© 2008 RightNow Technologies, Inc.

Title

Best Practices for Maintaining Your RightNow Knowledge Base

Penni KolpinKnowledge Engineer

• Focus on ongoing maintenance of your knowledge base• Less lecture / more discussion & demonstration• Address topics broad enough for most users• Demonstrations on a February ‘08 release

Goals

Getting Started

• Configure end-user pages• Define products and categories• Publish a few answers• Determine additional content• Publish a few more answers• Reiterate

Maintenance Issues

• Ability to track answers – custom fields• Ability to update terms - variables• Reviewing and updating content• Source of new answers – other staff, KB engineers• Notify staff of new answers• Evaluate how people use your site

Tracking Answers with Custom Fields

• Frequently tracks additional administration information• Original content owner• Original date published• Date last reviewed• Links exist in answer• Reference to manuals and documentation

• Special characteristics of interest

Answer Variables

• Shortcut for specific text or code

• $variablename

• Useful for: images, products, heading, URLs, policies

• Up to 4000 characters

• Use non-words to find answers with that variable

• November ‘07 and later releases include Variables report

Answer Variable Examples

Variables Report

• In November ‘07 and later releases

• Can add to navigation set

Reviewing Content

• Review On Date field – sets answer to Review status(Enable Answer Review notification)

• Can use rules to notify other staff of status change

• Can use a custom field – specific month / date – status will not change

• Scheduled reports or alerts to notify staff

Identifying Work to be Done

• Custom field to flag work needed

• Can add menu options as needed

Source of New Answer Content

• Staff suggest new answers or provide updates to existing answers

• Track specific information such as submitter, content provider, and action taken (disposition)

• Route incidents to KB team via separate queue• Answer feedback• Separate mailbox• Create at RightNow Console and manually assign to KB queue

• KB engineers work through incidents to address answer content

• Set incident fields specific for tracking content submittals

Answer Content Submittal Screenshot

Workspace with Custom Fields for Content Tracking

Only KB staff have access to

and can edit these fields

Read-only or hidden fields for

non-KB staff

Custom incident workspace

Content Review & Approval via Workspaces

8.0 and later releases, use custom workspaces to allow specific staff the ability to edit specific answer review custom fields.

This tab only editable

by managers.

Content Review via Incident

• Create an incident and copy the content in a note or include as an attachment.

• Obtain manager’s approval via incident thread which is not editable once committed to the thread.

• Include incident reference number in answer (custom field).

Notifying Staff of New Answers

• Custom date field for Date Published

• Set up report with data exception to use in alert

• I.E. Answer ID > 0

• Schedule report to send when alert is met

Evaluate End-user Activity

• Standard reports• Answers Viewed• Keyword Searches• Service Summary• Information Gap

• Define reports subscriptions and frequency

• Custom reports• Answers published weekly• Answer subscribers• Custom field based

Analyzing Session Activity

• Include search count, answers viewed in incident report.

• See which incidents had the most session activity prior to submittal.

• Begin with small time frame of data from the replication databaseFor high traffic sites, consider looking at a half hour of data.

• Determine which rows are of interest & add filters to the report.

Incidents with Counts of Searches and Answers Viewed

Filtered Session Data

• Filters on session data• Logical expression

Session Data Examples

Answer Visibility Field

• Answers.admin_vis field can be added as a filter to answer reports

• If answer is assigned to at least one product and category with administration visibility enabled for the interface, the answers.admin_vis field is Yes.

• Allows you to control whether answers from other interfaces are returned in a report

Answer Visibility Field - Screenshots

Report was run on interface 1, but shows answers with products and categories that are not visible to interface 1(products and categories are visible to interface 2)

Report was run on interface 1. Each answer is saved with at least one product that is admin visible for interface 1 and at least one category that is admin visible for interface 1

Additional Resources

• Knowledge base at http://rightnow.custhelp.com

• Tutorials -- Education & Training > Product Tutorials

• Manuals – Library > Manuals and Documentation

• Online help – from the administration console

• Customer forum