Assessing knowledge-centered service articles

Before you begin

Before you begin the customization, you must need appropriate access permissions to the knowledge article.

In addition to creating Article Quality Index (AQI) assessment questions, Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) Coaches can also assess their team's articles.

BMC Helix ITSMsupports the default AQI assessment question set. If you have not created a question set for your company, the default question set is used to assess articles.

You cannot create a question set for an organization without specifying the company that the organization belongs to. However, you can create one question set for a company without specifying an organization. This set is used for assessing articles written by authors who are part of that company's organization, but the organization does not have a corresponding question set.

You can also create question set for each organization within a company. Thus, if a company has three organizations, you can create only three question sets, one for each organization. For example, Calbro Services has three organizations: Human Resources, Information Technology, and Finance. You can create one question set for Calbro Services and one for each of its organizations. The following table lists the question sets that are available for this fictional company and its organizations.

The following diagram shows the logic the system uses to select the correct question set to assess knowledge articles:

To assess a knowledge article

Only a KCS Coach can assess a knowledge article. For more information, see Knowledge-Centered-Service-user-roles-and-permissions.

1. Use one of the following methods to open articles for AQI assessment:

   To open an article from the Knowledge menu

   1. Click Knowledge, and then click Manage your knowledge base.
      All articles created by your team members are displayed in the Knowledge console.
   2. Select the check box corresponding to the article that you want to assess.
      The Perform Assessment option becomes visible.
   3. Click the Perform assessment option.
      The article opens with the AQI assessment question set.

   To open an article from the Console menu

   1. Select Console > Knowledge Console. 
   2. To view a list of your team's articles, select My Team's Articles from the list at the top of the page.
      
   3. Select the check box corresponding to the article that you want to assess.
      The Perform Assessment option becomes visible.
   4. Click the Perform assessment option.
      The article opens with the AQI assessment question set.

   To assess a specific team member's article

   1. Click Knowledge.
   2. From My knowledge team, select the options list next to the member's details.
   3. Select the option to view articles. 
      A list of articles written by the member is displayed on the Knowledge console.
      
   4. Select the check box corresponding to the article that you want to assess.
      The Perform Assessment option becomes visible.
   5.  Click the Perform assessment option.
       The article opens with the AQI assessment question set.

   To assess articles while reading

   1. Open any article.
      If the article is written by one of your team members, the More menu is displayed on the article.
   2. Select More > Perform Assessment.
      The AQI assessment question set is displayed on the left side of the article. 
2. Review the article.
3. Answer the AQI assessment questions.
4. Click Save.

To maintain a healthy knowledge base, the knowledge team must ensure that knowledge articles provide correct and complete information to resolve issues. Flagging articles for necessary improvements is a means to achieve and maintain high-quality articles.

As a BMC Helix ITSM user with the appropriate Knowledge or Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) permission, you can flag an article to request for improvements and updates. You can participate in the discussion, and you can comment over the flag. You can flag articles in all statuses except Publish approval, Retired, and Cancelled. Only one user can flag an article at a time. When the article is updated as per the flagging comment and the flag is fixed, you can flag the same article again, if needed.

After an article is flagged, users with Knowledge or KCS permission to fix the flag are expected to update and fix the article in the shortest possible time. Fix is a response from the person acting up on the flag to the flag and flagging comments.