Knowledge Management overview

BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Managementis a framework for creating, publishing, reviewing, and searching IT knowledge articles. This framework provides service desk analysts with a knowledge base of easy-to- find solutions and gives users self-service search options to help them resolve issues on their own.

Business value

With BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management, you can:

Improve service quality through easy access to knowledge
Reduce support calls and costs by enabling users to search without involving the service desk
Access third-party knowledge through integration and indexing of content
Decrease call abandonment rates and increase first-call resolution rates by improving efficiency
Keep users and service desks up to date by providing news flashes and watch lists
Reduce training costs throughout your organization with integrated, self-help knowledge

End-to-end process

Every article has a life cycle. At the beginning of its life cycle, the article enters the pre-publish review and approval process. If approved, the article is published. Published articles can be reviewed and retired from use, as required. Retired articles continue to reside in the knowledge base, and although they are not visible to end users, by default, the knowledge users can search for them.

Knowledge article creation life cycle

The following illustration explains a typical life cycle until the article is published:

Knowledge article publishing life cycle

The following illustration explains a typical article publishing life cycle:

Article status

Statuses are used to denote the current phase of an article within the article's life cycle. Each phase determines factors such as:

Type of work the article requires
User or group to whom the article can be assigned
Status transition options for the article
User viewing permissions
Whether the article is searchable

Knowledge life cycle management

The BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Managementauthoring process allows authorized users to create knowledge articles and manage the knowledge article life cycle within a defined sequence of stages, (for example, In Progress, Draft, SME Review, Optional Review 1, Optional Review 2, Publish Approval, Published, Retire Approval, Retired, Closed Version, Cancelled).

BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Managementenables users to define the different life cycle stages and the available list of stages that a knowledge article can switch to from a given stage.

When switching between stages,BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Managementroutes the article to the next assignee using the Assignment Engine. This is performed by analyzing pre-defined routing rules that are based on the company that the article belongs to and the article categorization.

Some stages, such as Publish and Retire, may require an approval process. BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Managementuses the Approval Server to define approval workflow for these stages.

Quick tour of knowledge management

BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Managementdisplays knowledge articles in two views depending on where you opened the article:

Display view—When you open articles from search results, the article and the non-role related article metadata that can be viewed by all users is displayed in read-only mode. When you open the article, only the header and content are displayed. Clicking the Details tab displays the article in read-only view, even when you have edit permissions.
The Update Requests tab is never displayed in the Display view. While in the Display view, you can switch to the Advanced view by clicking the Advanced View button.
Advanced view—When you open articles from the BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge ManagementConsole or by clicking the Advanced View button in search results, you can modify the content and metadata fields of the article. The left-hand Navigation pane, links, and the Update Requests tab are displayed.

For information on BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management console, seeAccessing and navigating the BMC Helix ITSM interface(BMC Helix ITSM documentation).