Hi Joanne,
The knowledge base feature of HelpMaster is a key part of the overall HelpMaster system. As Scott mentioned, we recently gave it a good upgrade, and future versions of HelpMaster will continue to improve and enhance the way that knowledge articles are used throughout HelpMaster. The HelpMaster development roadmap contains things such as better auto-suggestions of knowledge, pro-active knowledge base article authoring, greater effectiveness on keyword tagging, a full role-based authoring and publishing model, and content indexing and searching for documents that are stored outside of HelpMaster, such as in your case.
Knowledge Management is a key component in the modern helpdesk. With certifications and best-practice frameworks such as KCS (Knowledge Centered Support), the support industry is really waking up to the enormous potential that a well maintained, structured knowledge base can offer. http://www.knowledge-centered-support.com/
I think you're on the right track with your knowledge planning. Getting a good naming convention and nomenclature is a great starting point, because as your knowledge repository grows, a logical naming and ordering system will pay off.
Here at PRD Software, our knowledge base categories contain the following types:
- Known Error
- FAQ
- General
- Installation
- Internal Article
This gives each article a specific focus. We then use the "Auto-general Knowledge Base article ID" feature (Administration > KB System Administration menu) to create unique article IDs that are based on these categories.
We also use the "Searchability" tab extensively to add variations of spelling, acronyms and other words/tags that we find by examing the search logs. It's always interesting to see what people are searching for, and how they phrase their search.
Here's the HelpMaster live knowledge base https://prdsoftware.com/h...geBase/KBSearch.aspx
Also, you may want to check out this publication : http://knowledgebird.com/...ng-a-knowledge-base/
This is a great starting point when starting out with knowledge management. This was written by a former user of HelpMaster who now works and speaks in the knowledge management space.
Hope this helps. Please keep us up to date with how your knowledge management project goes!
Rod