Create and Manage Knowledge Articles

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As an analyst you can perform knowledge management-related actions. The application assigns a Draft status to all new KB articles. A KB article remains in the Draft state until a required approver group approves it. An analyst cannot view an article that is in Draft state. All the approved KB articles move to the Approved state. The application administrator manages permissions to create, manage, access knowledge articles, and add ticket solutions as knowledge articles.

A Knowledge Article is a record containing information for troubleshooting frequently occurring or previously reported incidents. A Knowledge Article also contains instructions for setting up or configuring an IT service. A knowledge article also contains news, solution details, and other information about supported systems or services. Knowledge management helps in building and maintaining a knowledge base of articles. Maintaining a knowledge base helps in quickly resolving issues that have occurred in the past. As an analyst you can categorize, create, and maintain knowledge articles. 

Considerations

• The out-of-the-box permissions to edit articles are restricted to the following roles:
  • Tenant administrator
  • KB administrator
  • Public support group
• A KB analyst is a system defined role and can carry out the following tasks:
  
  • Provide feedback and rating.
  • View and download attachments.
  • Add or remove attachments.
  • Edit and submit knowledge articles for approval, if you are the owner of the article or have permissions.
• Including the tasks a KB analyst can perform, a KB administrator can also carry out the following tasks:
  
  • Add permissions.
  • Relate items.

Prerequisites

Verify the following prerequisites before creating a KB article or announcement:

• Ensure that the KB article categories are configured and the category that you want to use is in the Active state.
• If you want to relate the KB article to a CCTI, ensure that the CCTI categorization is defined.
• If you want to relate the KB article to an organization, ensure that the organizations are configured.
• Ensure that the support groups and roles are configured so that you can assign permissions for the KB article.

Manage Knowledge Articles

You are allowed to create an article or add a solution to the knowledge base. The KB administrator reviews and approves the article and makes it visible to other users. 

Follow these steps:

1. Create and Manage Knowledge Articles: Click Create New in the knowledge management workspace or click Add to Knowledge Base in the Actions drop-down.
   Note: You cannot see the Add to Knowledge Base action, if the permission for this action is not enabled by your administrator. The Add to Knowledge Base action is only enabled for problems and incidents.
2. Modify Article and Manage Relationships: Click Attachments, Relate Existing, or Add New in the knowledge article form. Relate an existing attachment or a new attachment to the knowledge article. You can also relate Organizations, CIs, and Categorization for CIs.
   Note: Adding these relations helps in filtering the articles and enhances the search functionality. Analysts can use these filters while narrowing their search for a solution to a ticket.
3. Submit Knowledge article for approval: Navigate to the desired article and click Actions, Workflow, Submit for Approval. A list of available approvers and reviewers dialog opens. Select approvers and reviewers from the list and click Select.

4. Set Knowledge Article State as Approved: Navigate to the desired knowledge article and click Actions, Approve Article. 
   Note: A Knowledge article is first created in a Draft state, and Active Status. The Knowledge Manager reviews the article and makes it available to the users.

Comment on a KB Article

You can comment on the usefulness of a KB article from the Feedback section. You can also view the feedback comments that are given to a KB Article.

Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the desired KB article and click Feedback in the anchor links.

2. Add your Comment, provide your Rating, and click Post.
   Note: You can give feedback and comments on a KB Article more than once. Self-Service users cannot view feedback comments on a KB Article, they can only view the rating of a KB Article.

   You cannot view an article that you were able to view earlier because your administrator has made the article inactive. In some cases, it could be because your administrator has restricted the visibility of the article.