Reviewing and validating knowledge articles

As a case agent, you refer to knowledge articles to get more information about the cases you are working on. To ensure that knowledge articles contain correct and updated information, it is important that they are reviewed. Although article review is optional, it is a good practice to help you to identify any missing or incorrect information, and add accurate information in the article. 

BMC Helix Business Workflows provides the following types of reviews for knowledge articles:

• SME review—This review of unpublished articles verifies their accuracy and completeness.
• Periodic review—This review of published articles validates the information and allows the you to update the article, if necessary.
  
  

Review of unpublished knowledge articles for technical accuracy and completeness

When you request an SME review of knowledge articles to verify them, the SME reviewer reviews the articles. After the review is complete, the reviewer moves the knowledge article to an appropriate status based on the review result. 

The following table lists the status change associated with the reviewer actions: 

For more information about the statuses of knowledge articles, see Changing-knowledge-article-statuses.

To request an SME review

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
2. Navigate to Workspace > Knowledge.
3. To open a knowledge article that you want to review on the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
4. Click the status to open the status pane. 

5. In the status pane, select SME Review under Status, and specify the required values in the Reviewer Group and Reviewer fields.

   Notes

   • To review the article, the reviewer should have the Knowledge Contributor, Knowledge Publisher, or Knowledge Coach role.
     For more information about these roles, see FAQs.
   • When you change the article status from Draft to SME Review, the Review Status column on the Knowledge workspace displays the status Pending Review.
   • When you skip the SME review of your article, the Review Status column on the Knowledge workspace displays the status Not Reviewed.
6. Click Save.

The reviewer receives an alert notification about the article review, performs the review, and updates the article status. After reviewing the article, the reviewer can add comments in the Tell us more dialog box. These comments are displayed on the Activity tab of the article.
As an article assignee or reviewer, you can receive email notifications for articles that are assigned to you or pending for your review. To do this, ensure that your administrator has set the default notification method in your profile to Email. For more information, see Adding-users-in-BMC-Helix-Business-Workflows.

After you send the article for review, you can change its reviewer. After you change the reviewer, the earlier reviewer cannot view the article. 

Periodic review of published knowledge articles for validity

Periodic review cycle is a process of reviewing published articles periodically and taking necessary actions on them. Periodic review enables the agents to validate the article content in specific time intervals.

BMC Helix Business Workflows notifies agents (assignee or reviewer) about periodic article reviews by using the out-of-the-box Next Review Date rule. It specifies the time period by which the reviewer should review an article. By default, the Next Review Date value is one year. However, you can add different values for the periodic article review.

To alert the article assignee and reviewer for the article review before or after Next Review Date, the rule sends the following notifications:

• If the article is due for review, the notifications are sent every day, beginning five days before the review date.
• If the article is overdue for review, the notifications are sent every day until five days after the review date. After the article is reviewed, the assignee and reviewer do not get notifications. 

The notification is sent to the user who last reviewed the article. However, if the article assignee changes the reviewer or assignee, the notifications are sent to the updated users.

Example of how the periodic review cycle works

The following example illustrates how the periodic review cycle works with the following conditions:

• The value of Next Review Date is set to one year 
• Article is reviewed after the review date 

For the first time, article assignee publishes a knowledge article A on July 26, 2017. The article review date is set to July 26, 2018, a year from the article publish date.

The periodic review cycle works as explained in the following steps:

1. The assignee and reviewer receive notifications every day from July 21, 2018 to July 31, 2018. Notifications stop when the reviewer reviews the article. 
2. The review date, July 26, 2018 is passed and the reviewer has not reviewed the article.
3. The reviewer reviews the article on July 28, 2018. The assignee and reviewer receive notifications until July 28, 2018. 
4. After the article review is complete, the next review date is set to July 28, 2019, a year from the current review date.

Review progress of published knowledge articles

Published knowledge articles have associated review statuses that indicate the progress of article review. 

Based on the next review date, the Review Status column on the Knowledge workspace displays one of the following review statuses:

• Due Review Date—Article due for review
• Overdue Review Date—Article overdue for review
  When an article is in Due or Overdue status, as the agent (article reviewer), you can extend the review date by clicking . The review date is extended by the time period specified in the Next Review Date rule.
• Reviewed—Article reviewed

To change the reviewer of a published article

After you publish an article, you can change its reviewer.

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
2. Navigate to Workspace > Knowledge.
3. To open a knowledge article from the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
4. In the Knowledge Metadata section, click Edit.
5. Click Change Reviewer and in the Change Reviewer pane, perform one of the following steps:
   • To specify yourself as the reviewer, click Assign to me.
   • To specify a support group or user as the reviewer, perform the following steps:
     1. Select a combination of Company, Business Unit, and Department.
        A list of all the users of the support groups directly related to the selected combination of company, business unit, and department is displayed.
     2. Select a value from the Support Group list.
        Only support groups directly related to the selected combination of company, business unit, and department are listed. Additionally, if there is an active domain, only support groups from that domain are displayed. For example, if you select the company as Calbro Services and the business unit as Human Resources, all support groups defined for Human Resources are displayed in the list.
     3. To specify the reviewer, select a support group or user from the list.
        If you select a user, the user must have access to the company for which the article is created.
     4. Click Assign.
6. In the Change Reviewer pane, click Assign.
7. In the Knowledge Metadata section, click Save.

Related topics

Defining-the-periodic-review-duration-for-published-knowledge-articles

Changing-knowledge-article-statuses

Notifications