Searching the knowledgebases

When searching the knowledgebases, you can either perform a basic search where you search for a text string or an advanced search where you can provide several search parameters. When you perform an advanced search, you can specify the knowledgebases and the document categories to search. You can also specify a set of filtering parameters, such as exact phrase and creation date. After doing an initial search or advanced search, you can then search within the search results.

Each of the knowledgebases has different fields that are indexed for searching, so when you search a knowledgebase, provide search parameters that match the fields in the knowledgebase. For example, the knowledge articles have a title and author field. When you view an Incident record, the out-of-box system displays the Incident record number, description, and solution for closed incidents.

If your Service Manager uses the SOLR search engine, the out-of-box system includes five separate knowledgebases that can be searched collectively or separately, depending upon what information you are searching for. In addition to making your search more efficient by specifying a knowledgebase, it is also best to search with a limited number of document categories. When you search, your log-in profile determines what information you can search and view. If your Service Manager uses Smart Analytics as the search engine, you can perform cross-module search from selectable sources inside and outside of Service Manager. For more information, see Use Smart Search as a general search tool.

You can use the Knowledgebase Maintenance feature to add additional knowledgebases for searching. These knowledgebases are created from a table in Service Manager(sclib) or by using web crawling to browse and index an external web site (weblib).

Knowledge documents

In the Knowledge Management (KM) system, a knowledge document typically consists of information about a particular topic. The amount of detail and length depends on the complexity of the topic and the audience for the document. Knowledge documents can include attachments that can be images, text files, PDF files, or Word files for example. In the out-of-box system, the types of knowledge documents are error messages, external documents, question/answer documents, problem/solution documents, and reference documents. All knowledge documents are assigned to at least one document category and may be placed in multiple categories. A typical document category might be technical documents or HR procedures.

• Draft documents - These are documents that are being created, but have not yet been submitted to be published..
• Published documents - These are documents that are available for searching and viewing. Some documents may only be viewed by internal users, while others can be viewed by internal and external users. Published documents can be edited by users with the Edit in place a published document option selected for their KM security profile. Users can add feedback to published documents. Users with appropriate privileges can create a working copy of the document and then make revisions.
• Working copy - A document becomes a working copy when a published document goes into the workflow to be updated. When the working copy of the document is published, it replaces the original document. A working copy of a published document has an "R" appended to the document ID. A new document submitted to be published is also considered a working copy while it is in the workflow waiting to be published, but there is no "R" appended to the document ID.
• Retired documents - These are documents that become out-of-date and have been archived for some reasons. Retired documents are not searched when users perform a knowledgebase search. KM ADMIN users can delete retired documents.

Knowledge documents typically have a life cycle that includes draft, triage, pending documents in the approval workflow, published, and retired.

Published knowledge documents

Published knowledge documents are documents that are available for searching and viewing. Some documents may only be viewed by internal users, while others can be viewed by internal and external users. Published documents can be edited by users with the Edit in place option selected for their Knowledge Management (KM) security profile. Users can add feedback to published documents. Users with appropriate privileges can create a working copy of the document and then make revisions.

The system displays a search screen instead of a list of published documents so that users can quickly find a published document or a group of published documents.

In the out-of-box system, a Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS) II user profile can publish internal documents and a KCS III user profile can publish internal and external documents.

Reverting a working copy document

Working copies of published documents can be reverted to the original version of the published document while the document is in the document workflow. There is a Revert button available for a working copy of a published document. If changes have been made to the working copy of the document, it can still be reverted. In the out-of-box system, users with a KCS II or KCS III profile can revert working copy documents in those categories to which they have access. A KM ADMIN profile allows the user to revert any working copy document.

Retired knowledge documents

A retired document is a knowledge document that is no longer searched during a knowledgebase search. A retired document can be deleted or unretired.

Before you retire a document, you should update any documents that link to the document you are retiring. When you attempt to retire a document that other documents link to, the system will not allow you to retire it. The system alerts you to the situation and then allows you to send these linked documents to workflow for review. You can then update the links or remove the links in these documents because Knowledge Management will not allow you retire a document that links to other documents in the knowledgebase.

In the out-of-box system, users with KCS II or KCS III profiles can retire any of the published documents that are assigned to the document categories and subcategories to which they have access. A user with a KCS ADMIN profile can retire any draft or published document in any document category.

Using the Pending Documents queue

The Pending Documents queue manages knowledge documents that have been submitted to the document workflow. The standard workflow for documents is to determine what processing the knowledge document requires, assign the document for editing or review, assign the document for review, and publish the document for internal or external audiences. In some cases, documents can be published immediately without going through a formal workflow.

Users with a KCSII or KCS III profile are primarily responsible for coordinating the Knowledge Management documents in the workflow. They are able to view and act on documents in the categories or subcategories to which they have access. A user with a KM ADMIN profile or a System Administrator can access all the Knowledge Management documents for all categories and subcategories.

If the resolution of an Incident or Interaction record is used frequently, the KCS Coach or System Administrator may want to manually create a knowledge document by locating the Incident or Interaction record and clicking the Create Knowledge link.

In the workflow, an editor can initiate the following changes:

• Make any required changes to the document

  Note If you are editing an attachment for an existing knowledge document, you must send the document to the workflow. You can then save the attachment to your desktop, make the necessary updates, save the changes, and then re-upload the attachment to the knowledge document.

• Assign the document to a member of the document group for the document category or subcategory and move the document to the next phase in the workflow
• Publish the document immediately
• Use activity update
• Retire the document

For each document, a user will select a document owner and an assigned editor from a list of users with edit privileges.

Tips for searching the knowledgebases

These tips will help you to narrow your search for knowledge documents. While it is helpful to be specific to find the knowledge documents you need, it is also sometimes helpful to broaden your search by eliminating some of the search parameters.

Here are some suggestions for using the Search for text box.

• Enter words and phrases in plain text.
• To search for an exact phrase, surround it with a pair of double quotation marks ("").
• When a search returns a large number of hits, limit your search by searching within the search results (search within results).
  
• If you have performed an advanced search, terms entered in the advanced search screen are still active even if the advanced search screen is not visible. The advanced query terms are added to the simple search query unless you go to the advanced search screen and remove them.

Search engine relevance ranks

A simple search by the Solr search engine ranks documents found according to relevance of the criteria you enter for the search. For example, based on word density, word count, word proximity, word stemming, and thesaurus expansion, the documents found are listed in order based on their relevance to your search criteria. The most relevant documents are displayed at the top of the list.

Special characters in search queries

The following table describes how the Solr search engine uses special characters.

Special character	Description
?	Specifies one of any alphanumeric character, as in ?an, which locates "ran," "pan," "can," and "ban."
*	Specifies zero or more of any alphanumeric character, as in corp* (which locates "corporate," "corporation," "corporal," and "corpulent") or as in *inter (which locates "printer", "sprinter", and so on).
/,\, #, $, %,^, &, (, ), _,- (em dash or en dash), +, =, | (pipe),<,>,comma (,), and period (.), etc.	These special characters will be filtered out (ignored).

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