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Articles
| Field | Type | Description |
| Enable Article versioning | Checkbox | When selected, there will be a new action button at the top of articles called "New Version". If a new version is created, there will be a drop down at the top of the new article (which will be the default article shown) that says "Other versions of this Article" where older articles can be viewed when clicked into. |
| Use Article drafts for KB articles | Checkbox | This will make the new and edit functions in the Knowledge base create an Article draft Ticket. Add the Knowledge base fields to your chosen Ticket Type, and create an action with system use "Publish Article" to create or edit the Article from the Ticket. By using an action you can create KB articles on tickets. |
| Use new draft type (Drafts stored on an Article) | Checkbox | (v2.238+) When enabled, Article drafts are stored on a hidden Article, instead of storing the data on the Ticket. This method supports additional Fields that can be used on a draft Ticket Types and actions. This stores the hidden draft article in the KBentry table, which will store the data added on the Ticket. This setting only shows when "Use Article drafts for KB articles" is enabled. |
| Ticket Type for Article drafts | Single Select | Decide the ticket type to use for article drafts you create. |
| Only owners can raise drafts | Checkbox | When enabled, only Agents marked as the "Owner" of an Article will be able to Edit or Draft Amendments. |
| Use Article Drafts for News Articles | Checkbox | When selected, this will enable article drafts to be created on tickets for news articles via an action you can create. This will make the new and edit functions in the Knowledge base create an Article draft Ticket. Add the Knowledge base fields to your chosen Ticket Type, and create an action with system use "Publish Article" to create or edit the Article from the Ticket. NB: "Enable News Articles" must be checked on for this setting to appear |
| Ticket Type for News Article drafts | Single Select | Decide the ticket type to use for article drafts you create. NB: "Enable News Articles" must be checked on for this setting to appear |
| Allow Users to amend and submit article drafts | Checkbox | When article drafts are enabled, enabling this setting allows you to specify a set of user roles per FAQ list, which will allow users with that role to use the Article Draft button to submit a draft for an article. The ticket type used for the draft must also allow users to submit tickets of that type. Approval steps can be added here, with the system use "Linked article owner". |
| Do not allow the creation of new article drafts if an existing draft is active | Checkbox | When enabled, only one article draft can be in progress at a time, and new ones cannot be opened. |
Hide the edit and clone buttons on Articles when using drafts | Checkbox | When enabled the "Edit" and "Clone" buttons will not be visible on article drafts when newer versions are available. This forces all changes to be made through draft amendments. |
| Hide the generate pdf button on outdated Articles | Checkbox | When enabled the "Generate PDF" buttons will not be visible on article drafts when newer versions are available. |
| Add the Agent who publishes a Draft Article as an Owner | Checkbox | (v2.250+) When enabled, the agent who published the article draft for this article will automatically be added as an owner of the article. This is only applicable when using the Article Drafts functionality. On versions prior to v2.250 publishing agents are added as owners automatically, this setting allows you to disable this. Used when the team publishing articles are not the owners of the articles. |
| Hide 'Send' button on Articles | Checkbox | When enabled the "Send" button will not be available on an Article. |
| Hide the edit and clone buttons on Articles when using drafts | Checkbox | When enabled, the "Edit" and "clone" button will be hidden on an article, thus forcing all changes to be done through draft amendments. |
| Enable Article Review Functionality | Checkbox | Articles can be reviewed and when saved after reviewing, the "review" section of the article details at the top will contain the agent and date/ time reviewed. |
| Default Number Of Days Between Reviews | Integer | The articles details section has "Next review date" this setting can be used to decide how many days before the next review date. This will be reflected as a date and time on the KB. |
| Allow the Ticket type/template article hyperlink to be displayed on the new service and new Ticket type screen | Checkbox | When checked, should the Ticket Type or Ticket Template you are using to log a new ticket have an associated Article, then a hyperlink to this will appear on the screen. |
| Agent app KB area view | Single Select | The default view that will be seen in the Knowledge Base area of the agent application. Can be tree view or search view. |
| Allow comments to be left without rating the article | Checkbox | When checked, a "Leave a Comment" button will be available under the article. Users can select this to leave a comment about the article. Comments are stored in the database, comments left where no rating was given will have a "KBVvote" as 0 in the database. If disabled you will be able to choose whether users can leaves comments for positive and/or negative feedback only. |
| Include a comments field when leaving negative feedback | Checkbox | When selected, if on the end-user portal and clicking onto the thumbs down feedback symbol at the bottom of a KB article, there will be a comments box that appears. Users can leave negative feedback comments on articles, they can't leave positive feedback. |
| Include a comments field when leaving positive feedback | Checkbox | When checked, users will have an option to leave a comment when they rate an article positively. Comments and votes are stored in the database in the "KBVotes" table. |
| Make the negative feedback comment field mandatory | Checkbox | When enabled, the Comments box will be mandatory to submit negative article feedback. |
| Make the positive feedback comment field mandatory | Checkbox | When checked users must leave a comment when they rate an article positively. They will not be able to submit the feedback until the comments box is populated. |
| Ticket Type for negative feedback | Single Select | If a ticket type is chosen here, when negative feedback is left, a ticket of this type will be created. |
| Make FAQ list selection mandatory | Checkbox | When selected, if an agent is adding an article to the knowledge base, they will have to add it to a FAQ list by default. |
| Make tags mandatory | Checkbox | This will force the addition of Tags to an Article when creating it. |
| Remove welcome message | Checkbox | When selected, if in the end-user portal, the welcome message at the top of the screen when clicking into the Knowledge Base section will be removed. |
| Show Knowledge Base Article views in the Users activity feed | Checkbox | When selected, if in the user activity feed on the home page of the end-user portal, the viewing of KB articles will be shown on the activity feed. |
| Show the menu when linking to an article | Checkbox | When selected, links to knowledge base articles will show the KB side menu. When disabled, the side-menu will be hidden. |
| Enable pop-out when clicking on images in actions and articles | Checkbox | When selected, images clicked on in actions (applies to all tickets) and articles will open in a big screen which overlays the original page. |
| Do not allow editing of Article content fields | Checkbox | When checked on, agents will not be able to edit articles, the edit button will be visible, but they will not be able to edit the content fields. Options such as the FAQ List, Related articles and tags will still be editable depending on the level of permissions the agent has. This can be useful if article versioning is turned on, so that the agents have to create a new version instead of just editing the current version. |
| Enable Knowledge Base Articles Publishing | Checkbox | After enabling this setting and editing a knowledge base article you'll have a Publish Articles tab near the bottom of the page, clicking generate permalink should display a confirmation text below and the table will be hidden. After saving, in the read mode there should be a 'Permalinks' tab which should display every current permalink for that article. When creating a new version (Visible if "Enable Article versioning" is turned on) the link should essentially transfer over the links to the new one. Without being logged into the portal and having the option "Require Users to Log in to Access the Knowledge Base" turned on, go to the generated link and you should be able to see the article. The articles will no longer be accessible for anonymous users, but if you send that link, they will be able to access specific articles without a login. |
| Allow anonymous access | Checkbox | This will determine if users need to log into the portal to view articles via a permalink. If your self service portal currently requires users to login to access the knowledge base, and this setting is enabled, users will not need to login to access articles via permalink, but they will need to login when accessing articles directly from the knowledge base. If you would like users to still login when using permalinks, keep this disabled. |
| Show anonymous FAQ lists at permalinks | Checkbox | (v2.250+) When enabled, anonymously accessible FAQ lists will show when accessing the knowledge base via a permalink. Note: FAQ Lists will only show if they are available to all users. |
| Show the first 250 characters of the Resolution if the Description is blank when browsing or searching for Articles | Checkbox | When enabled, if the description field has been left blank for a knowledge base article, then the resolution field will be used, and the first 250 characters will show. This will be displayed under the title of the article, for all the options returned from the search. |
| Allow Articles to be added to FAQ Lists which are used to group other FAQ lists | Checkbox | When enabled, the FAQ Groups that create hierarchy in your FAQ lists, can have guides added to them at any level. |
| Use Geo Location Restrictions for Knowledgebase Articles | Checkbox | Only works for the self service portal, allows the knowledge Base FAQ List or specific Article to be restricted based on the location of the user. To configure this, refer to this guide on Article Restrictions |
| Enable collision detection for when multiple Agents are editing the same Article | Checkbox | When enabled, agents will receive a pop-up against knowledge base articles when another agent is viewing or editing the same article. They will also receive a pop-up when the article has recently been updated. Useful in preventing two agents attempting to edit the same article at the same time. |
Open linked Articles in search side menu | Checkbox | When enabled, Articles searched for in the side menu search will will open in the side menu. |
FAQ Lists
| Field | Type | Description |
| Configure FAQ Lists | Button | Setup FAQ Lists to group Articles and allow End-Users to view them on the web portal. |
| Select an FAQ list before searching Articles | Checkbox | When selected, the agent will have to choose a FAQ list before searching the knowledge base. |
Show the FAQ List selection tiles and FAQ List filter on the Self Service Portal Search Screen | Checkbox | When enabled FAQ Lists will show as tile buttons, as well as in the filters to force Users to select the FAQ before an Article can be viewed/searched. |
| Display FAQ List Descriptions on Tiles in the User Portal | Checkbox | This field will only show when "Show the FAQ List selection tiles and FAQ List filter on the Self Service Portal Search Screen" is selected. When checked the description set against a FAQ List will show underneath the name on the tile. |
| Hide FAQ tiles with no search matches | Checkbox | When enabled, FAQ Lists with no articles relevant to the search term will be hidden. This applies to the portal only. |
| Hide Article search filter on the User portal | Checkbox | (v2.242+) When enabled, Users will be not be able to filter search results in the Portal. |
| Enable Knowledge Base Article Full-Text Searching | Checkbox | When selected, this will improve search times and accuracy when searching for knowledge base articles. Full-Text search must be enabled in SQL Server to use this, if your instance is hosted by Halo, Full-Text search will be enabled in the SQL Server. |
| Enable Full-Text Searching on Searchable Rich Text Custom Fields in FAQ Lists | Checkbox | vWhen enabled, Rich Text Custom Fields which have "Include this field in searches" selected will be included in search results. (Only shows when Full Text Searching is enabled above). |
| Full-text search the internal memo field when an Agent is searching | Checkbox | (v2.242+) When enabled, the Internal Memo will be included in search results for Agents. If not using full-text searching this setting is not applicable as the internal Memo will always be included in search results. |
| Enable Meta for Searching | Checkbox | Meta words allow you to boost the rank of an article in search results when particular search terms are used. For example you may add the meta word/phrase 'not turning on' to the article titled "Device issues", so that when users search for the phrase 'device not turning on' the article "Device Issues" returns higher in the search. Unlike titles, descriptions and tags, meta words are not visible to users, and you can add as many as you like. Keep in mind meta words cannot be used to return articles in search results alone. The search string will still need to match to an article, meta words just improve how high up an article appears in search. |
| Meta weighting in results | Integer | Only applicable when meta words are in use. Here you can set the weighting meta words have when calculating which articles should be returned highest in the search results. This determines how much weighting meta words have over other elements of the article. Lower values mean meta words have a lower precedence. If you would articles that have meta words matching the search string to be returned higher in the search than articles that have a title/resolution/tag etc that matches the search string, set this to 1000 or more. |
| Knowledge Base Search Type | Single Select | Decide how the search engine for the KB is configured. Search for the entire string - Each article will be checked to see if it contains the whole string in the search bar. Articles that only contain selected words in the search string will not be returned. Search for each word of the search string - Each article will be checked to see if it contains any of the words in the search string. Articles that do not contain any of the words in the string will not be returned. Search for every word of the search string - Each article will be checked to see if it contains any of the words in the search string, if it contains each of the words in the string it will be returned. The article must contain all the words in the search string to be returned, but they do not have to appear in the same order as they do in the string. |
Article ID Search Behaviour | Single Select | Allows you to determine if, and how search results show Article IDs. Don't Search Article IDs - IDs entered into the search will not return articles. Search Articles by ID and include other results - Article IDs entered into the search will return articles with this ID, articles that contain this numerical value in their searchable elements will also be returned. This cannot be used in conjunction with Knowledge Base Article Full-Text Searching. Only Return the Article with a matching ID if one exists - Article IDs entered into the search will return only the article with this ID. Articles that contain this numerical value in their searchable elements will not be returned. |
| Keep a log of Knowledge Base Searches | Checkbox | When selected, a log of the KB search history will be stored in a sql table. This will only start to log searches done after this checkbox was enabled and all searches that follow. The logs will be stored in the KBSearchLog table. This can be queried within the reporting suit. To return the first 10 results use: select top 10 * from kbsearchlog |
| Enable FAQ list treeview | Checkbox | When selected, shows the FAQ Lists in the "Filters" area when searching articles. (Not applicable if needing to set an FAQ List before searching articles). |
| Use Geo Location Restrictions for FAQ Lists | Checkbox | Only works for the self service portal, allows the knowledge Base FAQ List or specific Article to be restricted based on the location of the user. To configure this, refer to this guide on Article Restrictions |
| Include FAQ List in Knowledgebase Link | Checkbox | When enabled, URL links copied from the "Share" button on the Agent Portal will include a parameter for the FAQ List the Agent is viewing the Article from. |
| An Agents access to view/edit Articles/FAQ Lists is controlled entirely by their FAQ List access level | Checkbox | When enabled, an Agent's Knowledge Base permissions will solely be based on FAQ List level access control. For example, an Agent with "Read Only" access on a certain FAQ List will not be able to edit it, even if they have permission to modify articles in their agent profile. |
| Enable sticky FAQ navigation menu on the portal | Checkbox | When enabled, clicking on an FAQ list in the portal, or navigating directly via its URL, now loads the related articles directly into the main content area and automatically highlights the corresponding FAQ list in the sidebar. It also ensures the FAQ list menu says pinned to the screen as you scroll through an article, rather than needing to scroll back to the top of the page to change the FAQ list. |
Article Suggestions
| Field | Type | Description |
| Enable Article Suggestions - Matching Articles will be suggested for Tickets with an Incident or Problem ITIL Ticket Type | Checkbox | When selected, suggestions will be given for tickets of ITIL type Incident or Problem. |
| Enable Article Suggestions - Matching Articles will be suggested for Tickets of all ITIL Types | Checkbox | When selected, suggestions will be given for all tickets. |
| Enable Article suggestions on the portal new Ticket screen | Checkbox | When selected, if users are logging new tickets on the end-user portal, they will be given suggested articles if articles match the ticket details. |
| Portal Article suggestion type | Single Select | decide where you want the suggestion to appear from. Pop-out resolution finder is the standard option. Embed, add to this. |
| Categories must match a Tag | Checkbox | When selected, the category set for the ticket, must match a tag on a KB article. |
| Allow matching based on Ticket Summary | Checkbox | When selected, the suggestions matched on will be based on the subject of the ticket and with this selected, the summary as well. |
| Allow matching based on Text Custom Fields | Checkbox | When selected, custom fields attached to the ticket will be able to be matched on for article suggestions. |
| Problem/Resolution Finder Position (Agent app) | Single Select | The resolution finder can be displayed on the bottom right or top right of the ticket screen. |
| Customise Article link Canned Text | Button | This will open up the menu for editing the Article Link text that is added to an Action using the "Send with next Action" function on Articles. As long as the $.LINKTOARTICLE is in this text, it will work. The rest of the text is optional, and can be whatever you like. |
| Customise Send Article Email Template | Button | This will open a shortcut to the "Send Knowledge Base Article" Email Template. This can be customised to your preference, however the Template cannot be renamed or deleted, and it will require the $.LINKTOARTICLE variable in it to function properly. |
Article Creation
| Field | Type | Description |
| Show a Preview screen before creating an Article via closing a Ticket | Checkbox | When checked, should an Article be created upon ticket closure, a preview screen will be shown to confirm you are happy with the article. |
| Show a button to raise a Ticket if a search returns no Articles | Checkbox | When selected, this button will appear on the end-user portal if a users search returns no result. When nothing is returned, there will be a button they can click called "Raise a new Ticket". |
| Choose to use a specific Ticket Type or Template for the new Ticket | Single Select | This will determine how the new ticket mentioned above will be created. Ticket Type or Ticket Template can be chosen, "Template" meaning ticket template. These can be configured in the respective areas of the config > tickets section of the settings. |
| Article editor type | Multiple Select | This will allow you to dictate which methods of creation you are presented with when creating or editing Articles. |
| Allow option of document-based knowledge base Article | Checkbox | When enabled, Knowledge Base Articles can be created by uploading a document/file. The contents of this document will be scanned and its body used to create a 'Document' Knowledge Base Article. For more information on this, check out the "Create Knowledge Base Articles using Files/Documents" guide. |
News Articles
| Field | Type | Description |
| Enable News Articles | Checkbox | When checked the article type when creating a new article, will be a single select field. You can select "News Article" instead of making it a KB article. |
| Limit access to News Articles by start and end date | Checkbox | When selected, there will be an option to set a start and end date on a news article. NB: "Enable News Articles" must be checked on for this setting to appear |
| Configure News Article FAQ Lists | Button | Within this section, you can configure the FAQ lists shown on Knowledge Base area. The article type is set to "News Article" NB: "Enable News Articles" must be checked on for this setting to appear |
Tags
| Field | Type | Description |
| Allow new tags to be created on the Article | Checkbox | When enabled, new tags can be created when editing an article. If not, only a list of the pre-configured tags (as per the below "Configure Tags" list) can be used. |
| Configure Tags | Button | Adding/editing/deleting tags, updates the database (table is 'Tag' e.g. select * from tag) and tags will be updated globally when changes are made here. |
PDF Templates
| Field | Type | Description |
| Default PDF Template for Articles | Single Select | Select the default PDF template used when generating a PDF for an article. The PDF templates for this can be created using the button below. |
| Edit Knowledge Base Pdf Templates | Button | Create or edit the PDF templates for the knowledge base articles. |
Style Profiles
| Field | Type | Description |
| Enable Style Profiles | Checkbox | Enables style profiles to be added to articles. |
| Style Profiles | Button | Allows configuration of style profiles with style rules. This can then be applied to articles to stylise the article contents. |
Imports
| Field | Type | Description |
| Import Articles | Button | You can import Articles via an XLS import. Templates for each import can be downloaded on the import screen, located top left named "Download Samples". |