting.• After you enable Chatter Answers, several items are automatically added to your organization for use with setting up

communities:

◊ Standard permission settings for Questions on user profiles so that you can grant users permissions to questions andreplies.

◊ Visualforce pages that you add to a Force.com site so that users can register, sign in, and view feed items on a community.◊ An Apex trigger for questions named chatter_answers_question_escalation_to_case_trigger so that

questions with specified attributes are automatically escalated to cases.◊ A workflow field update named chatter_answers_num_subscriptions_above_ so that when a question is

escalated to a case, Priority on questions is updated.◊ Two workflow rules, chatter_answers_no_best_reply_within_time_limit_wf and

chatter_answers_num_subscriptions_above_limit_wf, which you can customize and activate so thatquestions without best replies or questions with a specified number of followers are automatically escalated to cases.

• You can add Chatter Answers to an existing Customer Portal or Partner Portal so that portal users can access ChatterAnswers communities from one of your established channels.

• Chatter Answers is designed to support one user language for each Web community you create. When you enable ChatterAnswers, the Visualforce pages automatically added to your organization inherit your organization’s default language.However, you can change the language attribute on each Visualforce page. Users who self-register for your communityinherit your organization’s default language. Guest users view your community in the language specified in the Visualforcepages, no matter the language chosen for their browsers.

• You can rename Customer Support on your communities’ user interface. For example, you can change “CustomerSupport” to “Acme Support.” Just edit the Customer Support label on the Question object. See “Renaming Tab and FieldLabels” in the online help.

• Questions escalated to cases display a Chatter-like feed on case detail pages. The case detail page also includes a CustomerView section that lets support agents reply publicly or privately to the thread posted to the community.

• Case comments marked Public display as private messages from customer support in Chatter Answers; they don't displayto the entire community. For example, if a support agent adds a public case comment, it only displays to the case's contactwhen he or she logs in to Chatter Answers to review private messages. Support agents can read all private and public casecomments. See “Creating and Editing Case Comments” in the online help.

• Chatter Answers sends emails to users when they:

◊ Sign up for an account.◊ Follow a question (answers or comments).

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Implementation Tips and Best Practices

◊ Receive an answer or comment to their question.◊ Receive a private reply to their question from customer support.

• Internet Explorer 8 users receive a security warning if you customize Chatter Answers with URLs that don't includehttps://.

• Before you make a Web community public, add at least 20 frequently asked questions, answers, or articles. This contentwill generate conversations.

• Create knowledge articles that contain:

◊ Your support organization's phone number so that customers can contact your support agents directly.◊ Terms and conditions for community members, such as when support agents might delete customers' questions and

comments.

• Chatter Answers uses the following API objects:

◊ Case◊ ChatterAnswersActivity◊ ChatterAnswersReputationLevel◊ Community◊ Question◊ QuestionReportAbuse◊ QuestionSubscription◊ Reply◊ ReplyReportAbuse

See the SOAP API Developer's Guide.

Best Practices• We recommend that you tell support agents that:

◊ The Case Origin field lists Chatter Answers on any case converted from a question.◊ If they answer a question privately, they can't convert it to a public answer.

• We recommend that you assign a support agent to review public questions from the Questions tab. Agents can’t click Flagnext to questions or replies that are spam, hateful, or inappropriate, but they can edit and delete questions or replies froma Web community via the Questions tab if they have the “Delete” permission on questions.

• To moderate many questions quickly, we recommend that support agents review questions from pinned lists on the ServiceCloud console (this requires adding the Questions tab to the console’s Navigation tab; see “Creating a Service CloudConsole App” in the online help).

• To see a list of cases converted from questions, we recommend that administrators or support agents create a case viewwhere Case Origin equals Chatter Answers. See “Creating Custom List Views” in the online help.

• Because photos added to profiles display externally on Chatter Answers, we recommend that support agents choose photosthat match their company's policies and branding. See “Uploading Chatter Group and Profile Photos” in the online help.

29

Implementation Tips and Best Practices

http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api/index.htm

LimitationsAvailable in: Enterprise and Unlimited Editions

Review the following limitations during your Chatter Answers implementation. For more information on any of the items,see the Salesforce online help.

• Chatter Answers doesn’t support Internet Explorer® 6.

• Users can't escalate a question to a case, but support agents can escalate questions from the Answers or Questions tabs.

• Each question can receive up to 500 replies from users.

• There are no standard reports for Chatter Answers, but you can create custom report types for questions.

• Administrators can’t customize the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) available to customers when they click Need help?.

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Limitations

Index

C

Chatter Answersadding to portals 22assigning data categories 11configuring a Customer Portal 11configuring a Force.com Site 11configuring cases 11configuring email notificaitons 11configuring Salesforce Knowledge 11enabling 11setting up 11

Chatter Answers communitycustomizing appearance 5customizing language 5

Chatter Answers usersoverview 9

Custom report types 25custom Visualforce pages 27Customer Portal

adding a Chatter Answers tab 22setting up 5

F

Force.com Sitesetting up 5

I

Implementationoverview 8

introduction 2

P

Partner Portaladding a Chatter Answers tab 22

Planningimplementation 5questions 5

portalscustom Chatter Answers pages 27

R

Reporting 25

S

Salesforce Knowledgesetting up 5

T

terminology 2

U

using this guide 2

V

Visualforce pages 26

W

what is Chatter Answers 2

31

Index

salesforce questions portal implementation guide

Documents

wide sharing

facebook authentication

service cloud

custom report

custom report

standard object

organizations

chatter answers