Learning about Knowledge Management
Knowledge authors can use Remedy with Smart IT (Smart IT) to create a knowledge base of easy-to-find solutions. Support agents can use knowledge articles to help resolve incidents.
Overview
Smart IT supports Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS). The practices defined in KCS enhance the collective efforts of the knowledge team to create and maintain a rich knowledge base. The Consortium for Service Innovation has created the KCS methodology and maintains it. The KCS methodology is as follows:
- Create knowledge as a by-product of resolving incidents.
- Collect available knowledge in a comprehensive knowledge base.
- Reuse and improve existing knowledge before creating new content.
- Encourage users to collaborate, learn, share, and improve knowledge within the organization.
The following video (3:24) describes the benefits of using knowledge management for KCS in Smart IT.
Whether you use KCS or traditional knowledge management, knowledge articles can help support agents and business users. After you create and publish knowledge articles, the articles show up in Smart Recorder when a support agent logs a ticket. If you use BMC Digital Workplace or BMC Helix Chatbot, the knowledge articles are available to business users.
While creating an article, if you copy plain text from a text editor (for example, Notepad), and paste it into the article content, and then try to change the font style of a specific text or sentence, all of the article text gets formatted instead of just the selected text or sentence due to the limitation of the CKEditor. While configuring source editing for knowledge articles, if you want to enable source editing (not recommended), you must open the isCKEditorSourceEditable property from the Centralized configuration and change its value from false to true.
Process overview for KCS
The following diagram illustrates the process of using and publishing knowledge articles:
When service agents record incidents, they search for knowledge articles that can help resolve the issue. If an applicable knowledge article exists, the service agent links to it. A service agent who also has the role of KCS candidate can update the knowledge article. Service agents have access to knowledge articles even at the draft stage.
If a KCS candidate does not find a knowledge article, the KCS candidate creates a new knowledge article. When the KCS candidate completes the proposed knowledge article, the knowledge article gets set to a draft status and becomes available to service agents to help resolve incidents.
If a knowledge article is used frequently, heavy usage of the knowledge article shows that the article is important. At this point, a KCS contributor validates the quality of the knowledge article. The KCS contributor might include subject matter expert (SME) reviews as part of the validation. After the validation is complete, the KCS contributor publishes the knowledge article internally. Service agents can see that the knowledge article has a status of verified and can be more confident when using the information in the knowledge article.
A KCS publisher identifies which verified knowledge articles to publish publicly. After identifying the knowledge articles, the KCS publisher might get SME reviews before publishing the knowledge articles. Public knowledge articles are available to end users in BMC Digital Workplace.
Process overview for traditional knowledge management
The following diagram illustrates the process of creating and publishing knowledge articles:
Smart IT helps you manage knowledge through the following stages:
Draft a solution
A knowledge author identifies the need for new knowledge and creates an article. The knowledge author uses a template to start creating a knowledge article. Knowledge articles can include rich media, such as images and video, but this video cannot be viewed in Remedy IT Service Management suite The following video (5:01) shows how to create a knowledge article in Smart IT.
When the author completes the draft, the article's content might be visible to some users with Knowledge user roles. However, the content has not been reviewed and approved for use. This content might change, or the entire article might be deleted.
Review and promote
A Subject Matter Expert (SME) reviews the article for content. If the article needs additional work, the SME flags the article and indicates what update is needed.
The article can be promoted through multiple stages of review: content, proofreading, and final review. At each stage, the article can be approved, rejected, or placed on hold by a reviewer or by a user with Knowledge Admin permission.
Publish to knowledge base
When the article is approved, it is published and becomes available to all users, even those without Knowledge user roles. For example, when agents use Smart Recorder to log a ticket, the system automatically displays relevant knowledge articles. Business users can see knowledge articles in BMC Digital Workplace and BMC Chatbot.
In some cases, the content might be confidential so the article might be marked as not available to users without a Knowledge user role.
Review and retire
After articles are published, knowledge users periodically review the articles to ensure that the articles are still accurate and relevant. Users can provide feedback on knowledge articles. A knowledge user might review the article in response to feedback. If your organization uses KCS, KCS Coaches use Article Quality Index (AQI) assessment questions to assess their team's articles. An administrator can create AQI question sets to meet your organization's needs.
Testing your knowledge
Check your knowledge. See if you can answer each question. Click the questions to view the answer.
Do you want to learn more?
For more information about creating knowledge articles, see Creating knowledge articles for sharing information.
For more information about using knowledge articles, Resolving tickets with the help of Knowledge articles using Smart IT.
For more information about working with knowledge in KCS, see Overview of the Knowledge-Centered Service.
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