Knowledge Base Use Case Questions

[Marcus Walbridg]

Hello ServiceNow Community!

I have some questions regarding Knowledge Management, and how you & your organizations have set this up.  I will briefly share what our knowledge (in ServiceNow) looks like, and what we would like to know. 

We implemented ServiceNow October 2020 with the Orlando version and have kept current with updates and will upgrade to the Washington version this summer. Our customers are our employees (3000) and everyone has access to our Employee Center. The ServiceNow application users are our IT department (300) and business users (2700). We have:

• Business facing knowledge base for self-service – all employees can access these articles
• Technical knowledge base for ITSM – only the ServiceNow Platform users can access these articles
• Governance, Risk, Compliance knowledge base – only the employees involved in these functions can access these articles
• Business owned knowledge base for procedural knowledge articles – only this business area can access these articles

We have been asked about implementing a knowledge base similar to your IT Internal so that is the basis of our questions:

1. How many articles do you have in your knowledge bases?
2. Does the Service Desk staff use the IT Internal documentation to resolve incidents? Does it get to be a lot of articles to search through?

A concern we have is that adding internal documentation may add a lot of noise when trying to resolve issues with technical articles.

1. How do you deliver your knowledge to users?
1. Portals (Service Portal/Knowledge Portal/Employee Center)
2. Any other areas?
2. How strict & developed are your templates?
3. Are there any dedicated knowledge content managers
4. How is your knowledge structured, high level (categorization)
5. Do you allow the attachments of other files to knowledge articles
6. Do you utilize any custom knowledge workflows, if so what benefits do you see
7. Do you utilize knowledge feedback tasks
8. Did your organization ever discuss storing non-IT knowledge within a knowledge base, if so what were the results of that discussion?

PS - At our organization, we have multiple options for storing knowledge, documentation, etc that came before ServiceNow.  We do not have the support of management to put all knowledge, documentation, and learning content into SN at this time.  We are looking to see what other companies are doing and what best practice may be.  From my perspective, one unified location for all of this information seems more useful.

Thank you for any comments and experiences you may share.

[TrevorK]

How many articles do you have in your knowledge bases?

We have thousands of knowledge articles across our knowledge bases. Several of our portal sites are heavily focused on delivering knowledge articles for users on how to access services, etc. Because we are a post-secondary we have a similar employee count to you but we service 15,000 - 20,000 people so that might explain why we have such a variety.

For example we have knowledge articles on things such as: using a waterjet cutter in our makerspace, what our standard cellular phone plan includes, how to submit a request to defer your exams.

Does the Service Desk staff use the IT Internal documentation to resolve incidents? Does it get to be a lot of articles to search through?

We have multiple service areas and several use the knowledge bases to deliver solutions to staff. We have adopted KCS principles ( Knowledge-Centered Service configuration (servicenow.com) ), which really focus on the creation of knowledge articles. 

Our IT department uses Agent Workspace (and soon Service Operations Workspace), which utilize a search mechanism built in to help find the right article. 

I haven't heard many complaints on finding articles, and when I do my suggestions around optimizing the searchable fields seems to fix it. We also use analytics on our portal sites which tell us things like search position for the article that was clicked, etc. 

How do you deliver your knowledge to users?

Service Portal sites for all our non-ServiceNow users (which includes 15,000-20,000 students). Our licensed users will often use Agent Workspace for their knowledge needs.

Within Agent Workspace, knowledge articles are sent to users as part of their ticket resolution which are framed within a Service Portal site. 

How strict & developed are your templates?

With our KCS implementation the areas utilizing it are very strict on their templates. We have a handful and you are forced to use one.

Other areas don't use templates and it's a bit more of a free for all. We had the idea to build out "styled templates" for things like tables, contact info, etc. so that styling could be consistent. One of our former team members did a great job building this out and you could inject these elements (tables, etc.) into a knowledge article and they were all pre-formatted. The goal was to fit within a style guide but not expect people to know the style guide themselves.

Are there any dedicated knowledge content managers

We have a single individual who focuses on knowledge management. I'm not sure if they stick around in that position when KCS implementation is complete though, but right now they are the person leading the implementation and ongoing training needs. I guess implementation might never be complete, but it seems like their work would still go down unless they are allocated towards continual improvement. 

How is your knowledge structured, high level (categorization)

It depends on which knowledge base. Some of our knowledge bases use a category structure (I think the most is three levels deep), some use absolutely no categorization, and others just focus on using templates to create the articles with no categorization beyond that. Each has pros and cons often depending on what your use case is.

Do you allow the attachments of other files to knowledge articles

Yes. 

Do you utilize any custom knowledge workflows, if so what benefits do you see

We have in the past and people hated it. Things always got hung up and then people wanted us to override the workflow.

Now with our KCS group of users everything relies on their training level to determine what they can or cannot do and they use an instant publish. 

I don't think we have any workflows beyond instant publish. Even our non-KCS users just use instant publish.

Do you utilize knowledge feedback tasks

Yes. We rely quite heavily on our users providing use feedback on our articles in some areas.

Did your organization ever discuss storing non-IT knowledge within a knowledge base, if so what were the results of that discussion?

Yes and we do quite a bit of non-IT knowledge in our various knowledge bases. As I mentioned we are a post-secondary so we have quite a large student base compared to our employee count. We have entire non-IT portal sites that deliver knowledge articles to our students.

If you have any other questions just ask away.