When do you add Knowledge Bases?

[cmspitzer]

As a Knowledge Product Owner, I'm seeking for guidance on what levers typically are pulled when approving a "new" Knowledge Base.  Why?  If a business unit in an organization wants their "own" knowledge base versus using the can read option - is there a discussion and or checklist you discuss with the customer to help guide to best practices and or governance of this?  Thank you!

[Eoghan Sinnott · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

When assessing a request for new knowledge bases, there are a few factors I would take into consideration.

Purpose: What's the business reason for wanting a separate knowledge base? Is the info specific to one department and needs to be kept away from others? If it can be housed in an existing Knowledge Base like Self Service or IT/Service Desk then I would point the users towards that direction.

Owner: Is someone from that area going to be in charge of what goes into this new knowledge base?

Access: Will this knowledge base need its own special user criteria that we doesn't exist for other knowledge bases?

Approval process: Are they looking for a different approval process than what is already in place for existing knowledge bases e.g. instant publish or approval based ?

Article lifespan: Do they want articles to be valid for a different length of time? Maybe 6 months instead of the usual 12?

I'd also think it would depend on who's actually going to be uploading and maintaining the documents. Does your company have a central Knowledge Management team, or will the experts in each area be responsible for creating and updating the content?

I hope this helps form some of your discussions.

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

[Eoghan Sinnott · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

When assessing a request for new knowledge bases, there are a few factors I would take into consideration.

Purpose: What's the business reason for wanting a separate knowledge base? Is the info specific to one department and needs to be kept away from others? If it can be housed in an existing Knowledge Base like Self Service or IT/Service Desk then I would point the users towards that direction.

Owner: Is someone from that area going to be in charge of what goes into this new knowledge base?

Access: Will this knowledge base need its own special user criteria that we doesn't exist for other knowledge bases?

Approval process: Are they looking for a different approval process than what is already in place for existing knowledge bases e.g. instant publish or approval based ?

Article lifespan: Do they want articles to be valid for a different length of time? Maybe 6 months instead of the usual 12?

I'd also think it would depend on who's actually going to be uploading and maintaining the documents. Does your company have a central Knowledge Management team, or will the experts in each area be responsible for creating and updating the content?

I hope this helps form some of your discussions.

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

[cmspitzer]

Thank you, this makes sense and I appreciate the additional questions to ponder!

[mbernste]

I think it all depends on how your organization is structured.  While it doesn't happen often, I handle catalog requests for new knowledge bases.  Usually it is for various L2 groups who have knowledge only specific to their team.  The catalog request we have asks where is the knowledge currently, who will manage the knowledge base, who needs read or contribute access, what the ublish/retire workflows should be and what categories they need.  I then create it in our UAT environment, test the woirkflows and then have the requesting group test it.  If all looks good, then I create the knowledge base in production.

[Carly6 · Accepted solution]

Eoghan's response is spot on with what we consider as well. Audience has a big impact on our decision for consolidating or separating knowledge which envelops access, lifespan, search solution, & approval process. We have a customer facing Knowledge Base that follows KCS with strict approval workflows, and then we have an internal IT Knowledge Base that isn't as strict with KCS, but requires other types of approval.

Our Customer knowledge base has different requirements within it for different product areas (lifecycle, access, etc.), but the structure for review & approval is the same so we have fields on the KBAs to manage where there are differences and that way avoid creating a lot of separate Knowledge Bases.

For search solution, you might also need to consider any indexing needs if you're using different search solutions for different types of  articles. We use ServiceNow searching for our internal IT knowledge base, but have our own support portal and search engine for our customer knowledge base.

I hope that helps!