Knowledge searching using categories

[kc99]

Hi,

can anyone put me on the right track before I start this piece of work please?

I've been asked to look at categorising our Knowledge Base and the client would like 4 levels of categorisation to allow ITIL users to create KB articles and the client's employees to search the KB via ESS.

As an example:

- The first level (using the Topic field) will have 12 or more choices.

- The second level (called Category) will have varying number of choices

- The third level (called Document Type) will have a set number of choices

- The fourth level (called Organisation) will have varying number of choices

The form used to create the articles now has these fields to categorise the article on creation.

Is there a method (in ESS) that would allow us to generate a KB search results list based upon the user entering one or more values into a form similar to above?

The customer actually requested a 4-stage drill down which would involve creating multiple CMS pages with buttons (yes, they want buttons !) - one button per choice in each of the above choice lists. The presented list would be the result of the choices selected after navigating through each of these 4 pages.

Apart from being a bit of a lengthy task I think that this method is a bit cumbersome and is not using SN to it's full potential.

If anyone has any examples of how they have created a categorised search of the Knowledge Base I would be really grateful,

many thanks in advance,

Keiron.

[britt_champeau]

Hi Keiron,

I believe you're saying your customer has requested 4 dependent dropdowns, and I agree this is not the best use of the tool.   While document type and organization may be dependent on topic and category in some places, this might make for a confusing user experience. I'm not exactly sure what buttons your customer is looking for, but I know the addition of UI Actions to multiple CMS pages is labor intensive and not the most efficient organizational method.

My suggestion would be to either use independent dropdowns or reference fields for document type and organization.   There may be times when a document may be for multiple organizations. If that's common, you might even consider using a slushbucket like some organizations use for locations.

Once you've created your fields, you can enhance kb_home to include checkboxes that limit the search to specific organizations or document types and dropdowns for topic and category.   Check out ServiceNow's KB Home here: https://hi.service-now.com/kb_home.do.   Make sure you're logged in to HI so you can see all the search options. You could use the same scheme but replace the Product checkboxes with something more applicable to your organization.

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help or if you require additional information.

Britt

[kc99]

Many thanks for the reply Britt.

I've taken a quick look at the HI kb pages and it looks like it may be a good dersign to copy.

I'll check with the rest of my team to see which way they want to proceed,

regards,

Keiron.

[kc99]

Hello again Britt,

I've taken a look at the HI site where it initially displays all the Topics via this URL...

https://hi.service-now.com/kb_home.do?sysparm_cancelable=true

This looks really tidy and I'd hoped that my existing knowledge would be good enough to fully understand what is going on with the UI Page (kb_home) as it displays on the HI site.

When we display kb_home on our instance it displays all of the available articles relating to the topics as links on the page when we would prefer it to look like the HI version (with only a 'View All' link underneath the topic text).

Are we able to amend our 'kb_home' page to look like the HI site?

Also, is it normal to use the 'kb_' prefixed UI pages within a CMS-based site for ESS considering these pages are also viewed by ITIL users using SNC?

Apologies for the questions - I'm sure I'll pick things up eventually,

many thanks,

Keiron.

[Slava Savitsky]

Hi Keiron,

You can change the number of article links displayed in each topic using "glide.knowman.section_limit" system property or have no links displayed at all by setting "glide.knowman.home_titlesonly" system property to "true".

You may also want to have a look at the following article that describe a very easy simple yet powerful way to enhance you Knowledge Base homepage:

There is no place like homepage | SNOWman's Blog

Regards,

Slava