How do you add a Knowledge Base (KB) to Employee Center Pro?

[Shane J]

I've looked all over the place and can't find documentation, or a post, that explains how to add a Knowledge Base to Employee Center (Pro).

In Service Portal, I can just go to the Portal and add it via the Related List.

I can do the same for ESC, but it doesn't seem to actually work.

[Dan O Connor]

Hey @Shane J . 

Employee Center still uses the Knowledgebase Related list, where you can define what KB's should be connected to the ESC. However there are two additional steps you need to consider in terms of configurations for Employee Center

AI Search

AI Search is the recommended search engine to use for Employee Center. And it does typically require some configuration. Out of the box it should work fine, but you might want to make sure you have an AI Search engine setup and defined in the ESC record. Are you using Ai Search?

Connected Content

Employee Center uses Taxonomies and Connected content. This is how KB Articles can be rendered through a topic. It's not essential however to access KB articles, as you could just use Search, but if you are trying to see articles through the taxonomy you will need to make sure some are connected first. 

[Sarah Travis]

Hi @Dan O Connor ,

It appears that knowledge articles are not searchable from the mega menu unless they are connected to a topic.  We have a delegated knowledge base for our HR group, and each time they add a new article, we have to associate the new article with a topic for it to appear in the search.  Is this by design?  If so, is there a better method to deal with this than to create a task for our admin group each time a new knowledge article is published?  We're not using AI Search and the knowledge base is associated with the portal.

Thanks,

Sarah

[Dan O Connor]

Hey @Sarah Travis , you should definitely look into moving to AI Search as soon as possible, it's a big upgrade over legacy search. 

For the Mega Menu that contains topics, yes each time you want to render content as part of a topic it needs to be connected. That is by design to ensure there is control over the content you wish to display via topics to your end users.

However if you have search setup correctly, new content (articles) should be available in search when indexing runs (multiple times a day) and it does not require a manual connection or action. 

It is a main point I cover with customers on implementations, understanding Taxonomy and Topics, and understanding not every piece of content needs to be connected to a topic 😉 Search is a powerful tool that most users go to as the first port of call. 

However if you have Topics with specific content, and new content is being added then yes this needs to be managed by someone, as the purpose is it is considered 'important' or relevant information to render to staff quickly through Topics, and that content should be managed and curated.  

[Sarah Travis]

Thanks for the info.  Right now, a new article published in a KB that is associated with the portal is not appearing in the mega menu search results after 24 hours.  Can you point me to where I can check on the indexing frequency?