Knowledgebase for internal procedures

[amarks]

Hi folks,

We're currently using the KCS framework to manage a single knowledgebase, where articles are marked either internal or external. While we've explored the idea of separating this into distinct "public" and "internal" knowledgebases, that’s not the decision at hand today.

Emerging Use Cases:

• Some departments are looking to document highly technical procedures for internal use only—restricted even from other departments. They want support agents within their teams to follow standardized steps for some known issues and want controls over updates to these procedures with an approval workflow.
• Others are interested in using the knowledgebase as a home for departmental policies, with similar governance and visibility requirements.

These seem like valid and valuable use cases. I recall someone previously sharing a model where they maintained a shared knowledgebase for broadly applicable content, while also offering department-specific knowledgebases for policies and procedures. These departmental KBs were governed locally, with internal visibility controls and approval workflows tailored to each team's needs.

If you’ve implemented a similar structure—or taken a different approach—I’d love to hear how you’ve set it up and what you’ve learned along the way.

Thanks in advance!

-Adam

[andreababch]

We just implemented this. I setup access to the kb by support group so the Service Desk and anyone else without rights can't view it. Right now it would be 5-10 Tier 2/3 teams using it for internal instructions, but we are not "hiding" the articles among the teams. I told them during the pilot if this was absolutely necessary later, we can use "Can Read" to set security by article. We also had to implement Ownership Groups for this so that more than one person could approver from a team. It's a little more overhead, but it provides better control. We are in the very early stages of rollout and would love to hear how others have done this as well.

[amarks]

Hi @andreababch , I was just checking in to see how your roll out is going. Any new insights you would be willing to share? I'm all ears . 👂

Thanks, Adam

[Eoghan Sinnott]

Hey Adam, 

We implement a pretty similar approach to what you have mentioned above. We have a dedicated knowledge management team that look after multiple knowledge bases in different capacities. We have our "Self Service" Knowledge Base that is open to the entire company. This mainly features 'How To's' 'FAQ'S' and other similar articles that would have a broad audience. We also have a "Service Desk" knowledge base that is more IT focused, but again open to a large number of users, basically anybody that could be involved in the triage of an incident. Both of these use a KCS workflow, where the knowledge management team will have approval on any articles that need publishing and maintain the general health of the knowledge base.

Outside of this we also then offer the service of using ServiceNow as a knowledge management system. We will go to areas/departments that might have their teams internal technical document / procedural information held in a number of areas like OneNote, Sharepoint, Wiki etc. and sell them of the benefit of using ServiceNow. These Knowledge bases are locked down by Can Read / Can Contribute criteria so just the members of these teams have access. They can use an instant or approval based workflow, but we ensure that they are the ones responsible for updating and maintaining articles, handling feedback and expiry process etc. We have found it to be extremely useful to the teams, and we currently have over 30 different areas that are managing their own internal knowledge bases. The knowledge team then conduct annual compliance/governance reviews on the Knowledge base to ensure that the best practices that were discussed during hand off are still being adhered to ( article ownership, valid to dates, feedback etc.)

Please let me know if you have any follow up questions,

Eoghan

If you found my reply helpful, please consider clicking Helpful or Accept as Solution to assist others in the community!

[Rum]

We have three knowledge bases in our system: IT, Self-Service, and Information Security. 

* IT - KB articles relating to troubleshooting, work instructions, procedures, processes, issues and resolutions, standards, guidelines. Only IT personnel can access this knowledge base. 

* Self-Service - work instructions, FAQs relating to Service Desk activity, customer troubleshooting. This knowledge base can be accessed by everyone in the organization.

* Information Security - can only be accessed by Information Security team. This knowledge base contains confidential Information Security documentation. Information Security also has other knowledge bases that are part of the Security Operations (SecOps) module.

I managed both IT and Self-Service knowledge bases, approve almost of the KB articles in the IT knowledge base and some in the Self-Service knowledge base (some KB articles that we have to put them in Self-Service knowledge base in order for everyone to access). We have started to give approval authority to managers/ supervisors/ team leads in other IT teams (Service Desk, IT Operations....) the ability to approve their team KB articles. It works better this way since they're the ones know and understand all the activity in their teams. I only help review the overall as formatting, using the correct template, and getting appropriate documents for our Service Governance review and approval (for Standards, Guidelines, Processes).