Catalog Request for Knowledge

[StephanieM34173]

Good afternoon,

I am looking to create a Catalog Request for Knowledge Items. For example, if someone is requesting a new Knowledge Article to be created (i.e., someone from the ServiceDesk is requesting the Ownership group to create a knowledge article) or if the information in a current knowledge article is incorrect, they will email a Distro group and then we work with the ownership group to get a new article created or the current article validated and published. It is very hard to keep up with emails, so I was thinking of creating a Catalog Request for these types of requests. 

I am looking to see if any other company has this type of item and can share with me what types of information you look for in the form, workflow, etc.

I have something that I am working off of but wanted to see best practices of what other teams may be using.

Thank you,

[Chrislgarrett9]

Hi and yes!

I had one created to request for knowledge to be uploaded and to have documented knowledge uploaded (in lieu of self-service). 

I have people fill out the request form with justifications, topics, what team would be have the knowledge that needs to be uploaded, and who needs to be able to view (to translate to user criteria).

Once that has been submitted, the task will go directly to me and I will create a SCTASK for the responsible team. I will meet with a team SME and the submitter to establish exactly what is needed and then have them submit. After the article is submitted and approved, the sme's task will be closed and I will close my RITM with notifications to the submitter.

In my opinion, we can better track our work this way and provide metrics that may feed into KPIs. It also helps other to become accountable with the SCTASK being assigned to them.

Hope this helps!!

[andreababch]

Hi Stephanie,

We implemented an IT KM catalog last year and it has been very helpful for people to submit article requests or other knowledge needs. We had a KM mailbox and also wanted to eliminate that for better track and assign.

Our catalog has options for

• Create New Article
• Modify Article
• Retire Article
• New application for KB
• Other - access, training, new KB

For routing of the catalog item, I created a queue that has the Knowledge Leads and Technical Writers in it and I assign requests out accordingly. I'm sure you can expand and more automate that. This has most successful in that it shows all the work that Knowledge team does that was not tallied and we needed resource. We also implemented knowledge tasks on feedback and flag for above same reasons - better tracking and distribution. 

Hope that helps. 

Andrea

[Aerin]

I think I may have replied to the email, instead of posting here. Oops! So pasting my response here in case it's useful.

Hello!
I do have a catalog item that team members can use to request an article. If they are looking for a particular piece of information and can't find it, the cat item generates a task for the Knowledge Management team (at the moment, that's just me. LOL) to figure out which team owns that information and help them to create an article. Currently, the cat item asks for:

• the audience for the article (so I have an idea with KB it will live in)
• gives a list of current ownership groups to select from (with an "I don't know" option)
• asks how the gap was discovered (pick list of INC, REQ, PRB, CHG, Other)
• text box to provide more info about what problem they were trying to solve/what information they were looking for.

Our knowledge maturity as an organization is still low, so it doesn't get used often, but I'm trying to build for the future I want to see.

We encourage people to use the feedback options in specific articles (Flag, Stars, Helpful) to submit a KFT when they find a current article with something missing and/or incorrect.

[Eoghan Sinnott]

Hi Stephanie, 

Yes we have also created a catalog request called the "Knowledge Management Intake Request" which allows our clients (all internal) to submit requests through to the Knowledge Management team. As others have mentioned we used to have an Inbox as our primary intake method, but have looked to move away from this as much as possible over the last 12-18 months, and the Intake request was one of the big drivers to allow us to do so.

Our intake request is broken down into different request types;

• Create a New Knowledge Article
• Edit an Existing Knowledge Article
• Create a new Knowledge Base
• Request Access to an exiting Knowledge Base
• Reporting Request
• Other

Each one of the requests has various levels of automations setup within the workflow, for example if someone selects the option to Create A New Knowledge Article, they will be given various mandatory fields like Article Title (Short Description), What Knowledge Base the article is for, Contact, Article Body, Metadata etc.. Each of these fields is then mapped to the corresponding fields on the knowledge form, and after a member of our Knowledge Team assigns the Intake request to themselves, a new knowledge article draft is automatically created bringing in the information from the form. Once the Knowledge writer completes the request and closes it off, an automatic email is sent to the requestor with a link to the new article. We also have similar for the requests to Create a New Knowledge Base and are working on some automation for the Reporting requests.

Our access requests are also automated, where the user gets a drop-down menu of the available Knowledge Bases and then can pick the users that they require the access for. Again once the request is approved by the Knowledge team, the users are automatically added into the corresponding Can Read User Criteria for the correct Knowledge Base.

This has greatly improved our reporting capabilities as we can report much more accurately on the volume of work that is coming in, and we have also saved a lot of time with some of the automations mentioned above.

Hope this is of some help and if you have any follow ups please let me know!

Regards,

Eoghan

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