Knowledge management

Knowledge articles are simple documents of information that are created to offer help to the users of the organization. They include information such as troubleshooting topics, how-to topics, FAQs, known errors in the application, useful resources, and so on.  

These articles can be created by ServiceDesk Staff users or ServiceDesk Change Managers by default. Users can search these knowledge articles from the Global Search page, Remedyforce Console forms, Self Service, Communities, and Salesforce Mobile application.

Types of knowledge articles

Knowledge article types are helpful in categorizing or determining the type of information you want to provide. 

BMC Helix Remedyforce provides the following out-of-the-box knowledge article types:

• FAQs
• How To
• Known Error
• Problem Solution

If you need additional article types to organize your knowledge articles, you can add those article types. For more information, see Configuring custom article types.

Lifecycle of a knowledge article

Example of how knowledge articles are used in an organization

To understand the usage of knowledge articles (KAs), consider the following personas and a scenario in the Remedyforce application:

• Mark is the Remedyforce administrator. He is the one to assign necessary permissions to the staff users or change managers for creating KAs.
• Steve is a staff member who will be creating, editing, publishing, or deleting the KAs.
• Jake is a client who will be using the created KA.

Mark logs onto Remedyforce Administration (Manage Users > Add and Edit User +). Here he opens Steve's profile and assign the Knowledge User permission. Additionally, Mark also creates an approval process in Salesforce to define the workflow of the article review process.

Now, Steve logs onto the Knowledge Articles tab and starts the KA creation process. Let us say his client user Jake needs to know "How to request time off (PTO)?".

Steve selects the article type as FAQ and enters the necessary details as per the KA creation wizard. The most important details here being the title, keywords, question, and answer. He even checks the Display in Self Service checkbox so that Jake can view it in Self Service. Steve then saves the form and submits the article for approval.

The article goes through the approval process set by Mark and upon approval, Steve goes ahead to publish the article. This article is now available for Jake when he searches for it on the Self Service portal.

Navigating the Knowledge Articles tab

Parameters of a knowledge article

A knowledge article is composed of the following sections:

The parameters of a knowledge article are as follows:

To create a knowledge article

Before you begin

By default, users of the ServiceDesk Staff and ServiceDesk Change Manager profiles can create a knowledge article. However, the administrators can grant permissions for the required profiles. 

For more information about the required permissions and configurations, see To grant Remedyforce knowledge article permissions.

The following types of knowledge articles are supported:

• FAQ
• How To
• Known Error
• Problem Solution

Note that, BMC Helix Remedyforce does not support custom knowledge article types.

Watch the following video (04:05) to know how to create a knowledge article.

 https://youtu.be/bjh1d9h5Q5M

How to create a knowledge article

Perform the following steps: 

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. On the Knowledge Articles Home page, click New.
   
   
   

3. From the Record Type of new record list, select the appropriate type of article and click Continue.
   Based on the record type that you select, the fields that are displayed in Article Details section vary. The fields displayed for different options in the Article Details section are:

   Article Type	Fields updated
   FAQ	Title Keywords Question Answer
   How To	Title Keywords Question Answer
   Known Error	Title Keywords Error Root Cause Workaround
   Problem Solution	Title Keywords Problem Solution

4. Click Next.
   The user who has logged on to Salesforce is the owner of the article.
   The knowledge article form is displayed as follows: 
   
5. In the Article Information section, select a Category. 
6. From the Status list, select the appropriate status of the article.
   The available status values are Draft, In Review, Published, and Retired. By default, all articles are assigned the Draft status.

7. To enable the article to be searched for and displayed in Self Service, select the Display in Self Service check box.

8. In the Article Details section, add appropriate content in the Title, Keywords, Question, and Answer fields.

9. In the Video Details section, in the Video URL field, enter the video streaming link of the video, which can be embedded in an iframe. You can also change the default values of the Width and Height fields.

   For example, for YouTube, from the embed URL, <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NpXuXT2nERk?list=PLibAMtD70sYH1AvbK5seqEcwMYuMrRSxC" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>, you must enter only https://www.youtube.com/embed/NpXuXT2nERk?list=PLibAMtD70sYH1AvbK5seqEcwMYuMrRSxC in the Video URL field. 

10. In the Additional Information section, in the Review Date field, enter the date when you want to review the article for its validity.
    Contact your system administrator to add a time-based trigger to the Notify Author that Article is due for review workflow to send an email reminder to you, one month before the review date stating that the article is due for review. For more information, see Creating time triggers.
11. Click Save.

12. To embed a direct link to the knowledge article, use the link in the Self Service Link field. This field is populated automatically only after you save the knowledge article.
    You can embed this link on your intranet site or send it by using an email message to provide direct access to the required knowledge article. If the Self Service Link field is not available on the Knowledge Article form, contact your system administrator.

    For more information, see Providing direct links for Self Service components.

13. By default, the knowledge article is displayed to all accounts. 
    Perform the following actions to configure the accounts to which you want to display the knowledge article:
    1. In the Account Details section, click Edit.

    2. In the Display Knowledge Articles to Account pop-up window, select as required:

       Option	Description
       All Accounts	Displays the knowledge article to all account
       Selected Accounts	Display the knowledge article to selected accounts

    3. In the Available Accounts list, select the required accounts and click the right arrow key to move them to the Selected Accounts list. 

       Tips

       You can link a maximum of 100 accounts to a knowledge article.

       When you localize a knowledge article, do not localize the URL.

14. Click Save.

To create a knowledge article by cloning

To create a knowledge article that is similar to an existing knowledge article, you can clone the existing knowledge article and modify the title, status, category, or article details based on your requirements. Note that, when you clone a knowledge article, you cannot change the article type.

Perform the following steps:

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. In the Article ID column, click the ID of the knowledge article that you want to clone.
   
3. On the Knowledge Article page, click Clone.
4. On the New Knowledge Article page, modify the required information, and click Save.
   
   
   

To submit a knowledge article for approval

To send an article for technical or editorial review, you must submit the article for approval. 

Perform the following steps:

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. In the Article ID column, click the ID of the knowledge article that you want to submit for approval.
   
3. Click Submit for Approval.
   
   
   

To publish a knowledge article

To publish a knowledge article, you must have the Remedyforce Knowledge User permission.

Perform the following steps:

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. In the Article ID column, click the ID of the knowledge article that you want to publish.
   
3. Click Publish.
   You receive an email notification message stating that your article has been published. If you do not want to receive such a notification message, contact your system administrator to deactivate the Notify user that knowledge article is published workflow.
   
   

Scenarios for updating published knowledge articles

You can update a published knowledge article in a few different ways.

The following table describes scenarios in which you can choose to edit, clone, or check out a published knowledge article.

To edit a knowledge article

Only the system administrators and staff members with the Knowledge User permission set can edit the accounts to which the knowledge article is displayed. You can edit a knowledge article after saving and publishing both. However, when editing a knowledge article, you cannot modify the value in the Article Type field.

Note that, if you edit a published knowledge article that is checked out, you must not make changes to the fields in the Article Details section. When the draft version of the knowledge article is checked in, these fields are updated with the values specified in the draft version.

Perform the following steps: 

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. In the Article ID column, click the ID of the knowledge article that you want to edit.
3. Click Edit.
4. Make the required changes and click Save.
   
   

Checking out a published knowledge article for editing

Checking out is where you can edit only the fields in the Article Details section of a published knowledge article. This is called as checking out a published knowledge article for editing. Users continue to access published knowledge articles until you check in the changes. If a published knowledge article that is checked out meets the search criteria defined by users, that article is also displayed in the search results. 

The following table lists the fields that can be updated based on the article type:

To check out a published knowledge article for editing

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. In the Article ID column, click the ID of the knowledge article that you want to check out.
3. On the Knowledge Article page, click Check Out.
   The Check Out button is replaced with a link to the draft version of the published knowledge article.
4. To open the draft version, click the knowledge article link.

5. On the Knowledge Article page, click Edit and update the required fields.

   Note that, you cannot change the status of the draft version to In Review, Published, or Retired. However, you can clone the draft version or submit it for approval. Also, even if you can update most of the fields in the draft version, only your changes to the fields in the Article Details section are applied to the published knowledge article.

6. Click Save.
   
   

To check in a knowledge article

To apply your changes to the published version of the knowledge article, you must check in the draft version. When you check in the draft version, you can delete or retain it for further editing. Users continue to access the published knowledge article until you check in the changes.

Perform the following steps:

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. In the Article ID column, click the ID of the knowledge article that you have checked out for editing.
3. On the Knowledge Article page, click the link to the draft version of the knowledge article.
4. To apply your changes to the published version of the knowledge article, click Check In.
5. In the pop-up window, perform one of the following actions:
   • To check in your changes and retain the draft version for further editing, select Update the original article and continue editing the draft version.
   • To check in your changes and delete the draft version, select the Update the original article and delete the draft version.
6. To check in your changes, click OK.

To retire a knowledge article

You must mark the article for retire when the information in the article is no longer valid. To retire a knowledge article, you must have Remedyforce Knowledge User permissions. Retiring an article still keeps it in the KA list view.

Perform the following steps: 

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. In the Article ID column, click the ID of the knowledge article that you want to retire.
   
3. Click Retire.
   
   

To delete a knowledge article

Knowledge articles that have Status field value as Published or were checked out for editing cannot be deleted. To delete a knowledge article that is checked out for editing, you must check in and delete the draft version.

Perform the following steps:

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab on the Home page.
2. In the Article ID column, click the ID of the knowledge article that you want to delete.
   
3. Click Delete.
4. To confirm deleting the knowledge article, click OK.

To view feedback on a knowledge article

When a staff member or client provides a feedback to a knowledge article, the feedback is stored in the Knowledge Feedback related list of the knowledge article record.

Perform the following steps:

1. Click the Knowledge Article tab.
2. Click the knowledge article whose feedback you want to view.
   The feedback is displayed in the Knowledge Feedback related list. If the feedback was provided from an incident record, a link to the incident record is provided in the Knowledge Incident Links related list.
   
   

To view change requests and problems linked to knowledge articles

The related lists that show the change requests and problems linked to a knowledge article can be configured to appear on the knowledge article details page. You must edit the layout of the knowledge articles page to display the Linked Change Requests and Linked Problems related lists.

Perform the following steps:

1. Click the Knowledge Articles tab.
2. Click any knowledge article.
3. Click Edit Layout.
4. In the left column of the palette, click Related Lists.
   
   
5. Drag Linked Change Requests at the required location on the page.
6. Drag Linked Problems at the required location on the page.
7. Click Save.

To link a knowledge article to a configuration item

You can link a knowledge article to a configuration item (CI) of the Configuration Management System (CMS) by linking the CI in the Linked Services and CIs section.

1. Open the required knowledge article.
   
2. In the Linked Services and CIs section, click Link CI to Knowledge Article.
3. Select the required CIs and click Link.

Related topics

Getting started with knowledge management

Creating an approval process

Configuring knowledge articles

Working with records