Creating and publishing knowledge articles

Knowledge articles are a source of information that agents might require for cases they work on. As a case agent, you can create knowledge articles that contain information about resolving an issue, your company's policies, and so on. To create articles with different types of information, you must use the available knowledge templates. These templates provide consistent structure for different types of articles. You must create complete and accurate articles that help agents with the required information for their cases. For more information about creating articles, see Best practices for creating knowledge articles.

By default, you have the Knowledge Candidate and Knowledge Contributor roles that enable you to work with knowledge articles. For more information about these roles, see Responsibilities and permissions of a Case Agent.

Important

If a case business analyst modifies the default lifecycle of knowledge articles, then the modified lifecycle is displayed while creating and editing the articles. For more information, see Modifying the lifecycle of cases, tasks, and knowledge articles.

Before you begin

Ensure that knowledge sets are created and associated with appropriate knowledge templates.

To create a knowledge article

Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
Navigate to Create > Knowledge.
By default, the Line of Business is selected for which you can create an article.
Select a knowledge template for the article. Before you start creating the article, you can preview the template and then choose Use selected Template or to select a different template, click Select a different template.
On the Create Knowledge page, enter the article title in the Knowledge Title field and the content in the text box by using the DocEditor.
Best Practice

We recommend that you do not change the template of a knowledge article after you enter the content of the knowledge article. If you change the template, you must reenter all the details for the article in the new template.

In the Knowledge Metadata section, fill the following fields:

Description of fields in the Knowledge Metadata section

Field	Description
Knowledge Set	To associate a knowledge set with the selected template, select the required knowledge set from the list. Knowledge templates inherit the permissions from the knowledge set and these permissions are applied to the article.
Company	Select the requester's company for the knowledge article.
Author	The logged in user is selected by default.
Article locale	Select the language for the article.
Assigned Group	Select the group to which the article will be assigned.
Assignee	Select the user to which the article will be assigned. The article inherits the access permissions from the selected group.
Assign to me	To assign the article to yourself, click Assign to me.
Keywords	Add a keyword to the article. You can use this keyword to search for the article from a case.
Category Tier 1, 2, 3, and 4	Select a category for the article. This classification is useful when you search for the article from a case using the Advanced search options and include the category values.
Region, Site group, and Site	Select a region, site group, and site for the article. This information is useful when you search for the article from a case using the Advanced search options and select location values.
Attachments	To attach files to the article, click Attachment. The valid file size is 20 MB.

Important

When you view a knowledge article with the view permission, the following read-only fields are displayed:

Knowledge Title
Article ID
Knowledge Status
RTF fields
View counter
Useful counter
Knowledge Metadata
Flag icon

Click Save Knowledge.

The view, edit, and search permissions of knowledge articles are inherited from knowledge sets. To change the permissions of the knowledge article, see To add or remove user access to a knowledge article.

After you create an article, the default status of the article is In Progress. As you work on the article, you can change the article status to reflect the progress on the article. For more information about article statuses, see Changing knowledge article statuses.

If required, you can send the article for an SME review by changing the article status to SME Review. For more information about SME Review, see Reviewing and validating knowledge articles.

To publish a knowledge article

You can publish knowledge articles to an internal or external audience. To publish an article, you must have the Knowledge Contributor, Knowledge Publisher, or Knowledge Coach role. For more information about these roles, see FAQs.

To publish a knowledge article, complete the following steps:

Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows
Select Workspace > Knowledge.
By default, the Line of Business is selected for which you want to publish an article.
To open a knowledge article from the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
Click the status to open the status pane.
In the Status field, specify the value Published.
(Optional) Specify the audience for the article in the External list in the Knowledge Metadata section. By default, the value of this field is set to No.
- No—Publish internally for agents.
  You must have Knowledge Contributor, Knowledge Publisher, or Knowledge Coach role to publish the article internally.
- Yes—Publish externally for agents and self-service users.
  You must have Knowledge Publisher or Knowledge Coach role to publish the article externally.

After you publish the article, you can periodically review the article to validate it. The Next Review Date field in the Knowledge Metadata section of the article displays the date by when you should review the article. As required, you can specify a different review date or extend it. For more information about the periodic review of articles, see Reviewing and validating knowledge articles.

To revise a knowledge article

You can revise a published knowledge article by editing it. You can make minor edits to the same version. However, if you want to make changes to a knowledge article, you must create a newer version. The new version goes through the complete approval process if it is defined. Learn more about knowledge article versioning in Knowledge article versioning.

To revise a knowledge article, complete the following steps:

Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
Select Workspace > Knowledge.
By default, the Line of Business is selected for which you can revise an article.
From the Knowledge workspace, open a published article.
Click .
Make minor changes to the knowledge article on the Minor Edit tab, and make changes.
To create a major version of the knowledge article, click Major Edit tab.
Click Save.

When you publish the updated knowledge article, the newer version is published. The older version becomes inactive and the status of the older version changes to Closed. When you create a version, you can send the article for review, and then publish the article. For information about reviewing, see Reviewing and validating knowledge articles.

To reassign a knowledge article

After you create or publish an article, you can change its assignee and support group.

To change the assignee or support group of an article, complete the following steps:

Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
Navigate to Workspace > Knowledge.
By default, the Line of Business is selected for which you can reassign an article.
To open a knowledge article from the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
On the Information tab, in the Knowledge Metadata section, click Edit.
In the Knowledge Assignment section, select the Assigned Group and Assignee.
To assign the knowledge article to yourself, click Assign to me.
Click Save.

To add or remove user access to a knowledge article

Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
Select to Workspace > Knowledge.
By default, the Line of Business is selected for which you can update an article access.
To open a knowledge article on the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
On the Information tab, in the Knowledge Access section, click Edit.
In the Edit Article Access pane, you can view the list of support groups and agents who have access to the knowledge article.

To provide a company, support group, or agent access to the knowledge article, perform any of the following actions:

Action	Description
To provide access to a company or support group	Expand Support Group Access, and select the company or support group. Click Add.
To provide access to an agent	Expand Agent Access, and enter the agent name. To provide write access to the agent, select the Assign Write Access check box. Click Add.

To remove a company, support group, or agent access from the knowledge article, click the Delete icon on the company, support group, or agent name.
Click Close.

To add notes to a knowledge article

Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
Select to Workspace > Knowledge.
By default, the Line of Business is selected for which you can update an article.
To open a knowledge article on the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
On the knowledge article details screen, click the Activity tab and click Add a note text box.
Click Notes Template, select the template that you want to use from the list displayed, and click Apply.
Enter additional details in the text box if required, and click Post.
(Optional) To attach files to your notes, click Attach.

To view activities performed on a knowledge article

Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
Select Workspace > Knowledge.
By default, the Line of Business is selected for which you can view article activities.
From the Line of Business list, select the line of business for which you want to view article activities.
If you have access to a single line of business, the line of business is selected by default.
To open a knowledge article on the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
On the knowledge article details screen, click the Activity tab.
On this tab, the latest activity performed on the knowledge article is displayed at the top.
(Optional) To filter the knowledge article activities, click Filter, from the Knowledge Article filtering options, select the desired options such as General Notes, Flag, Review, and so on, and click Apply.
(Optional) To perform a search to view the updates made by a particular agent, click Filter, enter the name of an agent in the Author text box, and click Apply.
Important

You cannot add more than one agent in the search criteria.

For information about how to view the previous knowledge article ID of a migrated knowledge article, see FAQs.

Best practices for creating knowledge articles

BMC Helix Business Workflows provides the following best practices to create and maintain knowledge articles: