This introduction article will help Knowledge Owners who manage and review knowledge base content. The features discussed are part of the TDClient application and Google Analytics. The user must have a Technician license with Knowledge Base security permission in TDClient, as well as permission to set up Google Analytics for the Client Portal applications and Read & Analyze access to the Google Analytics profile.
Overview
As part of your knowledge base upkeep, your knowledge base owner should regularly look at usage data to track content performance. You can use the search history report to see if user’s searches are leading them to helpful content; review the feedback report to analyze problems on articles that have received low helpfulness ratings; and use Google Analytics to learn about page views, and page flow behavior, to see how customers are navigating content, what they are reading, and what they’re bouncing (leaving almost immediately) from.
Where to Find This
You can access these features in the TDClient and TDAdmin interfaces. You will also need access to Google Analytics to see any of that reporting data.
Navigate to the search history report by following this path:
- TDClient > Knowledge Base > Search History
Navigate to the feedback report following this path:
- TDClient > Knowledge Base > Feedback
Navigate to the Google Analytics setup by following this path:
- TDAdmin > Applications > [Name of the client portal application] > Settings
Using Knowledge Base Analytics and Reports
Search History Report
The search history report gives a knowledge owner insight into what users are looking for and how many articles matched the search. It even includes details on what user performed each search.
If there are a lot of searches for a particular term, but there aren't good articles being found in the results, this indicates a need for more content on the search topic.
The search history data can be downloaded as an Excel file for further analysis.
Feedback Report
Each article in the knowledge base displays the question Was this helpful? at the bottom to authenticated users. Managers and article owners can learn what content is working well, and what needs improvement from these responses.
By default, the feedback report loads only the Not Addressed entries. To see all feedback, click Both and then the Search button.
After looking at feedback for an article, the author could make changes to the article to resolve any issues. The author can indicate the feedback has been addressed.
To mark feedback as addressed:
- In the navigation click Knowledge Base > Feedback.
- In the table, click the article title.
- Scroll to the end of the article, then click the Feedback tab.
- Click the Mark Addressed link below the respective feedback entry.
Google Analytics
With a Google Analytics Web Property ID set up on your knowledge base, you can track usage statistics like, pageviews, time spent on a page, bounces and more. This setting is applied to the whole client portal.
To add Google Analytics so it can gather data about your client portal application:
- Log into the TDAdmin interface
- In the left sidebar click Applications > click the name of the client portal application
- In the left sidebar click Settings
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and under Google Analytics Configuration enter the Web Property ID in the field
- Click the Save button at the top of the page.
Once the connection is established, you can view data and configure reports in the Google Analytics interface.
For help setting up Google Analytics and the Web Property, follow these instructions provided by Google.
Gotchas & Pitfalls
The search history report will include many phrases preceded by a hash "#" which indicates the tag search was used. In most cases this does not mean the user entered "#search-term" in the search field, instead it represents the number of times a user clicked on the tag shown in an article. There is no way to know which path the search came from.