Customer Sign In 1-888-250-8971
  • Products
  • Solutions
  • Pricing
  • Company
Start Free Trial

Products

Service management solutions that grow and evolve with your business.

SolarWinds Service Desk 

The smartest employee service management platform to run your service business.

SolarWinds Service Desk 

The smartest employee service management platform to run your service business.

Features  SEE ALL arrow-icn

  • Incident Management
  • Service Portal
  • Change Management
  • Service Catalog
  • IT Asset Management
  • Knowledge Base
  • Problem Management
  • Reporting
  • Discovery

Platform

  • Automations
  • Mobile
  • Internationalization
  • API
  • Documentation

Integrations  SEE ALL arrow-icn

  • Google Apps
  • Slack
  • Jira
  • Zendesk
  • Zapier

Solutions

Best practices and solutions to meet your service needs.

IT Management  SEE ALL arrow-icn

  • ITSM
  • ITIL
  • Computer Inventory
  • IT Service Desk
  • Microsoft Audit
  • IT Audit

Department  SEE ALL arrow-icn

  • IT
  • Human Resources
  • Facilities Management

Industry  SEE ALL arrow-icn

  • Financial Services
  • Healthcare

Company

Our leadership and team bring a fresh vision to the service industry.

Our Commitment

  • Customer Service & Support
  • Community
  • Contact

Our Insights  SEE ALL arrow-icn

  • Blog
  • Case Studies
  • White Papers
  • Datasheets
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • Infographics

Who We Are

  • About Us
  • Careers
  • Products

    SolarWinds Service Desk

    The smartest employee service management platform to run your service business.

    Features
    • Incident Management
    • Service Portal
    • Change Management
    • Service Catalog
    • IT Asset Management
    • Knowledge Base
    • Problem Management
    • Reporting
    • Discovery
    See All Features arrow-icn
    Platform
    • Automations
    • Mobile
    • Internationalization
    • API
    • Documentation
    Integrations
    • Google Apps
    • Slack
    • Jira
    • Zendesk
    • Zapier
    See All Integrations arrow-icn
  • Solutions
    IT Management
    • ITSM
    • ITIL
    • Computer Inventory
    • IT Service Desk
    • Microsoft Audit
    • IT Audit
    See All IT Management arrow-icn
    Department
    • IT
    • Human Resources
    • Facilities Management
    See All Department arrow-icn
    Industry
    • Financial Services
    • Healthcare
    See All Industry arrow-icn
  • Pricing
  • Company
    Our Commitment
    • Customer Service & Support
    • Community
    • Contact
    Our Insights
    • Blog
    • Case Studies
    • White Papers
    • Datasheets
    • Webinars
    • Videos
    • Infographics
    See All Our Insights arrow-icn
    Who We Are
    • About Us
    • Careers
Start Free Trial

5 Steps to Building a Successful Knowledge Base

  • Tweet
  • Share 0
  • LinkedIn 0

By: Taylor Burgess Twitter , LinkedIn   |   August 19, 2013

Categories: Help Desk Software

Your IT team accumulates knowledge with just about every resolved help desk issue. So why not transform those solutions into a knowledge base to save time when the issue arises again?

Who has time to repeatedly create solutions from scratch? Nobody. Besides, everyone makes fun of you when you wear that hat at work.

With a knowledge base, your end users can learn to resolve common support problems by themselves. Tagging solutions so that they become fully searchable empowers end users to reference these solutions without having to submit a service desk ticket.

A knowledge base is a contextual structure for facts, experiences, and insights that helps both the IT service desk and end users. With an extensive knowledge base that’s kept up to date, you increase the efficiency of IT service delivery, reduce call time, and improve the overall service desk experience. Here are 5 steps that will help you build a successful knowledge base.

1. Spend Time Beforehand Learning How End Users Search

Spending time up front learning how your organization’s end users search for information on common computer problems gives you information on which terms and phrases you should use when tagging your knowledge base elements. This will help their searches be more effective once the knowledge base is implemented. Speak with a handful of your more motivated end users and ask them questions like, “What kind of searches would you do if the printer wasn’t working?” Collect answers and you’ll have a better idea how to tag entries in your knowledge base.

2. Use Consistent Style Throughout Your Knowledge Base

Your IT service desk workers also need information on how to make knowledge base entries informative and how to tag them properly. Remember: the knowledge base is supposed to be helpful to end users who want to at least try to solve their problems before submitting a help desk ticket. Therefore, it needs to be written plainly, and with a minimum of jargon and “tech speak.”

3. Keep Building Beyond Basic Desktop Support

There’s no reason to stop building your knowledge base just because it covers the basics of common service issues. After all, service desk workers can use it too. The more incidents and solutions your knowledge base contains, the less often your service desk workers will have to develop solutions from scratch. They can quickly search for solutions in the knowledge base, and if one exists, implement it without delay. If no solution exists, service desk workers can put the solution they come up with into the knowledge base to save time next time the problem occurs.

4. Maintain and Update Your Knowledge Base Regularly

We’re not saying an asteroid will destroy Earth if you fail to maintain your knowledge base, but really, why take chances?

Content in your knowledge base should be refreshed regularly and perodically. If a service desk worker finds an error in a knowledge base entry, she may need to make a correction immediately. Other, less urgent changes can be done at regular intervals. You can even ask end users to offer suggestions on how to make knowledge base items more informative and helpful. This is one of those processes that should be planned, because it’s all too easy to put off. Yet keeping your knowledge base informative, accurate, and useful requires periodic maintenance.

5. Choose ITSM Software That Makes Knowledge Base Building Easier

When you choose IT service management software carefully, you make building your knowledge base significantly easier. Leading ITSM software Samanage contains knowledge base capability that makes it easy to document solutions to common incidents. The integrated knowledge base-service desk system reduces time to issue resolution and is easy to build into a knowledge sharing platform. The result is increased support efficiency and better IT service provision throughout your organization.

Photo Credits: stockimages / freedigitalphotos.net, Idea go / freedigitalphotos.net

Taylor Burgess Portrait

About Taylor Burgess

Read more articles by Taylor


  • Tweet
  • Share 0
  • LinkedIn 0
5 Steps to Building a Successful Knowledge Base Click To Tweet

Tags:

IT Knowledge Base

You Might Also Like:

related items icon
Are You Keeping Your Data Secure in the Knowledge Base? Image

Are You Keeping Your Data Secure in the Knowledge Base?

How to Develop a Useful Knowledge Base Image

How to Develop a Useful Knowledge Base

Friday Fun: 8 Google Autocompletes That Can Brighten a Tough Day at Work Image

Friday Fun: 8 Google Autocompletes That Can Brighten a Tough Day at Work

Follow Us
Facebook Icon
Facebook Icon
Facebook Icon
Facebook Icon

Subscribe to our Blog


Blog Home

View By Category
  • Cloud
  • Company
  • Employee Service Management
  • Enterprise Service Management
  • Friday Fun
  • Help Desk Software
  • Insights
  • IT Asset Management
  • IT Service Management
  • sdblog
150 Examples of Automating Service Management

Products

  • SolarWinds Service Desk

    The smartest employee service management platform to run your service business.

Resources

  • Blog
  • Case Studies
  • White Papers
  • Datasheets
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • Documentation

Company

  • About Us
  • Careers
  • Customer Service & Support
  • Community
  • Contact

© 2019 SolarWinds ITSM Israel Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Terms | Privacy | Sitemap