Structuring the Service Catalog and Knowledge Base(s)

[klautrup]

Hi,
We are trying to build and mature our Service Catalog as well as our Knowledge articles in ServiceNow.

Do you have recommendations how to optimally structure the Service Catalog when it comes to categorization (top categories and sub categories) - how have you done it?

Besides the records for ordering new HW+SW what kind of generic Service Catalog records do you have in those categories that produces incidents, requests or standard/normal changes?
By generic I mean records which would be relevant for most companies (Eg. report a printer error, request new network share, request a password reset, raise a SAP incident etc.).

Instead of having all incidents and requests sent to the ServiceDesk we would like to create more relevant records in the Service Catalog allowing us to use record producers and templates for instance to assign tickets directly to the relevant support groups.

Together with maturing our Service Catalog we would like to mature our Knowledge articles and also where applicable link to the relevant Knowledge articles directly from the Service Catalog records.

For instance before an end-user submits a Service Catalog record for reporting a printer error the catalog record could suggest relevant Knowledge articles for suggested actions the end-user can try himself, before submitting the catalog record thus opening an incident.
Have you linked from the Service Catalog to relevant Knowledge articles like that to reduce the number of tickets?

About the Knowledge Base(s) I'm also interested to learn how you have done the categorization (top categories and sub categories) and whether that is similar to the Service Catalog categorization?

Currently our Knowledge articles are a bit of a mess both when it comes to categorization, relevant tags and relevant visibility as well as ensuring they are maintained.

For the generic type of Knowledge articles which would be relevant for most companies, do you know of any free or perhaps payable repositories from where such generic Knowledge articles can be imported into ServiceNow thus only requiring minimal updates to fit our environment?

And final question 😉
Probably we would like to hire an external consultant who can assist us building the most optimal Service Catalog and Knowledge Base(s) who is perhaps also able to sell some generic Knowledge articles for import into ServiceNow, so we have a good foundation of Knowledge articles to start out with.
Anybody who knows anybody who has that kind of expertise?

Regards,
Kristian

[Uncle Rob]

Yes.   Take everything everyone's told you about categorization of Knowledge and Catalogs, write it all on exquisite velum, place it on a wooden boat.
Then douse that wooden boat with gasoline, push it off the shore, and set it ablaze.
In the light of its conflagration, throw a party.

Your customers hate category taxonomies.   Let me repeat.   Your customers HATE taxonomies.   Its bad enough that a customer has to take time out of their day to come to ServiceNow (they hate that too) rather than their day job... but when we do, we shamelessly force them to navigate a taxonomy that's been built by a layer of middle management that can't see past reports that have *NEVER* made one iota of operational significance in the last 40 years.

Don't believe me?   Check out the world's largest gateway to knowledge and services devised by man:   www.google.com

Not a category in sight:   just a combination of Search + Trust.

Leverage contextual search, and give your customers a break from IT's stupid, STUPID category trees.

I'm between gigs right now, so I'm more than happy to discuss this with you at length.

[klautrup]

I agree that from the end-user point of view search should be used over categorization both for the service catalog and the knowledge base.

But still for the IT people administering the catalog + knowledge base some kind of categorization must be relevant to keep the overview.
And even if the end-user perspective for the searches to make sense good tags, short description, description are required right both for the catalog + knowledge base to hopefully prioritise what is relevant?

So still I would like to hear of anybody has some recommendations - how do you do it?

And perhaps more important we will need a consultant preferably in Denmark or EU who has expertise in these areas and who is willing to travel to Denmark.
Anybody who knows somebody with those skills?

[Uncle Rob]

Hey Kristian,

The way you categorize KB and Catalog content will, in my estimation, depend a lot more on the services you provide via ServiceNow, and hte knowledge you've already written.   I think it will be far more dependent on that then what other companies have done.   Happy to help you work this out for yourself as a professional courtesy, though I am in US Central time.   Save your consulting dollars for the difficult and high value stuff, like eBonding for SIAM initiatives.

You can reach me here.