Quality in knowledge article creation

[RogueFader]

Hi. I was wondering what others do in regards to ensuring compliance from knowledge authors in regards to the quality of their articles they create.

Currently, we do have a guideline that font is a particular type and size, description is clear and easy to read, meta is added to help with searching for knowledge etc....

It seems that KBs come in for approval daily, where the font has been amended to their own personal preference and size. URLs are broken, attachments not included, meta missed etc etc....

Despite the fact we actually have a KB and sharepoint page which details how to create a KB, and this has been communicated and shared via Teams and training calls, it seems people don't want to read a KB on how to create a KB.

I've started to look at AQI, but to me this seems rather labour intensive on myside as it means I review all KBs after they've been published, I would like it if AQI was in place when knowledge was created so authors would be forced to check the content prior to publishing.

Is this something others have an issue with and how do you address is across the org consisting of multiple teams globally to ensure they follow guidelines.

Rant over..I need a tea.

Thank you

[Juhi Yasmin]

It is a standard field. We use the Standard template to create knowledge articles.

[Eoghan Sinnott]

Hi, 

I feel your frustration! It can be very hard to ensure that articles being submitted from different areas all meet the same guidelines, and it can feel like you're pushing people away when focusing on the formatting and look of an article. It can be difficult at the best of times to actually get people to submit documentation, and then if they feel they are being critiqued on the "quality" of that it can push them away further.

I would say from experience that AQI is not worth the hassle involved. It ends up just being a process for you reviewing articles after the fact, and doesn't tend to change a lot of behavior from authors. 
Approval workflow is a good idea as John mentioned previously, but if you are solely responsible then it can build up when you're off. Is there anyone else that you could get help from as a "Knowledge champion", who you trust to look after the content to the same standards as yourself? 

You could also look at using the Templates in ServiceNow, which might help to create some sort of uniform standard of what gets submitted.

I'm also not sure if you're familiar with the practice of KCS ?

Regards,

Eoghan

[RogueFader]

Hi. Sadly they all come to me for the 2nd stage approval. Basically the ownership group of that article will approve the content, it them comes to me for final review prior to publishing. There used to be a team of 3 apparently, but they've all drifted off and now I had knowledge handed to me to manage. 

[RogueFader]

Hi, we've apparently got the KCS plug in in our dev environment, but the only difference I can see is that when an analyst resolves an incident, it no longer has the tick box for knowledge required, but a link to create an article.

Seems most people think AQI is not worth the hassle and I'm inclined to agree too.

[Rum]

I've created knowledge management Standard / Guideline for our system. This is only focus on ServiceNow, nothing else like SharePoint or other systems that our organization has. The basic guidelines cover general information like basic use of fonts, format should be used (come with the template we have in ServiceNow)... or if used fonts outside of ServiceNow, should be common normal fonts that our organization has for our organization templates.... Times, Helvetica, Calibri...

We have 3 knowledge bases - IT, Self-Service, and Information Security. I'm responsible for the overall of all knowledge bases, and managers/ supervisors of Service Desk and Information Security are responsible for Self-Service and Info Sec knowledge bases, which their KB articles have to be reviewed and approved by their managers / supervisors. I also provided basic training to the managers / supervisors to ensure they understand the importance of the content that their teams put in the system, consistency of usage of correct templates, formats....etc. We also have periodic review for different types of documents....processes, diagrams, issues & resolutions, instructions....