Getting Started with Your Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base application is automatically created when a Client Portal is set up in TeamDynamix. It serves as a centralized hub where organizations can store, organize, and share knowledge in the form of articles about products, services, processes, and procedures. This helps reduce support ticket volume by empowering users to find answers independently.

Key Features

• Article submission and approval workflow
• Article revision tracking
• Reusable templates
• Article categorization
• Optional modules: Popular Articles, Recent Articles, and Popular Tags
• Crowd-sourced feedback
• Flexible visibility settings: public, restricted to authenticated users, or dynamic based on content permissions
• Support for Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) principles

Knowledge Base articles can be configured for different audiences:

• External: Customer-facing knowledge for products, services, and processes
  • Admins can grant users permission to approve and publish articles for public visibility
  • Published articles become accessible to all client portal users
• Internal: Employee knowledge sharing and organizational collaboration
  • Create articles directly from ticket updates for instant knowledge capture
  • Use permission-based categories (like "Internal") to restrict visibility to specific groups or departments

In this article, we'll cover basic info on:

• General Set Up Steps
• Configure Access to the Knowledge Base
  • Options for Controlling Article Visibility
  • Permissions Audit
  • Set Knowledge-Base-Wide Access Rule
• Set Up Categories to Organize and Manage Access
• Create Custom Attributes to Capture Additional Article Information
• Import Articles from Legacy Knowledge Base
• Set Permissions for Knowledge Management Roles
• Examples

General Set Up Steps

Here are the general steps to take before you start editing articles in your Knowledge Base:

1. Configure access
2. Set up categories
3. Create custom attributes to capture additional information about articles
4. Import articles from an old knowledge base
5. Set up content management user roles 

Configure Access to the Knowledge Base

Options for Controlling Article Visibility

There are multiple layers of control that govern the visibility of Knowledge Base articles, ranging from top-level portal-wide access settings to individual article settings. Using these options, you can effectively manage who has access to your Knowledge Base articles.

Access to the root of the Knowledge Base is determined in the Client Portal settings. Top-level categories inherit this permission configuration, and child categories and articles inherit it as well. The permission inheritance can be broken at the category or article level.

The following table outlines the permission layers from broadest to most specific.

Set Knowledge-Base-Wide Access Rule

To set access and visibility:

1. Open the Client Portal settings:
   • Application Admin: In the Client Portal, click your name in the top right, select Admin > Settings
   • Global Admins: In TDAdmin, click Applications > Client Portal name > Settings
2. To prevent unauthenticated users from accessing all Client Portal content, including the Knowledge Base, under General, check the Only allow authenticated users to view the Client Portal box.
3. To set how the Knowledge Base is accessible to public users, scroll down to the Public Client Portal Sections and adjust the application visibility settings:
   • Visible - Always publicly available.
   • Not visible - Always available only to logged-in users.
   • Auto - Application will remain hidden until it contains public content. 
4. Click Save.

To achieve complete separation, you could also create multiple client portals that maintain entirely distinct internal and external knowledge bases, each featuring unique branding and URLs.

Learn more about Client Portal Access and Security Settings.

Set Up Categories to Organize and Manage Access

Knowledge base article categories are organizational units that group related content and manage access permissions. You can create distinct categories with varying permission levels to control who can view specific content. 

Using category inheritance, articles can inherit the visibility settings of their parent category. This allows for dedicated sections, such as "Internal Knowledge" or "Employee Resources," that are accessible only to authenticated staff, while public categories cater to customer-facing content.

Learn more about  Managing Knowledge Base Categories.

Create Custom Attributes to Capture Additional Article Information

Custom attributes are configurable data fields that administrators can add to a Knowledge Base to capture additional article information beyond the standard fields. These custom attributes serve several key purposes:

• Include specific information that doesn't fit into the standard fields
• Support Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) implementations by capturing structured metadata
• Provide enhanced and customized reporting details
• Allow for better categorization and organization of content

Learn more about  Knowledge Base Custom Attributes.

Import Articles from Legacy Knowledge Base 

TeamDynamix offers a bulk import feature through the Admin interface, allowing organizations to import Knowledge Base articles in bulk. This feature simplifies the migration of existing content and quickly populates the new Knowledge Base. During the import process, you can set various parameters, including the target category, article order, tags, publication status, and ownership. All articles contained in a ZIP file will receive the same category and tag assignments.

Learn more about  Importing Knowledge Base Articles.

Set Permissions for Knowledge Management Roles

Establishing clear knowledge management roles is essential for maintaining quality, consistency, and security in your Knowledge Base. A well-structured permission system supports efficient content workflows while protecting sensitive information and ensuring appropriate oversight.

Key considerations when setting up roles:

• Balance trust and oversight: KCS principles promote trust in knowledge workers, but new contributors may benefit from additional review processes.
• Department-specific needs: If using multiple Client Portals (such as IT and HR), users may require different permission levels in each portal's Knowledge Base.
• Content visibility: Determine whether your knowledge workers need to see all articles (including unpublished drafts) or only content relevant to their role.
• Review workflow: Determine whether you require single-level approval (Where the Reviewer approves and publishes) or multi-level approval (Where the Reviewer approves and the Manager publishes).
• License implications: Each user's global security role determines their license type, which must support Client Portal access at a minimum.

You can configure different levels of Knowledge Base editors with specific permissions to support a structured knowledge management process.

Example security role configurations:

For further details, see the Application-Specific Security Roles article.

Examples

To get some ideas of what the knowledge base application can do for you, have a look at:

• Learn how the University of South Dakota transformed its IT Practices with Knowledge-Centered Services
• TDX CONVERGE 2020 presentation: KCS 101 | University of South Dakota