Best knowledge setup and design

[Henk Roos]

How have you setup your knowledge management in regards to the processes? I am the process owner of the incident- and problem management process. And we created a lot of knowledge content. That are available via a ServiceNow portal. However, I run into some challenges.

1. People can't find the information.

2. People don't want to read the information.

3. The setup and structure is not very mature.

How have you done that in your organization? What would be the perfect knowledge setup/structure? How can I make it easily available? What are your experiences/best practices? Do you have any tips?

[BarbaraMM]

Hi Henk,

In my experience it is not easy to find the 'best possible' way to set this up. When a user doesn't find the correct answer in the first time right, they tend not to use the KB anymore. 

Some things I've learned over time:

Don't set up to much layers in categories

Use tags wisely; we added project names to some articles to make sure the related info could be found

Explain the reward of using the KB to both IT and the users

Do a weekly check on the KB articles, to keep them up to date

Respond to remarks and ratings to improve.

Please let me know if you would like to talk about it 'in person'; send me a DM on linkedin!

Kind regards, Barbara

[Henk Roos]

Thanks Barbara for the help. Very valuable input that I am going to take along in my design. And indeed we have an active review system built in to our knowledge bases. And it is reviewed periodically. But not yet every week. Maybe we should?

[ollymet]

Hi Henk,

I agree with the comments from Barbara. To add to them...

We now have the added complexity of surfacing the correct knowledge through AI, AI Search, Virtual Agent etc. I definitely think there will be a shift in how knowledge is structured and accessed over the coming year. Less focus on user consumption, more focus on AI consumption - or will we need both to serve different audiences. 

Where have you got to with it since your post, have you made any changes that have improved the situation for you that you could share? 

[Henk Roos]

Currently I am still gathering information regarding the perfect setup. Although I already accepted that it does not exist. I am aiming for more smaller knowledge bites. Linked to categories and topics. Accessible via a topics page on the portal and some other channels. Taking into account findability, writing style, design (intuitive and attractive) and audience. From there we are going to keep on developing to enhance the user experience.

Granted, AI is going to change things significantly in the future. And we are takin g this into account deciding on the setup. But it is going to take some time to have the optimal benefit of that. And it is not flawless as well.