question Using Knowledge for a Glossary of Terms in ServiceNow AI Platform forum

Using Knowledge for a Glossary of Terms

jeffblancato — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 19:11:33 GMT

Hi all,

I'm curious if anyone has ventured into using Knowledge to somehow house a glossary of terms. If so, it would be helpful to hear about how you've structured things -- whether you're, say, committing all terms to a single knowledge article vs. using multiple articles within a "Glossary" KB or Topic... how you're using templates... how you're accommodating terms that have multiple, domain-specific definitions...

If anyone had examples or experiences to share, it would be much appreciated!

-Jeff

Re: Using Knowledge for a Glossary of Terms

StephLindorff — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 13:47:32 GMT

I have one global glossary KA. Throughout my KB, I have indicated that a KA only pertains to a specific region, department, division etc by including the name of that entity in parentheses in the Short Description so I continued that model in the glossary. Now that we have User Criteria, I'll be revisiting that approach but here's an example of how it looks today

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

Active Directory - A Microsoft service that...

AntrilSys (R&D) - A system used by the Research & Development team to...

APAC - a business region comprised of offices in China, Japan, Korea...

B

C

Re: Using Knowledge for a Glossary of Terms

servicenowkevin — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 13:52:57 GMT

Jeff Blancato are you using Fuji?

We use a single KB article to record all of our acronyms and initialisms. While not a glossary, it is similar. We find it effective and in Fuji you can "pin" the article to the top of search results if you like. So if somebody searches for Glossary, it will automatically be the top result.

We have some acronyms or initialisms that have multiple meanings depending on your division within the company. We list out what the possibly options are. I think that is how you would approach the glossary as well. Have the terms and then numbered definitions.

Re: Using Knowledge for a Glossary of Terms

jeffblancato — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:00:16 GMT

Thanks servicenowkevin and Stephanie Lindorff - exactly the sort of info I was after, and it lines up nicely with how I was picturing our own glossary. We are indeed on Fuji, too, so the notion of pinning the glossary KBA to bump it up in search results is do-able.

I'm also curious -- as a 'global' repository, how do you manage updates to the glossary article? Since some terms will have multiple definitions depending on the domain/context, are you using any sort of mechanism (technological, policy, or otherwise) to help ensure that a definition is modified only by the person/team that "owns" it?

...And stepping back a bit, who "owns" the glossary KBA record itself -- your Knowledge Management team, for example?

-Jeff

Re: Using Knowledge for a Glossary of Terms

StephLindorff — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 18:53:14 GMT

The Knowledge Team owns the glossary. My update strategy is to add things as I encounter them

I also include separate entries for each different definition - so a single term or acronym might have multiple definitions.

Re: Using Knowledge for a Glossary of Terms

raking08 — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 18:31:38 GMT

hello,

Now that you have the business glossary, have you been able to leverage that list into other SN Applications?

I need to figure that out in support of a custom knowledge application for master data standards and controls management. It has many HTML fields and often the strategies and background sections have jargon that needs their own separate quick lookup definition. Linking to a KM Glossary inside SN would be perfect.

The App I have is to large to try and build those links manually so I was wondering if you are looking into a dynamic cross reference between your Glossary and other things.

thx

richard

Re: Using Knowledge for a Glossary of Terms

StephLindorff — Mon, 10 Aug 2015 18:00:03 GMT

We've linked to KAs from other areas in SN but not specifically to the Glossary.