| Description
- What are Best practices for creating knowledge content?
- What goes in the various fields in a knowledge form?
- What are the standards for existing knowledge?
Solution
All new knowledge articles should be created from a Submission Form. Create a Sub whenever the request comes in via email, IM, a driveby etc
Fields in the Knowledge Form
- For now we're only really using Application, Email and General
- Category - not used until we get a taxonomy in place
- Valid To - when this date has been exceeded, the article will automatically be Retired and disappear from search. The default date is typically used
- Owner - the Content Owner (person who provides content, signs off on future changes to technical or process details). This is required. Use "John Mathews" for Overview articles
- Article Type - leave at default (HTML)
- Workflow - Articles in any state but Published will not be found in search
- Source - automatically populated with the KB Submission number (SUBxxxxxxx) when the article is requested via the knowledge checkbox in Incidents or Problems or the Knowledge Request Form. This field can also tie the article to an Incident. Of particular note are the Incident numbers which identify the repository the content was originally migrated from
- Role - restricts who can find/see the article. For now, typically set to ITIL. Setting the role to Knowledge restricts it to our team
- Display Link - use to cause an attachment to open immediately when link in search results is clicked. So, if the only meaningful content is in the attachment, this will save the user a click
- Display Attachments - creates a linked list of all attachments at the bottom of the article
- Short Description - see this article for description and short description guidelines
- Meta Field - used for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Words or phrases entered in this field are weighted to be 3000 times more important than other fields (so when a search phrase matches the content of a Meta Field, that article should appear high in the search results list (though other factors also work to determine search results ordering). As always, use this space thoughtfully - no extra words!
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Using the Template
The Knowledge Team maintains responsibiliity for the Fields described in the previous section and the Description, Related Topics and Solution sections of the Text field. The Content Owners have responsibility for the Solution section of the Text field.
The Description section of the template defines the topic of the article, typically in the form of questions as modeled in this page. This section also helps with the findability of the article by duplicating the ways that users might ask the question which the article answers. See this article for Description style guide information
The Solution section answers the question(s) that was raised in the Description. The content in this section is written in 2nd person, professional voice (though this will change when we have Self Help content).
Always bear in mind that the content needs to be found and efficiently consumed by the Service Desk. Keep it as clean as possible and include a lot of white space (more about Usability) especially in lists:
- there is an empty line between every line in the list to help the eye "consume" the individual lines
- <shift> <enter> creates the empty space and then a space keeps the empty line open
- list lines don't have periods at the end because they're not (and shouldn't be) full sentences
Another reason to keep it clean is to prevent the page of cluttering up the search results. Be miserly with your words and be sure they apply to the topic.
Other
- Links to external pages always open in a separate window
- Images should be uploaded to the SN image library (rather than attached to the article). Be sure to check for existing image before adding a new onw
- Put a 1 pixel black border on images that don't have a clear delineation from the white background of the knowledge article
- The only font color, besides black, is dark red (which should be used very sparingly). In the interest of consistency and usability, always use #990000
- The only background color for header rows on tables is #CCCCCC
Related Topics
This section has cross links to other articles which can provide more information on the questions raised in the Description. Pages linked to in the Solution should have links here as well. Avoid extraneous text like see: or quotes around the link text. As with every other section, keep it clean and simple.
Application pages should include a link to their Overview pages (when available) and always link to an Other Articles About [AppName] search results list
Assignment/Escalation
This section helps the service desk fill out the field in an Incident and escalate the issue as necessary. Add all relevant assignment Groups with information about when that group would be chosen (as noted in the example below).
Category:
SubCategory:
Configuration Item: (how to find CI)
Assignment Group(s):
- EUS-assignmentGroup-NA-Regional (issues with x)
- Deskside-Support (issues with y)
- Third-AssignmentGroup (issues with z)
Because the some articles are used by support desks around the globe we use generic references to common assignment groups. Example: appropriate Regional team for your location
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