Examples of best practice for creating multiple knowledge bases

hhr · ‎11-17-2016

Hi, I am looking for some best practice examples on how to set up knowledge bases in a global, multi function company. Are there any published best practice that I can refer to.

Dave Smith1 · ‎11-21-2016

Each KB can have people nominated as authors (Can Contribute) or viewers (Can Read) in User Criteria, but these controls are imposed on a per-KB basis, rather than per-category or per-article. In other words, a contributor in one KB can edit any articles, including those not written by them. Don't forget that there's an audit trail showing who has been changing it, and when, so it's possible to identify authors in conflict.

From a governance point of view, there's a Publishing Approval workflow that means authored articles require one of the KB's nominated Knowledge Managers to approve an article for publication before it's viewable by readers, but this doesn't prevent an author from amending an article once it's published - you may want to consider a BR that flicks the article back to "Draft" if the last edit date is later than the approved date.

In terms of best practise: treat KBs as libraries, consider the core purpose of each library and decide what criteria makes readers/writers accordingly. It is easier to have several KBs with access set at the library door than to leave the doors open and attempt to secure individual rooms (categories) or books (articles).

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royan · ‎05-03-2017

Hi,

I would recommend you to try ProProfs Knowledgebase to create a repository for your global and multi functional company.

Here's how it would be beneficial for you:

1. Keep information on the cloud - ProProfs Knowledgebase is a cloud based tool and as you have mentioned that you are a global company, this can benefit all your employees working around the globe. All your employees would need is an internet connection to access the company knowledge.

2. Assign roles and permission - Now because you are a multi function company, I am assuming roles and permissions would be a necessity as you want give relevant access to your information. By assigning roles and permissions such as Admins, Contributors and so on, you can easily cater relevant knowledge to your employees.

3. Conditional content - As mentioned by Dave Smith, that the roles and permission are based on per-KB basis and not per- category, ProProfs resolves that problem with ease. Conditional Content allows you to restrict viewing of a specific piece of content. It maybe a page, a folder or even a single line, it can be hidden. You can set conditions on the content that you want to hide and when an employee logs in the knowledge base under the applied condition, he/she will not be able to see that content.

For example: If I do not want my employees in Germany to access a specific page of content in my KB, I can set the condition of IP address. So, when anybody logs in from Germany into my knowledge base, they won't be able to see the content I have hidden from them.

ProProfs Knowledgebase also offers a 40 page forever free plan, it is enough to evaluate its full potential.

Try it now and see for yourself - http://proprofs.com/knowledgebase

Dave Smith1 · ‎05-04-2017

Royan Barun wrote:

1. Keep information on the cloud - ProProfs Knowledgebase is a cloud based tool and as you have mentioned that you are a global company, this can benefit all your employees working around the globe. All your employees would need is an internet connection to access the company knowledge.

ServiceNow is a global Cloud-hosted platform, and comprises of more than a knowledgebase. I see no advantage of using a separate tool over the SN platform.

Royan Barun wrote:

2. Assign roles and permission - Now because you are a multi function company, I am assuming roles and permissions would be a necessity as you want give relevant access to your information. By assigning roles and permissions such as Admins, Contributors and so on, you can easily cater relevant knowledge to your employees.

All content management systems have permission structures to define accessibility levels. The issue comes when trying to centralise the authentication model - does ProProfs support external authentication models so that users won't need to maintain another set of credentials?

Royan Barun wrote:

3. Conditional content - As mentioned by Dave Smith, that the roles and permission are based on per-KB basis and not per- category, ProProfs resolves that problem with ease. Conditional Content allows you to restrict viewing of a specific piece of content. It maybe a page, a folder or even a single line, it can be hidden. You can set conditions on the content that you want to hide and when an employee logs in the knowledge base under the applied condition, he/she will not be able to see that content.

I think you're referring to viewing restrictions. Note that the more granular an accessibility model becomes, the more complex it grows. When dealing with the SharePoint security levels, it's advisable not to lock content at document level but at library (container, folder) level, and if you're locking several libraries then you may as well lock it at site (parent container, or KB) level.

I'm not saying that the SN access levels for KBs are perfect, but you'll note a LOT more support requests for ACLs (which provide more granular and flexible access levels) than for KBs (which are much simpler access levels to use). Simply put: powerful and complex requires greater effort and support.

Royan Barun wrote:

For example: If I do not want my employees in Germany to access a specific page of content in my KB, I can set the condition of IP address. So, when anybody logs in from Germany into my knowledge base, they won't be able to see the content I have hidden from them.

Forgive me for saying this... but this is a flawed approach.

If you don't want your employees in Germany to access a specific content, then blocks should be applied against those users, or the groups they belong to, or their location. Applying it against a range of IP address simply blocks connections originating from those IPs, irrespective of location or nationality. Consider:

Should a German employer travelling to France still be blocked? They'll bypass the IP block where the user/group block will still succeed.
Should a Swiss employer visiting Germany be blocked? The IP block will catch them, but a user/group block will permit access.
Would a German employer connecting from home be blocked? The IP block may only catch work addresses and not home connections; the user/group block will still succeed
Should a (potential) customer falling within the same IP address space be permitted access? The IP block will lock them out, irrespective of them being an employer or not. The user/group block will still distinguish German employees from German customers.

This really isn't anything to do with choice of KB platform - this is more to do with applying content security - but blocking at IP level is almost as insane an approach as keeping countries terrorism-free by imposing travel restrictions against a country of inbound flight ... even mail servers these days find IP blocking not to be terribly effective since it's judging the content solely upon its point of origin without any further analysis.

Now, having said that... I will concede that there are improvements to be made in ServiceNow's implementation of a KB (which I've been informed are in the pipeline) and I would definitely recommend investigating ProProfs KB tool (amongst others) just to get a feel of pros and cons, if only to gauge the features and usability on offer as part of a shortlisting exercise.

But from the list of benefits mentioned about ProProfs, I can't see much superiority over ServiceNow's own KB implementation. Looking at ProProfs Help - Ask Questions and Get Answers from ProProfs they don't even seem to have the most basic of antispam filters configured.

ajay123 · ‎05-05-2017

That's Bullshit Dave. SN sucks big time. I used SN for a long time and that's a shitty piece of software. Having moved on to ProProfs KB after using SN I can firmly say ProProfs Knowledge Base and Helpjuice are among the best KB tools out there (although I eventually moved to ProProfs because of their highly competitive pricing). SN simply doesn't come anywhere close. PERIOD. There is a reason those guys rank on the top 3 of Google when you search for a knowledge base software and there is no mention of SN in the top 100 results. Go figure.