Overview
Knowledge Management is the process of creating and using knowledge articles to solve customer incidents, improve workflow and increase work efficiency.
Knowledge Management Process
There are four steps in the Knowledge Management Process:
Create & Attach
Existing knowledge documents that are relevant to the incident, problem or request being worked are attached to that ticket. These links provide valuable information on the common questions or issues faced by customers and provide a guide for improving training and communication to customers.
If there are no knowledge articles applicable to the incident/problem/request, or if there is a known need for a knowledge article on a subject, staff should create a new knowledge article. New articles are immediately searchable to all ServiceNow users, so there is no delay in sharing important information.
Publish
There are multiple paths to publishing articles in ServiceNow. Articles created from resolved incidents can generally be published immediately by the author. Articles that require additional input from a subject matter expert are sent to the appropriate assignment group or individual for review before being published.
When the knowledge base is opened to a wider audience, articles accessible by those audiences will follow structured review and approval process.
Review
Each time a knowledge article is used to resolve an incident, problem or request, the person attaching the article is serving as an article reviewer. Articles can be edited as needed or flagged for the author or assignment group to review. When the knowledge base is externally-facing, customers will also be able to flag and rate articles.
Articles not updated in one year trigger an automatic review by the assignment group.
Retire
Articles that are no longer relevant or otherwise not needed, can be retired by anyone. Articles that are flagged for review after one year and are not updated after an additional two months are automatically retired.
Knowledge Form Fields
| Letter | Field/Button | Description |
|---|---|---|
| A | Service Provider | Defaults to your Unit IT organization. |
| B | Valid to | Defaults to one year from the article’s publication date. When the article reaches the Valid to date, it triggers the review process. |
| C | Assignment Group | Group responsible for maintaining and reviewing the article. This group is notified when the article is flagged by a user, updated, or reaches its retirement date. This is a required field. |
| D | Assigned to | Optional field used to assign an article to a specific person within the Assignment Group. The use of this field may vary by group. |
| E | Short Description | Title of the article as displayed when users search the knowledge base. |
| F | Workflow | State of the article – draft, in review, published or retired. How to set the workflow depends on several factors, including the audience and your role. |
| G | Author | Individual who created the article. The Author is notified when an article is flagged, updated or set to retire. |
| H | Audience | The audience is set to Internal for all articles, meaning only ServiceNow users can see it. In the future, Self-Service (the U-M community) and Public will be available audiences. The workflow for choosing these audiences will be determined and shared before that functionality is enabled. |