Knowledge Article Standards

Tags TDX Standards
Purpose
This set of standards will provide a model for TDX Knowledge Base article:
  • Content
  • Settings 
  • Related articles 

Note:  The knowledge base is intended to provide support to MU Division of IT staff (including inexperienced staff) and for customer information and self-service. For this reason, make sure you are writing and thinking in a "user voice" as you design and write knowledge base articles.

Articles submitted that do not meet the standards will be reviewed and in most cases re-submitted to the author advising that changes be made to apply the appropriate set of standards.  If it is identified that the existing standards do not apply,  on a case by case basis,  the service owner responsible for the service in conjunction with the DoIT Enterprise Service Management team may approve the article and the knowledge article can be publish.   
See the table below 

 

Standards

 
Category
  • Categories are used to organize articles into defined groups. 
  • Permissions for an article are inherited from its parent category by default. Articles can be give different permissions manually by the knowledge article owners. 
  • Always select a category before creating a Knowledge Base Article.  

 
Order
  • Select the order in which this article should appear in the list of other articles within the category.
  • Consider putting new articles and articles that will be relevant to large groups of people at the top.

 
Pin Article
  • Articles that are pinned will stay at the top of the list.
  • Consider pinning quick start guide articles. 

 
Subject
  • The subject will appear as the article title. 

 
Body
The body is the section that contains the article content.  Below is a list of the types of articles that may be written. There are coinciding article templates that should be used for each of the below article types. Make sure and select the appropriate template from the "Templates" drop-down menu located in the rich text editor located just above the Body field. 
  • How-to
  • General Knowledge
  • Break / Fix

 
Summary
One to three sentences describing the service, product, application, etc., and how the article will help the reader.  All article summaries should address the following:
  • Purpose of the article
  • Application/Service

 
Tags
Used to identify articles in a search and will associate the article with popular tags and other articles.  Standard tags can be used to identify the type of article. business application and target audience. The author may add other tags as appropriate.

Audience

  • Faculty
  • Staff
  • Students

Type of Article

  • How-To
  • Break-Fix
  • General-Information

Business Application

  • You can tag the business application
  • Use the - as a space
  • Tag with keywords that are used by the customer
  • Examples:  PeopleSoft, Security, Microsoft-Teams, Canvas, TeamDynamix, TDX

 
Status
Indicates the current state of the article. 
  • Not submitted - article should remain in not submitted status until it is ready to be reviewed for approval
  • Submitted - Articles should be changed to submitted when ready for approval for publishing.
  • Approved - Once an article is ready to publish it should be approved
  • Rejected - This status is not often used but may be used if there is no need for the article. 
  • Archived - An article that is no longer relevant or has been replaced should be archived.

 
Publish to KB
  • Checking this box will publish the article to the knowledge base. 
  • Only approved articles should be published by the Knowledge Owner.

 
Next Review Date
  • This is the future date the article should be reviewed for relevance and accuracy.
  • Set date for maximum of 1 year from the date the article is published or reviewed. 
  • Consider staggering review dates to help manage reviews and updates.

 
Owner
  • The article owner is the TDX group that is responsible to keep the knowledge article relevant and up to date. 

 
Notify Owner on Feedback
  • Check this box if you would like TDX owning group to receive notification of feedback about this article. 
  • Knowledge article owning TDX group to review feedback.

 
Related Articles
  • Once the article is created and saved you may edit the article to add related articles. 
  • This feature will associate the article with other articles in the Knowledge Base. 
  • Consider relating articles of similar subjects.
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