Create a knowledge document

User roles: KCS I, KCS II, KCS III, KM Admin, System Administrator

You contribute a knowledge document by authoring knowledge articles or using external documents that are uploaded into a knowledgebase. When you author a document, you will be asked to specify a document type. Knowledge documents can be saved as drafts before they are complete. You can also preview a document while you are creating it.

As part of the task to create a knowledge document, you need to assign it to a document category or several document categories, depending upon the topic of the knowledge document. After you have created the knowledge document, you need to either submit it for approval or publish it for either internal or external viewing. In the out-of-box system, a user with a KCS II profile can immediately publish a document for internal viewing and a user with a KCS III profile can immediately publish a document for an internal or external audience.

To create a knowledge document, follow these steps:

  1. Click Knowledge Management > Contribute Knowledge.

    A list of document types is displayed. The out-of-box document types are:

    • Error Message/Cause
    • External
    • Question/Answer
    • Problem/Solution
    • Reference
  2. Select the document type you want from the list.

  3. Complete the mandatory and optional fields on the form.

    Field Description
    Title

    A general or descriptive heading for this knowledge document. This is a mandatory field.

    Note If you install and enable the latest Smart Analytics for your Service Management, the content in the Title field of this knowledge document is used as the search string for context-aware search. Depending on your Smart Search configurations, context-aware search can be either automatically triggered as you type in Title, or manually triggered by clicking the Context-aware search icon. You can also put the cursor in the Title field, and press Shift + Enter to trigger a context-aware search.

    Summary A brief statement that presents the main points of the Knowledge document in a concise form. If this field is empty, the search engine may provide a dynamically generated summary.
    Expiration date The date when this Knowledge document should be flagged as retired, for example, when the document may be out-of-date and require a review. A retired document can also be seen from the Knowledge KPI (Global) dashbard. After viewing such a report, a KCS II. KCS III, or an administrator can search for a retired document by id or title, review the document, and elect to send the document through a workflow for revision.
    Legislation A drop-down field that you can modify to include specific legislation and regional requirements. Out-of-box options are listed as HIPAA, ISO/IEC 20,000, and SOX.
    Confirmed legal rights to publish this material A check box that you must select to confirm that you have the legal rights to use the data contained within the document. If this option is not selected, when you attempt to publish the document, the system prompts you to confirm your legal rights to publish this document.
    Tags

    Enter free-form tags (keywords or terms) of this document. The tags you enter are searchable and can be used as keywords to highlight important knowledge information.

    Document ID

    This is a system-generated unique identification number for this document.

    Note This field is read-only.

    Document type This read-only field indicates the document type you selected.
    Document subtype

    Note Available only when you selected the Reference document type.

    You can optionally specify a document subtype as appropriate. By default, the following subtypes are available:

    • Agreement: a document describing a formal understanding between two or more parties. An agreement is not legally binding unless it forms part of a Contract.

    • Service Design Package: a document that provides the initial outline of a service agreement and denotes what agreements will be required, who the signatories shall be, and other process oriented details.

    • Service Quality Plan: SQP, a long-term quality improvement plan

    • Service Improvement Plan: SIP, a limited, short-term improvement plan

    • Business Case: provides a business justification for a change proposed by a formal Change Proposal

    • Project Information: provides information about the project proposed by a formal Change Proposal

    • Availability Plan: a plan to ensure that existing and future availability requirements for IT services can be provided cost effectively

    • Process Documentation: a storage of process related documentation, including Standard Operating Procedures, Organizational Charts & Responsibilities, Escalation Procedures, Contact Lists, Work Instructions, Process Schedules, and so on.
    Status This read-only field indicates the current status of the document based on the pre-defined knowledge management workflow.
    Locale In the drop-down list, choose the locale to be used by the search engine when searching and indexing the document. By default, the language code matches the language you logged in as. Changing this field overrides the Knowledgebase default locale setting.
    Reason for information This text field can be used for describing the reason for this document or for additional copyright information.
    Associated Services

    Click the Fill Field Associated Services icon to select one or multiple business services that are associated with this document. Specifying an associated service will cause this knowledge document and the service record to be linked to each other in their Related Records tab and Related Documents respectively. Once this knowledge document is published, it is listed in the Related Documents section of the service records.

    After you select the services, the Notify Service Subscribers on Publish option is displayed. Select this option if you want to notify users who have subscribed to this service once the document is published.

    To view subscribers to the services, click the View Subscribers icon. A list of users and departments actively subscribed to the selected services is displayed. Click the subscription ID link of a department to see users in that department.

  4. Use the rich-text editor to enter text for the document.

  5. If needed, click the Link icon to insert a hyperlink to an external web site.
  6. Click the Preview button to view the document. The following information is also displayed:

    • Document Id
    • Document Type
    • Document subtype (available only for the Reference type)
    • Summary
    • Creation Date
    • Expiration Date
    • Author
    • Associated Services (if selected)
    • Tags
    • Related Documents
  7. Click Back.
  8. If you want to save the document as a draft, click Save Draft.
  9. Click Save or click the applicable button to submit the document for approval or to publish the document immediately if you are a KCS II or KCS III for the document category.

    Once the document is published, the following information is also displayed to users: Document Id, Document Type, Document subtype, Summary, Creation Date, Expiration Date, Author, Tags, Associated Services, and Related Documents (Document subtype is available only for the Reference type).

To delete a draft knowledge document you created:

  1. Click Knowledge Management > Draft Documents. A list of draft documents is displayed.
  2. Select the document you want to delete.
  3. Click Delete.
  4. Click Yes in the confirmation window.