Different KBA Types

[Tara Bauch]

I'm trying to find out what the benefit would be to using the specific types for KBA's - Standard, FAQs, What is, How To, KCS. We have a relatively knew knowledge base without a ton of content but my predecessor did all the KBA's in "Standard" - and many of those should be "How To"  or "KCS" articles. Is there a compelling reason to change those to their correct type and then make sure all new ones are correctly identified to their category going forward? 

[jaimehonaker]

Jason - so this is what I found out. We mimic the same fields in the templates, but we customized the names of the fields a bit. We are not completely on Knowledge v3 on NowSupport. 

[Tara Bauch]

Thanks! I am inclined to use them (although Jason did point out a table of contents issue, but maybe it's going to be resolved?) because there must be a reason other than just consistency. I feel like given the types of information being explained/shared, it's pretty easy to make the KBA's consistent just in the standard template - so there just has to be something else. 🙂 I always think about the scenario where maybe SN has plans for future development that would build on those, or need them to be used in order to use some cool capability - so I'm leaning toward using them. 

[Barry_W]

We use various templates and cosmetically at least, they don't seem to add that much value. Most staff also tend to create everything using the standard option anyway, even when other choices are presented.

As another poster has said, having the TOC option in standard articles is very useful, certainly for larger articles.

The only other functional difference I would note, which I assume is out of the box and not simply limited to our instance, is that only known error articles can be linked to problem records. Under the Analysis information tab on a problem record, there is a field called 'Primary known error article'. This only allows you to search for articles created using the known error article template. 

Barry.

[David Kay]

Our experience is much like @jaimehonaker mentioned--not surprisingly, since we work with KCS.  Most of our clients set up two or three templates: one for break / fix ("Solution"), one for a Q&A, and often one for How To.  They share a lot in common conceptually, but the labels are different enough that using the templates increases readability.

For example, you might say "Issue" or "Symptoms" in a Solution, but "Question" in a Q&A and "Objective" in a How To.  Same with "Resolution," "Procedure," and "Answer."  Clear labels help.

Using templates in general makes knowledge easier to skim, evaluate, and apply.  Writing to a template is more like filling out a form than writing in a single big Body field, which means more consistency, less verbosity, and just easier authoring.

I know I shared our starting point for templates in another comment--let me see if I can find and link it.

[David Kay]

Ah, here are those templates.  Thank goodness for knowledge reuse!

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=06312b4d1bac7810fc3233bc1d4bcb26