Organizing the KB

rosenst22
Tera Contributor

‎06-14-2024 08:45 AM

We are currently in discovery to ascertain our current knowledge audience - the plane was built while flying it. 🙂 This includes authors, admins and readers. From there, I want to reorganize the knowledge base structure, the taxonomy structure, ownership groups, user criteria, templates and knowledge blocks.

 

I normally find or create an org chart by doing discovery, break that down by largest audience and create a hierarchical category/subcategory structure based on that. I made the mistake earlier in my career of trying to get the taxonomy to match the org chart exactly. Other times, I've done region.  Does anyone match the back end taxonomy to the front end one?

 

Regarding ownership groups, I've done region as well to break that down further. Templates for types of most used content and recurring user criteria, and knowledge blocks a little to avoid article content duplication.

 

Can you tell me what has worked for you and what hasn't when organizing a ServiceNow knowledge base? I'm looking for lessons learned to to modify my approach if needed. Thanks so much.

 

 

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LMacTT
Tera Contributor

‎08-27-2024 06:09 AM

What works for me is not having HEAPS of knowledge bases that i need to maintain and update. I also match the category/sub cat to the incident schema, and then if there are any corner cases that require other classifications, we add those to the relevant knowledge base.

We follow a KCS model of operation and encourage the idea that EVERYONE can and should contribute to our knowledge bases (whether that's by writing, reviewing, providing feedback etc.)

We have:

  • 1 customer facing KB
  • 3 internal KBs, split by org team.. e.g. one for the higher level Service Desk etc.., then one for the technical teams, then another more secure "ring fenced" KB for our secure operations team. 
  • Custom publishing workflows per knowledge base, that ensure the right people are reviewing the right content.
  • 5 templates for content creation, which are the same across all knowledge bases
  • A few knowledge blocks for things like standard disclaimers (i.e. don't follow these instructions if you're not qualified to do so type of thing)

    Hope that helps 🙂

 

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