Best use for Attach knowledge vs Helpful button

[laura_p]

We are looking at trying to figure out a better way when an article solves and Incident. Currently some people click Helpful while other Attach the article to the Incident. We also have some people attaching articles they used even though it did not resolve their issue.

I see some mentions when attaching articles it will add the Activity and get sent to the user. I had always thought Attach was used for internal that it solved an Incident. So now I am confused on the use of these two methods.

How is Attach knowledge supposed to be used per ServiceNow? How is Helpful supposed to be used per ServiceNow? 

[Vickie Runyon · Accepted solution]

For us, the difference is the audience and our workflow. We follow KCS methodologies which means that our knowledge workers (those solving Incidents) are using, creating, or improving knowledge as part of their Incident resolution workflow. For them, they Attach the KB article that they used to solve the Incident. This does a few things: 1) confirms that the content of the article is valid and then others can trust using it; 2) builds data around the incident that is described in the KB article which, when analyzed, can be used for root cause analysis and/or continual improvement; and 3) verifies that the knowledge worker is actually using the KCS methodology.

The Helpful/Not Helpful options are used by our public audience - all our employees who are accessing the KB articles on the Portal. If they choose Not Helpful, SNOW is configured to create a Feedback Task which is then assigned to me as Knowledge Manager. I can then follow up with the reader and determine how to improve the KB article. The same thing happens if someone rates an article with 1 or 2 stars.

Edited to Add:  When a KB is attached, the SNOW default is to put the permalink in the Customer Visible notes. We modified that behavior to go to the Work Notes and to a custom KB Article field that we created. We did this because we don't necessarily want to send the article to the contacting client until we are ready to. In the case that  we do want to send it, we copy the permalink and put it in Customer Visible notes.

[laura_p]

This is sort of what I was thinking but needed to know how else others use these features. Thank you.

[David Kay]

You're right; attaching the article tells the world "This article solved my incident / case."

Helpful links say, "this article helped me get closer to the final resolution."  Examples might be

• Troubleshooting guides (what KCS generally calls "Hub Articles")
• Procedures for gathering information (e.g., how to pull a log file)
• Analogous situations which provide clues for how to move forward to the final resolution

It's important to attach at least one resolution, but it's useful if knowledge workers identify helpful non-resolution articles along the way.  So, this is the way ServiceNow supports the ideas here, except I use the word "reference" rather than "helpful"--same idea.  https://www.dbkay.com/kcs/kcs-drive-to-resolution-you-should-close-most-of-your-cases-with-resolutio...