The Knowledge Base is a feature that facilitates the process of creating and publishing articles to allow end users (customers, vendors, partners, any users) to search these articles for answers to questions and issues. Providing an information source that end users can use self-sufficiently reduces the effort needed to support end users. The Knowledge Base also provides a means of documenting and proliferating information to minimize the time needed to resolve an issue.

Enabling the Knowledge Base

A Knowledge Base license key is required to use this feature. Enter your license key in the corresponding tab of the ProblemTracker License Manager.

Once your license key has been entered, create a new workgroup with "Knowledge Base" selected as the template type in the Workgroup Management System (WMS). An explanation of how this template is set up can be found in the section Using the Knowledge Base template. To create a new workgroup in WMS, refer to the Adding a Workgroup section of the WMS Help Guide.

To enable the Knowledge Base in the new workgroup, go to the General Preferences section by performing the following steps:

1. Login to the Knowledge Base workgroup as Admin
2. Click on the Admin icon
3. Click on the General Preferences button
4. Scroll to the Knowledge Base section, set the preference called Enable Knowledge Base to "Yes"
5. Click OK to save this change

Knowledge Base Components

There are several components of the Knowledge Base that can be customized:

• Workflow
  You can configure a set of workflow steps for the process of creating, reviewing, and publishing Knowledge base articles. A new Knowledge Base workgroup has a default workflow configured which is explained in detail in the Knowledge Base template section of this Help Guide.

• Search Page
  Customize the page where users will perform searches. You will be able to select the content displayed and options provided such as search methods (all words, any word, exact phrase) and preferences.

• Results Page
  Define the fields that will be displayed as part of the search results.

• Item Page
  Design how each individual Knowledge Base article will be displayed e.g. which field will be used as the article's title, which other fields will be included in the article.

• Preferences
  Set preferences such as date and time formats that are applied to the Knowledge Base for all searches.

• Customize the KB Pages with your own HTML
  The Search, Results, and Item pages include the ability to add your own HTML to change the look and feel of the pages presented to your users. Refer to the sections for each component above for details on customizing the HTML for each of the Knowledge Base pages.