What are "best practice" for setting up a knowledge base for the first time

[rody-bjerke]

Hi,

What would you say is the best practice for setting up a knowledge base?

How many knowledge bases and what to call them,

How many categories and what to call them.

I'm wondering.

[Uncle Rob]

Best practice:   Start.

My first years on the ServiceNow platform saw three distinct KB initiatives at the place I worked.

Two failed.   Why?   Couldn't get stakeholders to agree on a category hierarchy.   You could hear the sickening gurgle of the overburdened plumbing as these people defecated their last project dollar into arguing if the category tree should have 3 parent nodes or 4.

The third KB project was much more successful, even without a budget.   We simply cut the complexity out of everything.   Stopped worrying about categories, and started worrying about contextual searching, reading the search logs, and rewarding Knowledge participants for valuable behaviors (writing, editing, flagging, approving, retiring).

[Uncle Rob]

One specific answer for you, regarding quantity of Knowledge bases:

First determine how many people are *asking* for that distinction.   We didn't used to have mutliple KB's in SN, so some of us got savvy about broad categorization that facilitated as many stakeholders as possible.   Now that new KB's can be spun up, a line of business can have its own Category structure.   Other things you'll want to consider is if there are sweeping security / usage constraints that affect one body of knowledge vs another.  

If all articles have the same audience, and nobody's wishing for their own pile, then your answer is 0.

[Uncle Rob]

How many categories and what to call them

Unimportant.   Your customers don't want to be on your knowledgebase.   They DO NOT WANT to be there.   They want to be doing whatever it was before they found something wrong.   The very *best* a KB does is get the user an answer faster.   Every category and subcategory you put in front of them is a boulder you place in their path.

Use the contextual search capabilities embedded in the platform, and take the category issue away from the customer entirely.  

[rody-bjerke]

You have some very good points here. So if they want to restrict users to see only knowledge article 1 and 2, then there should be more knowledge bases right? as it seems the permission is set on the knowledge base it self. Or could it be restricted to to who can see each knowledge article?