---
title: "Add a SaaS Product to Your External Knowledge Base"
sidebarTitle: "Add a Product"
description: "Walk through every field and setting required to create a new SaaS product entry in your External KB and get ready to publish articles."
---
> **For AI agents:** the complete documentation index is at [llms.txt](/llms.txt). Append `.md` to any page URL for its markdown version.
Before you can write a single help article, you need a product to put it in. Adding a product to your External KB takes only a few minutes, but the choices you make here — the name, the description, the topic categories — shape how customers navigate your content and how accurately AI agents scope their answers. Take a moment to get these details right before you start publishing.
## Create a New Product
In your dashboard, navigate to **External KB → Products**. You will see a list of any products you have already added. Click **Add Product** in the top-right corner to open the creation form.
Type the product's name exactly as customers know it. In the **Short Description** field, write a single sentence that tells customers what the product does — keep it customer-facing, not technical. For example:
```text
Slack — Team messaging and collaboration platform for real-time communication.
```
Avoid descriptions that reference internal systems or team names. This text appears on your public product directory, so write it as if a new customer who has never heard of the product is reading it for the first time.
Click **Upload Icon** and select a square image file (PNG or SVG, minimum 64×64 px). Use the product's official logo whenever possible — customers recognize it instantly and it reduces confusion in search results. If you do not have the official logo, use a simple, clearly labeled icon that represents the product's category (e.g., a chat bubble for a messaging tool).
Choose one of two visibility options:
- **Public** — The product and all its published articles are visible to anyone who visits your help center. Choose this for products your entire customer base uses.
- **Restricted** — The product and its articles are only visible to users you explicitly invite or who belong to a permitted user group. Choose this for products used by a specific customer tier, internal beta users, or enterprise accounts with custom tooling.
You can change this setting at any time after the product is created.
Topic categories are the high-level groupings that organize articles within your product. Add at least three to five categories before you start writing — having them in place makes it much easier to keep content organized as your library grows.
Common category sets include:
| Category name | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Getting Started | Setup guides, onboarding steps, first-login walkthroughs |
| Account Settings | Profile management, billing, SSO, permissions |
| Core Features | Task-by-task guides for the product's primary capabilities |
| Integrations | Connecting the product to other tools in your stack |
| Troubleshooting | Error messages, known issues, fix-it guides |
Click **Add Category**, type the name, and repeat for each one. You can reorder categories later by dragging them.
Click **Create Product**. Your new product collection appears in the **External KB → Products** list with a status of **Empty** until you add your first article. From the product's detail page, click **New Article** to begin building out your content — or read [Writing Product Docs](/external/saas/writing-product-docs) first to learn best practices before you write.
## Choosing Good Topic Categories
Topic categories are the first layer of navigation customers encounter after they select a product. Good categories match how customers think about their problems, not how your team thinks about the product's architecture.
**Align with customer intent, not feature names.** A customer who cannot log in will look for "Troubleshooting" or "Account Access" — not "Authentication Module". A customer setting up a new integration will look for "Integrations" — not "API Configuration Layer".
**Keep category names short and scannable.** Two to four words is ideal. Customers skim navigation labels; long category names slow that process down and can get truncated in sidebar menus.
**Avoid overlap between categories.** If you have both "Getting Started" and "Onboarding", customers will not know which one to check first. Consolidate overlapping categories into one clear name.
**Plan for growth.** If you expect to add fifty articles about core features, consider breaking "Core Features" into more specific categories from the start (e.g., "Reports & Dashboards", "Automations", "User Management") so the category never becomes a catch-all with dozens of unrelated articles buried in it.
Use the exact product name customers know — not an internal codename or abbreviation. If your customers call it "Salesforce", name the product "Salesforce", not "SFDC" or "CRM Platform". Consistent, recognizable naming reduces the time customers spend hunting for the right product and improves the accuracy of AI agent responses that rely on product names to scope searches.
## Assigning a Product Owner
Every product can have a designated product owner — a team member who is responsible for keeping its articles accurate and up to date. Product owners receive notifications whenever a reviewer requests changes to an article in that product, and they appear as the escalation contact for customers who flag content as outdated. To assign a product owner, go to the product's **Settings** tab and select a team member from the **Owner** dropdown. Owners must have at least Editor-level access to the KB.
## Next Step: Write Your First Article
With your product created and your topic categories in place, you are ready to start building out your content library. Head to [Writing Product Docs](/external/saas/writing-product-docs) to learn how to write clear, customer-friendly how-to articles that work equally well for human readers and AI agents.