Keeping knowledge up to date

[bryanalff]

Hi Everyone,

My knowledge site has plenty of knowledge articles. To help ensure the knowledge stays fresh, we have implemented a strategy where each document is reviewed by the owner once a year.

On paper this looks great.   In practice however, it's sometimes a problem.   For starters, the total number of article owners increases as the knowledgebase grows.   Plus, in a years' time a lot of things can happen to an article owner.   An owner could be promoted to a new job, or they may have retired, or even left the company.

What strategies do you use to help ensure the knowledge in your databases stays up to date?

[britt_champeau]

Hi Bryan,

There are many ways to implement the sort of review process you need.   I'm glad to hear you're considering multiple options!   ServiceNow has a fantastic Knowledge Management team, which owns Knowledge Articles, and maintains the Knowledge Base.   They're doing a wonderful job of not only publishing new content, but curating existing content.   It's exciting to see a company fully commit to Knowledge Management.   This was a pleasant surprise for me when I entered the company because, at my previous company, the Knowledge Management team consisted of only me.   Each company's business requirements are different based on their specific situation, and I hope you can design something perfect for you and your organization.

Good luck with your review process, and let us know how everything goes!

Britt

[StephLindorff]

We've gotten around the problem of people who have left the company with a customization that uses assignment groups rather than individual people as Owner.   When it's time for a review, the article goes into the groups Work list.   We also have a customization that requires the manager of the person who updated the article to sign-off before the update is published.

FYI, we also follow servicenowkevin's process of making review of existing knowledge part of every Change project (both application and process).

[SimonDunsmoor]

unknown

Stephanie Lindorff - Is that a difficult customization?? It is one that will be required for us during implementation as that is the exact way we manage our reviews and responsibilities through SMEs and KB Authors (KBAs).

[jennifer_dell-e]

Hi Britt Champeau and Kevin,

servicenowkevin@ mentions in his reply to Bryan that as the size of the KB increases it may become less practical to view every piece of content every year. Can you give the community some guidelines based on how other ServiceNow customers use the Knowledge Base, such as what's the tipping point in terms of # of articles to stop trying to do annual reviews, and then target other methods?

[servicenowkevin]

Jennifer Dell-Ernstrom there's no concrete rule for this as it will always depend on the resourcing you have available and the industry you're in. That said, when we were in the 500-700 article range at ServiceNow, it was no longer reasonable to get SME reviews on every piece of content. We had to target content based on release, use, and other dimensions that we deemed appropriate and rely on feedback from customers, partners, and employees for the rest. It's worked out well for us.