Knowledge article lifecycle

Completed

As mentioned in the overview unit, an efficient knowledge management and article approval lifecycle help guarantee not only that the knowledge content is accurate, but also, that the most current and relevant content is available to users. Out of the box, the knowledge management lifecycle resembles the following image.

• Draft: The process starts someone such as a customer service representative creating and proposing a Draft version on an article.

  • The article is marked for review by an approver.

• Approved / Rejected: A reviewer evaluates the content in the article and can either approve or reject the article.

  • If the article is Rejected:
    • It's sent back to the original article author for either edits or updates.
    • The process repeats until the article is ultimately approved.
  • If the article is Approved:
    • The article is set to an Approve state and is ready for publishing

• Scheduled: The article is scheduled to be published. Date information such as publish and expire dates are provided.

  • The article is set placed into a Scheduled state until the publish date is reached.

• Published: When the article publish date is reached it goes into a Published state. Published articles are available:

  • On case records being worked on by representatives
  • Customer facing websites

• Expired: An article that reaches its expire date are moved into an Expired state.

A knowledge article may go through many revisions, approvals, and reviews in the lifecycle. In many cases, after a knowledge article is expired, it goes back through the process of another approvals to be republished.

Draft

After the article content is created, it should be reviewed to make sure that it's accurate. Knowledge articles can be reviewed in two ways:

• Marked for review: Articles that are marked for review start appearing on the Knowledge Manager dashboard.

• Directly assigned: Articles can be assigned directly to specific people or to a queue.

Users who need to approve knowledge articles must have Approve permissions for the knowledge article record type. This permission is added by default, to the Knowledge Manager, Customer Service Manager, Customer Service Representative, or System Administrator role or equivalent permissions. Any security role can also have this permission defined by customizing that specific security role.

For more information on security roles, see Security roles and privileges.

When an article is marked for review, it appears under Draft Article Need Review view. The knowledge manager can then assign the article to specific team members or a queue for review.

For more about marking articles for review, see Mark a knowledge article for review.

Reviewing a knowledge article, and rejecting or approving it

Knowledge articles should be reviewed for accuracy before they're published or made available to other people. When an article requires review, a reviewer can perform the following actions:

• Select an article that's assigned for review.
• Suggest review feedback.
• Approve the content of the article.

There are multiple ways to add feedback and suggestions to an article. First, notes can be added directly to an article in the Timeline pane on the Summary tab. After a note is added, it appears in the timeline.

Additionally, article feedback can be added to draft articles, approved articles, or even published articles that are currently being used. Feedback lets people do things like add comments that suggest specific edits or provide an overall rating for an article.

Article feedback can be added and viewed in the Feedback pane on the Analytics tab. As feedback is captured, ratings can be defined. The Rating field shows the current article rating. The value of this field is recalculated on a predefined schedule, but you can manually trigger a recalculation at any time by selecting the calculator icon on the Rating field.

One good way to make sure that articles are current and accurate is to update them, based on article feedback and notes that you receive. After an article has been updated, you can assign it back to the reviewer for approval or publication. Select Assign on the command bar, and then select the user or team to assign the article to.

Once the article approver thinks that the article is ready to be published, the approver can approve the article by selecting the Approve button on the command bar. The article is ready to be published.

For more about reviewing and approving articles, see Review and reject or approve a knowledge article.

For more about updating knowledge articles to capture feedback, see Update knowledge articles to capture feedback.

For more information on updating published articles, see Update published knowledge articles