Pros and Cons of creating one or multiple Knowledge bases.

[Lauren Scibeck]

Does a document exist that identifies the Pros and Cons of creating one or multiple Knowledge bases.  We have many many products and a customer can have one or many of them.  We are  trying to determine the best route and why.

[Carly6]

I think it would really depend on the search engine used, categorization capabilities and the intended audience. And also how your knowledge is managed across the products. If it's the same, use one to reduce admin & maintenance tasks.

We use a non-ServiceNow support portal which uses a non-ServiceNow search engine and our company offers many different software products as well as deployment types (cloud / on-premise / hybrid).

We've deployed a single ServiceNow Knowledge Base for support KBAs that are used by customers & internal support for all of our products. We have categorization options such as product, product features/functionalities, knowledge type (how-to, defect, enhancement, problem) that allow for more personalization & filtering of the search results so there isn't a need for a separate Knowledge Base.

Each of our product portfolios also use the same Knowledge Management guidelines (KCS v6), so there aren't different admin needs and the roles and permissions are the same across products.

This is also helpful for overlapping knowledge - for example:  a reporting module is used within several different software applications, so having the ability to have a single KBA that overlaps into those different products without having to duplicate it in multiple knowledge bases is a benefit.

However, we do have another Knowledge Base for internal Cloud Operations KBAs that customers would not ever need access to that are only used by the Cloud Operations team. The categorization and audience don't line up with the use of the Support Knowledge Base and the management & permissions are very different.

I'm sure there are other considerations when deciding how to set it up, but these were our main points in deciding on a single support Knowledge Base.

I hope that helps!

Carly