Halo have removed this guide from their knowledge base. This is our last mirrored copy, kept so existing links keep working — it may now be out of date.
Knowledge Base
- knowledge base
- article
- kb
- guide
In this guide we will cover:
- What is the Knowledge Base?
- Viewing, Editing and Adding Articles
- Adding Videos to Articles
- Cloning Articles
- Reporting on Articles
- Access Control
Admin Guides:
Related Guides:
What is the Knowledge Base?
The knowledge base is used internally in the system by agents to ensure efficient resolution of common incidents, but it is also used externally by end-users on the self-service portal. This allows end-users to “self-serve” and fix their own problems without logging a ticket.
Viewing, Editing and Adding Articles
In Configuration > Knowledge Base, you can configure the settings for your articles.
Fig 1. Knowledge Base module.
The view you see in your knowledge base module will depend on the option selected in the "Agent app KB area view" dropdown.
Fig 2. "Agent app KB area view" dropdown.
Clicking into the Knowledge Base module from the left bar will show like this if the dropdown is set to "FAQ List Tree".
Fig 3. "FAQ List Tree" view of the knowledge base.
Whereas if the dropdown is set to "KB Search Screen", it will show like this.
Fig 4. "KB Search Screen" view of the knowledge base.
If you are in the first view, click on "New Article" to create an article.
If in the other view, click "Add" in the top right to create an article.
Here you input the title, the resolution and any attachments. You can also select which FAQ lists to add the article to, which will display groups as dropdowns in the tree when the tree view is enabled. You can set who can access it - restricting it by team for instance. This is particularly useful when you have a large number of articles, as it stops technicians having to search through a number of articles which are not relevant to their role.
The "Tags" field is used to add tags onto articles, which are searchable and will match on the categories attached to the ticket and display in the resolution finder.
Fig 5. Creating a new article.
Adding Videos to Articles
Adding videos to your articles can be an excellent method of making your knowledge base more engaging for end-users, particularly if you are looking to make your articles available on your end-user portal.
On any article (when in edit mode) simply click on the video camera icon to add a video. There are 2 methods of adding videos to articles:
- Insert a link: Click on the link icon and add in the URL of the video you wish to link the article to, then click insert.
- Embedded code:
Fig 6. Linking a video to an article.
Reporting on Articles
You can use the table KBViewLog for reporting purposes. It stores the Agent/User ID, KB Article ID and Datetime of every view of a knowledgebase article.
Other useful reports can be found in the online repository by searching for "knowledge base".
For a general report on all of the articles in your system:
select id as [KB ID],
abstract as [Title],
kbtags as [Tags],
datecreated as [Date Created],
faultid as [Linked Ticket ID]
from kbentry
Fig 7. Online Repository reports on KB articles.
Access Control
Access control can be assigned to FAQ Lists. This allows non-administrator agents to be able to edit details as well as assign access control to other agents, which is useful to avoid having to ask the administrator to edit it for them every time.
In Configuration > Knowledge Base, click the "Configure FAQ Lists" button and select a list. The administrator can then see the "Access Control" button at the top.
Assigning "Owner" access will allow the other agent to do anything in that area an administrator is able to do.
Assigning "Read and Modify" means they will be able to edit the details, but can not set access control for other agents.
For more information on this, check our the linked related guide at the top.
Fig 8. "Access Control" on an FAQ List.