Knowledge Base, where to start?

[raven]

where can I find the documentation about this? Thanks.

[tommy]

Could You be more specific as to what You need?

[raven]

I just need to know how to start the knowledge base. How to add to the knowledge base, what problem qualify as knowledge base, so users can search solution. I just can't find the documentation. Is this relate to root cause analysis or Knowlix? Very confusing with Peregrine's offerings. >=(

[tommy]

Ok, I just wanted to make sure what you refered to.



The very first thing you need to do before even considering starting to use the knowledge database within SC or Knowlix is to gather requirements from the users. Thats very important.



2 of my coworkers has been working on our knowledge management project for more than 6 months now and we have not yet started any implementation yet.



During the course of this project they have held numerous meetings and workshops with represant from the involved helpdesks (Copenhagen, New York and Tokyo). The result from this has been a requirement document. Another of my coworkers is checking which software best fullfills most of the requirements. We are not sure that Knowlix can do that. During this investigation we have found that Peregrine know very litle about Knowlix?



But don't buy Knowlix before You know all the requirements when You know that You can get test licenses from Peregrine to see if knowlix can fullfill the requirements.

[raven]

Assume that we don't use Knowlix (I really don't know what the product anyway), We just use SC. So how do we add new question and answer to the knowledge base. It comes with the product, so we need to use it. But I can't find no documentation how to edit the knowledg base, can you help? Thanks

[tommy]

To add articles the user checks the field "candidate for knowledge database" then the problem description and resolution is posted the a queue in the knowledge database.



Depending on a setting in the environment the candidate can go straight to the knowledge database - which is not recommended in my opinion. If that option is not enabled the candidate goes into a queue which someone needs to review and manually promote to the official knowledge db.



You find "knowledge Enginering" under utilities. Here You can also add articles manually.



But again I would recommend you to start examining the requirements before enabling this. (I don't know if you have already done this).



2,5 years ago we were on SC2.1 and the users could mark problems as candidates for the knowledge db. But less than 5% of the proposed problems could be used. Most of the solutions were just something like:



- OK

- Done

- Problem solved



and so on.

[raven]

Could you give me some of the requirement samples? or point me to books or article on how to develop the requirements? Thanks

[tommy]

I don't have the documentation but requirements could be:



- must integrate with SC

- must be easy to use

- it should be possible to categorize articles on: category, subcategory, asset, company

- the search should consider above fields if filled

etc



There is really no textbook answer to your question.



You can find lots of resources on this subject on the net. A quick search in google with the keywords: knowledge management requirements resulted in



http://b2b.ebizq.net/e_commerce/stevens_1a.html

http://sern.ucalgary.ca/KSI/KAW/KAW99/papers/Dignum1/



This is just a few examples.

[ambarnes]

In our system, we have been creating tickets and checking the "candidate for knowledgebase field". We have also promoted these tickets to and put in keyword descriptors. Our problem is retrieving the records. We have successfully promoted tickets to the KB, but when we go to search (incident management, search knowledge base), we get nothing. Is there something we forgot to enable or what?

We are using SC only - no Knowlix.

[tommy]

Just to followup on my own post. We have still not decided on the tool to use. We will check Get.Answers when the next version is released but I think currently that it looks like we will build a custom tool in Lotus Notes unless Get Answers can deliver all our requirements!

As for Your question. How do You do the search? I have not used the builtin knowledge system much but I think SC does not search in the KB unless You ask for it. There is a dropdown box on the find solution screen where the source is selected.