Links to Other Knowledge Articles in an Article

[mbernste]

I was wondering how other KMs handle links to other knowledge articles that are in the body of an article.  We have a lot of "if then" articles such as:

Perform these steps

1. Step 1 do this
2. Step 2 do that
3. If you get this error, see KB1234.  If you get that error, see KB5678
4. If you get none of the errors, route to support.

Related articles wouldn't work in this situation since it's just a list of articles.  The problem with the above is that articles get retired and therefore the links, which can be harder to find than a needle in a haystack, become invalid.

[shannont]

Hi @mbernste ,

When linking from one article to another, we also use the permalink that is embedded using whichever terminology is appropriate for the link.  Could be the KBID, title or whatever the Author feels is appropriate.  We then teach as part of the process to search by KBID when you are retiring an article to ensure that it's not linked anywhere else and if so, update those articles prior to retiring.  We also have a pop up message when a Knowledge Worker clicks on the Retire button stating the following:

Are you sure you want to retire this article? Did you search on the Article Number to confirm this article is not referenced in other articles?

I hope that helps!

[Trevor Petrie]

Hi @mbernste,

As others have mentioned, we always use the permalink when linking to another article. But now that we can leverage the bootstrap hierarchy to create links to heading elements (h2, h3 etc), we tend to write longer articles and link to elements within the same article. We will also include a table of contents for particularly lengthy articles. We find that our agents are using and updating the articles more frequently which also reduces clutter.

[Kim27]

Here's our approach: when linking to another article, we add it to the related article list. Prior to archiving an article, each linked article must also be updated. At least by using the related article tab, it's a little easier to call out what needs to be checked. It's not perfect, but it does help. Some of the homegrown solutions described here sound amazing.

If anyone chooses to add this to the idea portal, please post the link back here so we can upvote it!