Knowledge Management OOTB

[Heiko Bllr]

Experience from my recent project shows, once more, how much you can actually achieve by just using the OOTB capabilities. One such platform capability you almost always need and want is Knowledge Management.

After several discussions with the client, and few weeks later after the requirements workshops and initial configurations, it turns out we do not have to configure much at all. And I strongly believe, this is how it should be, having the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) thought in mind. If you wanna do more complex things, you can always do it later, but first your client should become familiar with the new platform.

I even remember the day when I implemented knowledge versioning from scratch back in 2015 for a client and I believe 2 or even just 1 (!) release later ServiceNow had it OOTB. I didn't see it coming of course, but I wasn't much surprised either.

So, what do we need for Knowledge?

• Knowledge base (or better two, one for end users, one for your agents)
• User criteria (use existing or create your own if you have to and try to avoid scripting)
• Decide for a knowledge template (standard, faq, known error, ...)
• Decide for the owner and manager of the KBs (many configurations can also be done later while in PROD)
• Decide for the OOTB publish and retire workflows (do you really need approval?)
• Decide on article validity (most of the times we use 365 days)
• Decide on category structure (don't go crazy on this one) and create the categories
• Decide if you want to be notified when your articles expire (glide.knowman.enable_article_expiry_notification)
• Configure access by using the configured User criteria

Now you can configure your searches on the portal, backend, etc. and... you are done.

Yes, there are other features, you can use AQI for a better article quality, use templates to prefill the article to make sure all authors use the same structure, use localization framework for translations, ...

But in the very beginning, I strongly recommend to first explain the concept to your customer and give a demo but stay with the basics. Enhance and evolve later.

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