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.

Before you begin

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

To create a knowledge article

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows. 
2. Navigate to Create > Knowledge.
3. 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. 

4. 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. 

   Note

   BMC recommends 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.

5. On the Information tab, fill out the fields in the Knowledge Metadata section. 

   Description of fields in the Knowledge Metadata section

   Field	Details
   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.
   Support Group and Assigned To	To assign the article to an individual, select the group name and member from the displayed lists. The article inherits the access permissions from the selected group.
   Keywords	Add a keyword to the article. You can use this keyword to search for the article from a case.
   Operational Category	Select an operational 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 operational category values.
   Location	Select a location 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.
   Attachment	To attach files to the article, click Attachment. The valid file size is 20 MB.

   Note

   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
6. (Optional) On the Information tab, in the Knowledge Access section, update the business units, departments, support groups, and agents access to the knowledge article.
   By default, the view, edit, and search permissions of knowledge articles are inherited from knowledge sets.
7. Click Save Knowledge.

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-and-additional-resources.

To publish a knowledge article, perform the following steps:

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. Click the status to open the status pane. 
5. In the Status field, specify the value Published.
6. (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.

1. • No—Publish internally for agents.
     You must have Knowledge Contributor, Knowledge Publisher, or Knowledge Coach role to publish the article internally.

1. • 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 change the assignment of an 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, perform the following steps:

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 Assignment and perform one of the following steps:

   • To assign the article to yourself, click Assign to me.
   • To assign the article to a support group or user, 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 assign the article, 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.

   Notes

   • If you select an assignee from the assigned support group, the support group members and the earlier article assignee can view the article.
   • If you select an assignee from a different support group, members of the earlier support group and the earlier article assignee cannot view the article.
6. Click Save.

To add notes to a knowledge article

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
2. Select to Workspace > Knowledge.
3. To open a knowledge article on the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
4. On the knowledge article details screen, click the Activity tab and click Add a note text box.
5. Click Notes Template, select the template that you want to use from the list displayed, and click Apply.
6. Enter additional details in the text box if required, and click Post.
7. (Optional) To attach files to your notes, click Attach.

To view activities performed on a knowledge article

1. Log in to BMC Helix Business Workflows.
2. Select Workspace > Knowledge.
3. To open a knowledge article on the Knowledge workspace, click the required article.
4. 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.
5. (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.

6. (Optional) To perform a search to view the updates made by a particular agent, click Filter, click the Author check box, enter the name of the agent, and click Apply.

   Note

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

Best practices for creating knowledge articles

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

• Agents should always search for existing knowledge articles before they create new articles. This prevents article duplication.
• The organization should define and use an article standard with consistent structure and formatting. This ensures a consistent user experience of articles. 
• The organization should focus on the improvement of frequently used articles. The articles in demand drive the time and focus allocation of agents. This ensures that work is done on valuable articles. 
• Agents with the Knowledge Publisher role should ensure that they publish high quality articles for users. 
• The title should have representative words which describe the problem which the article is trying to solve.
• The section inside the article which describes the problem statement should be brief. The section should be written in a language and terminology which the consumers of the article can understand and use.
• You should use the activity note templates while adding activity notes to an article.

• The article should have the keywords field to enter only singular keywords as well as synonyms which represent the article.
• In Lucene, you should use the dictionary or synonym feature to define similar words.
• You should identify stop-words which create a lot of clutter in the search results.
• Study search results with no hits and identify either missing articles or missing keywords in the existing articles.

Related topics

Knowledge-article-search

Working-with-full-text-search