Hi, Trisha! We're doing this same thing right now.
A lot depends on what kind of user base you have and what your process is for producing content.
For example, we're pretty tight with the review process prior to putting an article in the knowledge base. Therefore, percent of reviewed articles that are published isn't relevant. Nearly 100% are published. That report wouldn't help us as much.
However, if you have many authors submitting articles - and you're having trouble with either the quality of the submissions or with follow through, then that report may be helpful.
We serve an internal audience only. All users have to be authenticated. So, that report wouldn't help us. If you're serving the public, that's where unauthenticated users may be of interest to you.
That having been said, if you're looking at "health" or quality and utilization, you'll want to pay more attention to reports for:
- Click through rate (how many people click on an article from search results, implying they found what they are looking for potentially and are spending time in the KB)
- Click rank (how high an article ranked in the search when they clicked on it - are they clicking on the first article, second article, fifth article? Etc. This implies how well search is doing at predicting (or not) the information they're actually looking for and if it's ranking higher in the search results.
- Feedback reports.
- Which feedback features are you using?
- We use "helpful? yes/no," 5-star rating system, and people can leave feedback if they give negative ratings, so I'll speak to those. You may be using other quantifiers.
- You can get monthly average ratings for how helpful (a "yes" response) people are finding your articles and also get trend information by tracking over several months to a year - is the average rating for articles trending up, down, or plateau-ing?
- You can get the average star rating for all the articles in your knowledge base. For example, 3.02 average rating means the average is close to 3 stars. Is this where you want your articles to be?
- Pro tip - if you're working with different owner groups or authors, be able to break down article ratings by the group responsible, so each group can see how well their own articles are doing - are they doing better than average? worse than average? etc.
- For us, we break it down by category, so groups who are in charge of a certain category of info can see how they're doing.
- FEEDBACK IS TRICKY since most people only leave negative feedback, to be fair.
- Utilization reports include the click through and click rank already referenced - and then you can also see how many articles were viewed in your knowledge base and how many searches were conducted. This can give you an idea of busy seasons. For example, we always have a HUGE spike in views and searches in October during Open Enrollment for insurance benefits. We have a spike in January. And then it tapers off again until February/March, which is our bonus and merit raise season. How can you track usage to initiatives you may be sponsoring and promoting in your KB?
I hope some of this "talking through it" helps you choose which reports may make sense for you.
One thing that might help, too, is to think through your day. What are you looking up in the knowledge base? Would you like a report for that on a dashboard? For example, I need to know how many articles were updated lately - especially if I wasn't the one who did it - both so I can check up on the work that was done AND as a measure of how busy I am.
Think about the work you do each day. Then, ask yourself, how would I measure this step? How could I show what I'm doing?
If you find this helpful, Trisha, please mark "helpful." And feel free to reply with any follow-up questions. Thank you!
