Knowledge Management Categories - Example

[fabianthoma1234]

Dear all,

currently, we are preparing a migration from our legacy ITSM Solution to ServiceNow. As one part of this prep-work, I'm assigned to perform a deep analysis of the current KM Content and - based on this - define the first proposal for new KM Categories.

Actually, the current data is somehow scrappy. SN also do not provide a final OOB Knowledge Categories proposal. Is there a

How did you solve this issue? And is there anyone in this community, how please could share their category tree or taxonomy? Is there a

I would be so pleased if someone could help me with this topic.

Best,

Fabian

[Prasun]

Hello,

Define the Topics first and then drill down the categories based on topic.

Category is something based on topic. You can create topics to divide your Knowledge article into different phases. Then you can drill into different categories/classes to segregate your KBs.

PS: Hit like, Helpful or Correct depending on the impact of the response.

Thanks

Prasun

[fabianthoma1234]

Hi Prasun,

thanks for your input. What do you understand as a Topic?

The "Fragment" of the KB, like e.g. Guideline, Trouble Shooting Video, White Paper, FAQ, etc?

BR

Fabian

[Sarup Paul]

Hi Fabian

We tend not to ship an OOB category tree, due to the wide diversity in our client base and the use cases that they use ServiceNow Knowledge base for.

The general best practices about categories are

• Max 3-4 levels, otherwise you will loose your end users as they traverse through the hierarchy
• Try not to repeat category names within and across other KBs

If you are starting from scratch, I would recommend to do an audit of your articles. Aggregate them up by how they would be used (or considered as related), and then drill down to help them with finding the content. You should involve stakeholders from both the end-users as well as the authoring team. Word of caution- agreeing on a taxonomy is hard, so pack in some caffeine   and get started

[fabianthoma1234]

Many thanks for sharing your thoughts Sarup.

I really like these two general best practices and the recommendation to do an audit. The last part is already ongoing and it gives me the feeling, that we do the right things in our situation.

Last but not least: Caffeine is heavily needed, I agree. 🙂