Knowledge Category/ Taxonomy

[RogueFader]

Hi all.

Just looking to get a steer from someone wiser than I on how they went around creating knowledge categories.

The knowledge process was handed over to myself, however when I review what categories people chose when creating a new article, there seems to be no continuity.  If creating an article for a technical team, the category picker shows something like "Internal Digital Technology and a sub cat of Software", and people have an option to create a third category so they can drill down and be more specific, so the article may be  "Internal Digital Technology>Software>Adobe" for example.

Using  Hardware as the example, I was thinking if I could use "Internal Digital Technology>Hardware>laptop" or "Internal Digital Technology>Hardware>monitor", what I'm looking to get an idea on, is if other people have done something similar and have three or more levels, or do you keep the categories to a minimum, but then use service offering, so the example I gave for hardware "Internal Digital Technology>Hardware>laptop", you may only use "Internal Digital Technology>Hardware" but then use a Service Offering of "Laptop/PC Hardware support"

Sorry if this all sounds convoluted, this is all fairly new to me and I'm trying to get my head around this and how it should look,

Thanks in advance.

[RogueFader]

Thanks Pam. I've read over this and may I ask why you don't repeat categories across KBs. See we have internal and public facing KBs. Internal are for the technical teams, public are for end users and general staff. I wasn't sure if having repeat categories would be an issue if public can't see the internal KBs

Also where you say category is not a mandatory field, for your company does that mean the author would create an article and then someone from the knowledge team would select a category for it, creating a new one if required. Thanks  again

[Pam Calvey]

I don't repeat categories for reporting purposes. We only have internal KBs. So it may not matter so much for you if you have a lot of KBs and are always doing a higher-level sort by knowledge base first.  If we need new categories, yes, the knowledge team would create them and apply them as needed. We can usually suggest one we already have. 

[RogueFader]

Thank you Pam. So in which case within your org, Category is not a mandatory field, articles must hit your knowledge team in a state of draft or review, and one of your team will add the category and then once added, it's only then the article is approved and published?

[Pam Calvey · Accepted solution]

Yes, that is the goal. Sometimes my approvers miss that field, and it publishes in a category called "Empty" which shows up at the top of the category lists (when something is in it). When I catch those, I fill in the category myself and coach the author and approver. 

[RogueFader]

Thanks Pam, much appreciated. I may look at this and make sure that category is not a mandatory field, that way I can look at what it should be, then if need be look at what subcategories there are available and create one if required.