KCS support in BMC Knowledge Management

BMC Knowledge Management now provides support for by the Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS) framework. While BMC Knowledge Management is a full-fledged knowledge management tool in itself; it provides the infrastructure to perform for KCS-defined functions for the benefit of organizations that follow the KCS framework in their IT support processes.

Overview of KCS

KCS is a rich methodology that enables users to create and maintain knowledge within an organization. The Consortium for Service Innovation has created the KCS methodology and maintains it. The KCS methodology is as follows:

• Create knowledge as a by-product of solving incidents.
• Collect available knowledge in a comprehensive knowledge base.
• Reuse existing knowledge before creating new content, leading to evolution of knowledge as per the need and usage.
• Encourage users to collaborate, learn, share, and improve knowledge within the organization.

By adopting the KCS methodology, you can promote knowledge management best practices within your organization. For detailed information about the KCS methodology, see the KCS Practices Guide, available from the home page of the Consortium for Service Innovation website.

Product compatibility with KCS features

To use the KCS functionality, you must have the following product versions:

BMC Knowledge Management support for KCS features

The following enhancements in BMC Knowledge Management provide the infrastructure support for the various KCS functionalities:

KCS permissions

BMC Knowledge Management now supports the following key license levels defined by the KCS framework:

• KCS Candidate
• KCS Contributor
• KCS Publisher
• KCS Coach

The KCS license levels are hierarchical, and users gain authority as they advance from one level to the next. The level of KCS knowledge, application of available knowledge, and skill level determine a user's license levels.

The KCS defined license levels are mapped to four new permission groups in BMC Knowledge Management. BMC Knowledge Management user permissions and KCS user permissions are mutually exclusive. At one time, a user can have either BMC Knowledge Management user permissions or KCS user permissions. With KCS permissions, you must use Smart IT interface to perform the KCS-defined functions on knowledge articles. To generate and view KCS reports, you must use BMC Remedy Smart Reporting.

Your organization can shift to the KCS framework in a phased manner rather than one-time transformation. You can assign KCS permissions only to a group of users, while the remaining users continue to have BMC Knowledge Management user permissions.

For detailed information, see User-permissions.

KCS template

A new out-of-the-box template, the KCS template, is available for creating knowledge articles. This template is structured according to the KCS article definition. Knowledge articles created using the KCS template provide information about the problem; environment information such as hardware, software, and so on; resolution of the problem, and the underlying cause.

For detailed information about the KCS template, see the following resources:

• Knowledge-article-templates for an overview about the KCS template and other templates in BMC Knowledge Management
• Working-with-the-KCS-template for information about what functions can be done using the KCS template from Smart IT and BMC Knowledge Management.

New forms and escalations for KCS support

While a few existing forms have been updated in BMC Knowledge Management, the main change is that several new back-end forms and escalations have been added to support KCS features. These forms contain data that is generated from Smart IT when any action is performed on knowledge articles. The forms compute metrics for generating KCS reports that can be viewed through BMC Remedy Smart Reporting.

For more information, see, KCS-forms-and-escalations.

Data Management and KCS

Using the Data Management tool, you can create KCS articles from the KCS template. The Transactional-Knowledge.xlsx spreadsheet has a new RKM_LoadKCSTemplate_Join tab that is used for creating knowledge articles by using the Data Management tool. For more information, see the following resources from the BMC Remedy ITSM Suite online documentation:

• Transactional data mapping for information about the mapping of transactional data from spreadsheets to target forms.
• Data Management for information about the data management process

There is no change in the data management process or the functionality of the Data Management tool.

KCS features provided through Smart IT

KCS defines several functions to monitor and maintain knowledge health in an organization. Apart from creating or editing articles, KCS users can perform several actions on the knowledge articles using the Smart IT interface.

For detailed information, see  Overview of the Knowledge-Centered Supportin the Smart IT online documentation.

KCS reports provided through BMC Remedy Smart Reporting

A KCS Coach helps individuals develop their KCS skills, monitors and maintains the knowledge health of the organization, guides and influences users to adopt good knowledge management processes, and helps improve the KCS maturity level of an organization.

BMC Remedy Smart Reporting provides several out-of-the-box reports that enable a KCS Coach to review articles and author performance. A KCS Coach can access these reports from the Smart IT interface, For more information, see Reviewing your knowledge team's performance using KCS reports in the BMC Remedy with Smart IT online documentation.