So your company has decided to invest time and resources into building a Knowledge Base using the Knowledge Management app in ServiceNow. Currently, your company has a bundle of process documents saved as Microsoft Word files. Your challenge is to turn your Word documents into articles in the Knowledge Base in the most easy and efficient way possible. As of Geneva, importing Word docs into the Knowledge Base application is supported. Several customers, just like you, are starting afresh with a new Knowledge Base and want a way to bring their current documentation into their every-day interface that their customers and employees use in ServiceNow. Based on some conversations we had at our Knowledge16 poker session for KM, we collected some tips that customers wish they knew before attempting to bring their docs into the KB.
First, a few things to consider before importing your current Word documents into the Knowledge Base:
- You can do a bulk import. You can bulk drag/drop or bulk select content and have it imported.
- Images will come over as attachments.
- You can have the imported content go directly to a published state by setting the Publish flag.
Best Practices when importing existing documents into the Knowledge Base
When we released Knowledge Management v3 in Fuji, customers were introduced to a new way to highlight, organize, communicate and process their content. For new customers, this opened up a window of opportunity to transform their content that was being kept on someone's desktop in a Word file, or on a different Knowledge Base system. Those conversations we had at Know16 shed some light on the concerns and challenges our veteran Knowledge Managers and new Knowledge Managers were experiencing. From that conversation, I have two best practices for you.
Review your content before you import
Cut anything that is no longer needed, no longer used, and/or no longer relevant. I suggest that the team enlist the knowledge users and experts in each subject area to do a thorough review of the content and determine what should be kept or tossed. This is really important because you don't want to start a new knowledge base that has bad/stale/unused content from a previous knowledge base. It will negatively impact search results and put you in a position where you're trying to tidy up a new knowledge base retroactively. The best way to avoid that is to review and content before importing.
Organize your content by category, and import one category at a time
When you are ready to import your Word doc content, organize each piece of content by category and import each category one at a time. You can then apply your metadata on that content at import by selecting the category it applies to. You're bulk setting category at the same time you are bulk importing. This little bit of upfront planning can save a fair amount of work after importing.
Importing Word docs into a new knowledge base will only be an option available to you if you are contributor on that KB. If you cannot contribute to the knowledge base in which the importing is taking place, the Import button will not appear for you.
For information on importing documents see:
When importing a document into a knowledge base the categories are not showing to select from.
ServiceNow KB: Import MS doc files into Knowledge articles (KB0533212)
Ask the Experts: Knowledge v3 and Content Import Best Practices
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