Knowledge Management

A Knowledgebase (KB) article is a record that contains information about setting up and configuring an IT service. A KB article can also have instructions for troubleshooting frequently occurring or previously reported incidents. You can create, store, approve, control access, and distribute the KB articles to end users and IT support providers.

The Knowledge Management workspace helps you facilitate a Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS) for your organization. You can use a knowledge articles to link, store, and manage several types of objects, document types, and URLs.

The Knowledge Management Process

An analyst or administrator with permissions to create a KB article, creates new articles under a predefined KB article category. An analyst can also submit ticket solutions as KB articles. The availability of the KB articles depends on the KB article state and status. The application assigns Draft status to all new KB articles. A KB article remains in the Draft state until a required approver group approves the article. An analyst cannot view an article that is in the Draft state. All the approved KB articles move to the Approved state. Analysts can view, submit ratings, and submit comments on the Approved KB articles. You must have permissions to access KB articles.

The counter for Total Views is updated every time a user logs in and accesses the KB article. The counter for Is Useful and Is Not Useful is updated when a user provides feedback. The feedback is for the question "Does this article solve your problem?"

As an administrator, you can do the following tasks:

Define KB article categories.
Assign access to Knowledge Management related reports.
Create KB articles and edit them.
Assign KB article permissions, to users, groups, and roles.
Determine which articles get displayed in the Knowledge Base section in the Self-Service user interface. You can select the Show on Knowledgebase Home? check box for a specific KB Article Category. You can display a maximum of 10 KB Article Categories on the KB Home page
Manually add and delete key words to the KB article.

Note: The knowledge management approvers can approve the knowledge articles that were submitted for approval. For more information about approving KB articles, see KB Article Approval Process.

Refer to these links for more information about KB articles and the related processes, such as creating and editing KB articles, creating and managing KB article approval groups, and approving KB articles.