Reviewing the knowledge team's performance by using KCS reports

In BMC Helix ITSM: Smart IT, the Knowledge menu has options to launch KCS reports. These reports are generated in Smart Reporting (Smart Reporting). As a KCS coach, you can access KCS reports from the following locations:

Generating an AQI Results for Articles Reports

The AQI Results for Articles report provides the Article Quality Index (AQI) result of articles that you assessed. The result is used in the KCS : Article Quality Scores Report to derive the overall article quality score for a user.

To generate this report, you can apply the following filters:

• Company
• Article Author
• Article
• Date

Example: To view the AQI result of articles written by Allen Allbrook that you assessed in the previous month, you apply the Article Author and Date filters, and generate the report.

The report displays details of Allen's articles, assessment questions, desirable answer for each question, and the actual answer that you marked for each question. You can view the articles to know their nature and content. To know the weighting value of each assessment question, see the AQI Questions table displayed below the KCS : AQI Results for Articles report.

The KCS : AQI Result for Articles report helps you know how each article has performed in the AQI assessment, and find out areas of improvement for knowledge authors. You can then plan for any training programs for the authors. 

This report is based on the Article Quality Index (AQI) result of articles, and helps you know the article quality performance of your team members. To generate this report, you can apply the following filters:

• Company
• Department
• Article Author
• Date

Example: To view the overall AQI performance of articles written by Allen Allbrook that you assessed in the previous month, you apply the Article Author and Date filters, and generate the report.

The first part of the report displays the score recorded for issues in articles for each assessment question. Each question in the assessment has a desirable answer, which is marked as either Yes or No. If the actual answer does not match the desirable answer, a score is recorded; for example:
Question: Language Clear?
Desirable answer: Yes
Actual answer: No
Score for the Language Clear? question: 1

Out of all the assessed articles written by Allen, you assessed that language was not clear in one article. Similarly, scores are recorded for issues found in Allen's articles for all questions. Suppose you assessed five articles authored by Allen, and found 7 issues.

The second part of the report shows the overall score calculation. Allen's overall score is 74.50 %.

This report helps you to do the following tasks:

• Get a clear view of authors' performance, areas where they performed better, and areas that need improvement.
• Identify specific training, and mentor authors to improve.
• Identify top performers, mentor them to perform better and go to the next level of KCS role.
• Find out how all authors of a department have performed; if all authors face a common issue, you can arrange for training to overcome the issue.

Generating KCS article reuse reports

This report displays the number of times articles are reused in each status in the entire article lifecycle. When you relate an article to an incident, and use it to resolve that incident ticket, the reuse count of the article increments. The reuse count indicates usefulness of the article to resolve incident tickets. However, if you relate or pin the article to the incident without using it to resolve the incident, the reuse count of the article does not increment.

The report helps you understand the usage pattern, and the overall performance of articles when they move from one status to another. To generate this report, you can apply the following filters:

• Company
• Department
• Article Author
• Article Title
• Article Status

Example: To find out the reuse count of articles written by your team members who belong to the IT Services department, select IT Services in the Department filter, and generate the report. Each color block indicates the status of articles, their reuse count in that status, and the reuse count range.

You can notice that most articles have a reuse count between 0-1 indicating that articles in this range were not useful to resolve incidents. Articles with a reuse count between 6-10 were most useful to resolve the incidents.

To find out articles in the Work In Progress status which are reused less than once, click the green block in the use count range of 0-1.

The Article Reuse Count report displays all articles in the Work In Progress status, article details, and their reuse count. You must view the articles to know their nature and content.

This report provides the following information:

• The usage pattern of articles
• The most and least reused articles
• The usefulness of articles in different statuses
• Find out reasons why some articles are less reused and plan improvements
• Find out the performance of authors, articles, departments, and company

Generating KCS article citation Reports

The citation count of authors is the number of times their articles are attached to the incident tickets by other users. Note that articles cited by their authors are not considered in this report. This report displays the contribution of each article to their authors' overall citation count. To generate this report, you can apply the following filters:

• Company
• Department
• Article Author
• Date

Example: To know the citation count of Allen Allbrook, specify his name in the Article Author filter, specify the date range to see the number of times his articles were cited in the previous month, and generate the report.

To view articles and the number of times each article is cited, click the total citation count for Allen.

To see incidents resolved by using an article, click its contribution count value in the Article Fixes report.

The citation count report provides the following information:

• Usefulness of articles to resolve incidents
• Top performers whose articles are mostly cited
• Analyze why some authors are not cited, and mentor them to improve their performance.

Generating KCS article feedback response time reports

This report helps you know the timeliness of users to fix issues in articles flagged for improvement. Feedback response time is the time elapsed between flagging and fixing articles, and is an important factor in measuring users' performance in fixing issues. An article is fixed when a user selects the I'm unflagging this check box in the flagged comment area in Smart IT. The user may or may not update the article before fixing it. 

The report is generated on the basis of business hours, and displays the average response time spent to fix articles. The business time considered in this report depends on the author's support group and the business time segment defined for that support group. 

Consider the following example:
An office has working hours from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, for five days a week. Feedback 1 is received on a Friday evening; it is fixed on the following Monday morning. Feedback 2 is received on a Monday morning; it is fixed on the same day, in the evening. In this case, response provided for Feedback 1 is considered faster than that for Feedback 2.

To generate this report, you can apply the following filters:

• Department
• Article Author
• Date

Example: To find out the response time to flagged articles of by your team members who belong to the Quality Assurance and Customer Service departments, you select Quality Assurance and Customer Service in the Department filter, and generate the report for the previous month.

To review the response time of the Quality Assurance department, select its average response time.

In the Article Feedback report, you can view articles, feedback given to the article, and the time taken to fix each article. You can identify response trends, and the performance of each article. You can investigate why certain issues took more time to fix, and identify areas for improvement.

Generating KCS article fix count reports

This report helps you find out the number of times your team members have fixed issues in articles flagged for improvement. An article is fixed when a user selects the I'm unflagging this check box in the flagged comment area in Smart IT. The user may or may not update the article before unflagging it. To generate this report, you can apply the following filters:

• Department
• Support Group
• User
• Date

Example: To find out the fix count of your team members, select their name, say, Allen, Adams, and paresh in the User filter, specify the date range of two months, and generate this report.

Based on the result, you can easily compare the fix count of two months. You can analyze if the fix count rate has increased, decreased, or remained stable compared to the previous month. You can also analyze who performed better, and who actively participated to fix issues in the flagged articles.

To view articles contributing to the fix count total for Allen, click the fix count for November.

The Fix Count: Article Fixes report displays article details, and the number of times Allen fixed issues in each article. Note that multiple users can fix articles. However, this report displays the fix count by the selected user for the specified month. For example, an article was fixed ten times; both Allen and Adams fixed it five times each. The Fix Count: Article Fixes report for Allen and Adams will list the same article with the fix count of five each.

You can view articles that were fixed multiple times, and take measures to improve their quality.

Generating KCS article author performance reports

This radar chart report enables you to analyze the performance of your team members based on the following performance metrics:

• Participation Rate - proportion of the number of times that incidents are closed by using knowledge articles to the total number of incidents closed.
• AQI - overall Article Quality Index score of an author during the assessment period.
• Average Incident Handled - proportion of the number of incidents resolved to the total number of incidents assigned to a user.
• Citation count - the number of times an author's articles are attached to the incidents by other users.

For calculating the AQI, Participation Rate, and Citation Count, the current day's data is added to the previous day's data. The Average Incidents Handled value is calculated from the first day of the current month to the current day, and the average value is calculated. Except the citation count, all metrics are measured in percentage.

Before you generate this report, you must configure a goal for each metric. To generate this report, you must select minimum three metrics. You can generate this report only for the period of one month. For performances more than one month, the radar chart is based on the cumulative data.

To generate this report, you must apply the following filters:

• Company
• Article Author
• Metrics
• Date

Example: To find out the performance of Allen Allbrook, you specify his name and company he belongs to in the Article Author and Company filter. You also select all metrics, specify the previous month, and generate the report. The report indicates that Allen has performed better and exceeded all goals.

Based on the result, you can identify Allen's strengths and weaknesses. You can plan actions such as specific training requirements to improve the performance level, or you can identify Allen as a potential KCS Coach

Generating reports for knowledge articles created from incidents

This report displays details of articles created directly from incident tickets. You can use the following filters when generating this type of reports:

• Support Company
• Support Organization
• Support Group
• Article Author
• Date

Example: To know the number of articles Allen created directly from incident tickets in the past one month, in the Article Author filter, select Allen Allbrook, specify the date and time, and generate the report. When working on incident tickets, Allen created articles based on the issues that were detected for the first time, and hence they were not documented in the knowledge base.

The report helps you find out the proactivness of the service desk agents to create articles, and help other service desk agents resolve similar incidents.

Generating KCS article participation reports

This report displays the participation rate of users such as the service desk agents in resolving incident tickets using knowledge articles. The participation rate is calculated as the proportion of the number of times incident tickets are closed by using knowledge articles to the total number of incidents closed. Service desk agents are expected and encouraged to use articles to resolve incident tickets, and link those articles to the ticket. Note that only those incidents that are closed by using knowledge articles are considered in this report. You can use the following filters when generating this type of reports:

• Support Company
• Support Organization
• Support Group
• User
• Date

Example: In the Support Group filter, specify Backoffice Support and Service Desk to review the participation rate of members of these support groups over the past one month.

The higher percentage of participation indicates that the user always attaches useful articles to incident tickets, thus assisting other service desk agents to quickly resolve incidents by referring to those articles.

On the KCS : Knowledge Participation Report, select the participation percentage for a user to view articles and incidents that contributed to the participation rate of the user.

In the Associated Tickets report, you can view articles and their associated incident tickets to understand the nature of issues, resolution, and article content. You may notice that multiple articles are used to resolve a single incident

Generating knowledge status reports

This report displays the number of days articles have remained in each status. Time spent by an article in its current status is captured daily, so that it gives a clear view of how speedily a department or article author is working. You can find out in which status an article remained for a longer or shorter duration. In this report, days are counted as follows:

• A day is represented as a whole number. One day is counted as 24 hours, including weekends.
• If an article is in a particular status for less than one day, the report shows the number of days as 0.
• The number of days is rounded to the lower whole number. If an article is in a particular status for 2.5 days, the reports shows the number of days as 2 days.

You can use the following filters when generating this type of reports:

• Company
• Department
• Article Author
• Status

Example: To find out the status of articles written by Allen, select Allen Allbrook in the Article Author filter, and generate the report .

Based on the report, you can find out articles that remained in a particular status for a long time. You can further investigate the reason for delay, and plan for improvements.

Generating multiple authors reports

This report helps you know how many article authors have collaborated and contributed to create and update knowledge articles. KCS promotes knowledge sharing and team collaboration to create and maintain best quality knowledge base. Article authors can contribute in the form of creating articles, creating a new version of articles, making minor edits, and changing status of articles. To generate this report, you can apply the following filters:

• Article Author
• Date

Example: In the Article Author filter list, select Allen and Adison to view their contributions towards knowledge articles for the past one month, and generate the report. The result displays a list of articles to which Allen and Adison have contributed their inputs, and the number of their contributions for each article.

To know the details of their contributions, under Author Contribution click value 2 for article KBA00000022.

The All Authors report displays names of all distinct authors who contributed their inputs to improve article KBA00000022, irrespective of the authors specified in the Article Author filter. Thus, reports can have names of authors who are not specified in the Article Author filter. In this example, Adison contributed to the first version of the article. However, Allen and Adison both contributed to create and improve the next version of the same article.

This report enables you to:

• View each author's contribution towards articles
• Find out active contributors
• Mentor team members to share knowledge

To generate KCS custom reports

To generate KCS custom reports:

1. In Smart IT, click Knowledge.
2. Click the New Custom Report button.
3. In Smart Reporting, on the Create new Report window, select the Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) view.
4. Drag preferred fields in the Rows and Columns area, and specify other details.
    
5. To activate the report, click Close .
6. In the confirmation message, click Yes.
7. Under Report Settings, enter the name and description of the custom report.
8. Select Knowledge-Centered Service from the drop-down, and the category to save KCS custom reports.
9. (Optional) Specify the Display, Refresh, and Distribution Security options.
10. Click Activate.