Knowledge Base vs Managed Documents

[tbrothers]

We are in the process of moving our SharePoint document library into ServiceNow.  I started this effort using the Knowledge Base and Knowledge Base advanced plugin.  Recently, the Managed Document plugin was brought up.  I would like to know the pros/cons of moving from the Knowledge Base to Managed Documents.  We do have annual reviews and are ISO20K certified.

[scott barnard1]

Hi t

A lot of what may be considered pros and cons are pretty much based around what your use cases are.

By that I mean what is it that is your primary focus in terms of the document.

For me the two area both manage docs in an controlled fashion, both can handle approvals and removals etc. They are slightly different in terms of focus though.

Knowledge Management

This works best for help and how to's , some policies and work instructions and news or bulletins. So that is relatively short docs that are suitable for active searching and display in a browsing context.

This is just my opinion based on my experience and you can use knowledge for much larger docs and other purposes I just believe it's better suited to the more dynamic smaller stuff.

Document Management.

Works best for items that are larger or have complicated approval processes and viewing restrictions. The document can have unique identifiers rather than just KB12345 and suits stuff like contracts, proposals, service definitions, master service agreements etc.

You can even store terms and conditions in it rather than the contracts area but we digress.

Personally I use document management for the larger docs that are going through a lifecycle. So a tender may start life in presales and get a doc Id go through multiple revisions and pass through a series of states before it becomes a bid. It  can carry an ID that links it to related docs like service definitions, rate cards, legal docs, financial agreements like cost of money and exchange values for international sites of a domestic customer etc.

Knowledge I tend to use for how-to guides, release docs, work instructions, known issues, handy links and guides on the local business units for international peers who may need contact and or travel info.

This is by no means definitive and you could make either fit. 

I would encourage you to play around with doc management in a dev instance as ootb there are not much in there in terms of name structure that makes it helpful however it has some powerful features there and can be built out by just adding the doc structures in there.

I recently built a doc structure for an italian business unit that needed to keep track of docs that it was using to communicate with 3rd parties and its government customers. They needed a doc structure based on Business unit - unique number-internal/external-date of original-version. This can be done in doc management and if you have the approval history property on it gives you a lovely history.

OOtb they didn't think it would suit but with some basic config it was what they needed it just wasn't obvious from looking at the vanilla module.

Just my 2 cents

[tbrothers]

Thanks!  Just what I was looking for!