Document types and document views

Document types and document views specify how Knowledge Management displays a knowledge document. Each document type can have several document views so that not all of the information in a document is accessible to all users. Each document view has one or more document groups associated with it. In this way, document views combined with document groups manage what information appears in a particular document view and what users have access to that view.

Document types are templates for documents in Knowledge Management. Knowledge Management includes several default document types. These include Question/Answer, Problem-Solution, Reference, Error Message/Cause, and External. These default document types provide the basic structure for new document types that you can create. If you later delete your customized document types, the default document types retain their basic features.

For example, you can use Forms Designer to create a document type called Payroll Error based on the out-of-box document type, Error Message/Cause. When there is an error in processing payroll, the staff uses this Payroll Error form to write up the problem.

• Change the Error Message tab to Error and the error message field to Error. Users describe the error in this field.
• Change the Cause tab to Problem and the cause field to Problem. Users describe the underlying problem that caused the error in this field.
• Change the Workaround / Fix tab to Solution and the fix field to Solution. Users provide a solution to the problem.
• Use the default document view for Error Message/Cause to create at least one document view for this document type.

Document views have two purposes. Document views provide users a way to customize how the information displays in each form and to limit users to see only information that their group permission allows them to see. This way, users with different permissions view the same document records, but only those users with certain permissions can view sensitive information in certain fields of the record.

You can manage the documents in your knowledgebase by effectively using document types and groups. You can add new views to existing document types and then control the access to these views by selecting only certain document groups. You can also add new document types to the standard document types provided by the system.

The tasks for managing document types and views are:

• Add a new document type
• Add a view for an existing document type
• Add a document group to a view

To add document types, you must log in with a user profile that has either the System Administrator or Knowledge Administrator role.

Adding a rich-text field

If you add a new rich-text field to the kmdocument table, add it to the dbdict and to the document views that will display the new field.

In order for three of the buttons on the rich-text editor for this new field to work properly, also create three displayoption records for the kmdocument.open displayscreen and three for the kmdocument.view displayscreen.

• Insert Image
• Insert Link to Attachment
• Insert Link to Record

For more information, see the existing displayoption records in the kmdocument.open displayscreen. For example, 555, 556, and 557. Note that:

• the Condition is

  $L.preview="false"

• on the Rad tab and Pre Rad Expressions tab in all three displayoption records, the field name is set as follows:

  $kminsertlinkfieldname="error"

Also,if your new field name was comments, for example, then you would create the three displayoption records and set the following on the Rad tab and Pre Rad Expressions tab in the three new displayoption records:

$kminsertlinkfieldname="comments"