Key takeaways
- Organizing knowledge base articles enhances searchability, user experience, and the overall efficiency of support content.
- It's important to identify your organization goals, plan your system, implement the system with suitable tools, and maintain it over time.
- Beware of common mistakes such as inconsistent naming and tagging, not updating articles, and mis-categorization.
- AI can optimize your knowledge base organization by providing personalized organization systems.
About this guide
A knowledge base is a treasure trove of how-to guides, troubleshooting tips, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and technical documentation that aims to help users navigate and explore a product or service more effectively. When the articles are disorganized, it's akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, with users spending more time tracking down the information they need than actually benefiting from it.
Keep reading and discover how to organize your knowledge base to increase operational efficiency.
1. Identify your goals
Identifying the goals of organizing your knowledge base articles is the first pivotal step. Goals could include enhancing the user experience by making the articles easily searchable, reducing the time the users take to find the answers they need, updating and keeping the information current, and ensuring all critical aspects of your software or product are covered. The goals could vary depending on the complexity of the product, the number of articles, and the targets of user satisfaction metrics.
2. Plan your organization system
Clarity on the goals naturally leads you to planning your organization system. Based on your product and the nature of user queries, you could plan to categorize the articles based on different software features and frequently asked questions. It is also crucial to decide on the information that will be captured for each article, such as the title, tags, creation and update dates, which help in tracking and managing the articles effectively. On the data management front, robust practices such as using consistent naming conventions for your articles, avoiding storing unrelated articles under the same category, and refraining from data duplication are key to avoid common pitfalls.
3. Implement your system
Once the planning is complete, you move on to the implementation. There are several organization tools and software that can assist you in this journey. Moreover, leveraging the power of artificial intelligence can further customize and simplify the process. For instance, Skippet, a project and data management workspace, can help set up a personalized and efficient knowledge base organization system using AI.
4. Maintain your organization system over time
Creating and implementing the system is half the battle, maintaining it requires consistent effort. This involves reviewing and updating articles, ensuring proper categorization over time, and revisiting your system in response to changes in user requirements or product/services updates.
Best practices and common mistakes
At this stage, you should be mindful of certain industry best practices such as prioritizing articles according to user-frequented information, keeping them up-to-date, and careful and consistent tagging. However, beware of common mistakes such as not updating the articles with product updates or ignoring the naming conventions and tagging, which could lead to articles getting lost in the sea of information, rendering them practically non-existent to the user.
Example knowledge base organization system
To illustrate how an effective knowledge base article organization system might look, let's consider a hypothetical software that has numerous features and receives diverse user queries.
In this case, the first step in categorizing the articles could be broadly under 'Features' and 'FAQs'. Under 'Features', each unique feature of the software can form a category. For example, if your software includes a 'Dashboard', 'Reporting', 'Data Analysis' and 'User Management', each of these can be a category. Each category can further have subcategories based on the complexity of the feature.
Now, under each category or subcategory, you can add relevant knowledge base articles. Make sure to assign appropriate tags for each article. In our example, an article about "Adding a new user" in the 'User Management' category can carry tags like 'Add', 'User', 'Management'. Tags make it easier for users to search for relevant information.
To keep this organization system alive and kicking, schedule regular checks on the articles. Update old articles, add new ones as needed, and ensure each article is in its correct place.
Wrapping up
We have breezed through the concept of organizing a knowledge base, setting goals, planning the organization system and implementing and maintaining it.
Remember the AI-based tool, Skippet, simplifies this process by providing a personalized and efficient system for knowledge base organization.
Frequently asked questions
Why is categorizing knowledge base articles important?
Categorizing ensures that knowledge base articles are neatly organized in their designated places, making them easily searchable and accessible to users. It enhances the utility and efficiency of your knowledge base by providing users with a better search experience.
How can I keep my knowledge base articles updated?
You can ensure your knowledge base articles are up-to-date by regularly reviewing each article, updating them with changes or additions to your product or software, and adding new articles as necessary.
What role does AI play in organizing knowledge base articles?
AI-based tools like Skippet can analyze your knowledge base content, user needs and personalize the organization system. It can suggest relevant tags, aid in categorizing and ensuring articles remain up-to-date, thus optimizing the system for maximum user satisfaction.
How can I make my knowledge base articles easily searchable?
The searchability of your knowledge base articles can be greatly enhanced by using appropriate tags, consistent naming conventions for your articles, keeping the content updated and having a well-planned category system. Implement these and your users will navigate through your knowledge base smoothly and efficiently.
