Prioritizing article suggestions during ticket creation

[kbukg]

Is there any way to "weight" a specific article to be the first suggestion that comes up when someone types in a matching keyword when submitting a ticket? We have a large KB with several articles about Insurance, and I need a specific one to come up as the top suggested article. 

For context, our insurance term renews on 12/1. Beginning in October and then increasing in November and December, we get a ton of requests for new COIs. I have a SPECIFIC article about 24-25 COIs that would answer the question everyone is submitting, but they aren't seeing it. A user recently submitted a ticket with comments that said Our customers are beginning to request the 24-25 COI. Can you please advise when the updated COI will be added to the SharePoint Site?

I recreated it to see how on earth they missed the KB article titled ATTENTION: If you need an updated 2024-2025 Certificate of Insurance (COI), and it showed briefly when I was typing but then got buried under all the other results that had the words SharePoint, updated, advise, etc.

Is there a way to force an article to the top of the suggestions?

[Eoghan Sinnott]

Hi, 

Are you using AI Search? If so you could look at using AI Search Result Improvement Rules.

If not, you could also look at adding some keywords to the Meta section on the knowledge articles. If you put those keywords into the Meta field multiple times, it would make that specific article more relevant. 

Thanks, 

Eoghan

Please consider marking my reply as Helpful and/or Accept Solution, where applicable. Thanks!

[John_Wilkes]

My thought is that your users may just be raising a ticket rather than doing any self service. I would put a banner message on your portal home page rather than assume that your users are trying to self serve and not getting the desired results. How can I create an announcement banner for all users? - Support and Troubleshooting

[Mike Van Vooren]

@kbukg - Our way to make this work is to trick the search weighting algorithm to force the article you want to come up toward the top.  To do that, you need to manipulate the "meta" section, since that has a higher weight on the algorithm than other fields.  You will want to repeat the same search phrase or keywords over and over again.  It can be as simply as adding "certificate of insurance, certificate of insurance, certificate of insurance, certificate of insurance, 24-25 certificate of insurance, 24-25 certificate of insurance, 24-25 certificate of insurance, 24-25 certificate of insurance, 24-25 coi, 24-25 coi, 24-25 coi, 24-25 coi".  You have to look at how the short description of the tickets are being used to help guide you on the right search phrases.  Then, just repeat them over and over until it gets to the top.  We have done this before to get the right password reset article to come to the top.

[qprinsloo]

The method used depends on what search you have configured. If using Zing search, you can manipulate the weights by repeating terms in the meta. For example, every time the term used to search appears in the meta, it would add 10 points to the weight. So having the same word repeatedly in the meta twice would add 20 points, and if 3 times it would add 30 points and so forth. More info about scoring weights are available here. The same principle applies to actual articles and not just documents.

https://www.servicenow.com/docs/csh?topicname=c_DocumentScoring.html&version=latest

If using AI search, then the adding additional info already contained in the 'short description' or 'description' fields to the meta adds no value. You'd need to use result improvement rules. See the below link on how to setup a result improvement rule. These rules are specific to the search profile used so you'll need to setup the rule on whichever profile you use to provide KBA suggestions.

https://www.servicenow.com/docs/csh?topicname=boost-results-ais.html&version=latest