Introduction
Knowledge Articles are part of a knowledge base that is used to store vital information on Products and Services that the Clients are using. Knowledge Articles are perfect for Service, however, they can be used in other departments as well, for example, to help the Users find solutions to the problems that they are currently facing. In both the cases, whether it is a Client using the services and products, or the User, ease of use and accuracy of Knowledge Article is indispensable to a successful Customer Service implementation.
As per 2019 Release Wave 2, Microsoft has updated the existing Knowledge Management capabilities with awesome new features. This article will talk of one such great feature, Knowledge Article Template.
Knowledge article templates
As mentioned earlier, this feature is an upgrade to earlier Article Template (KbArticleTemplate) entity. In fact, the Article Template Entity is deprecated. When trying to create new Article Template record, the following message shows up:
Knowledge article templates, as the name suggests, are templates that can be used to create new knowledge articles without the need to create a knowledge article from scratch. Thus common content can be reused by knowledge authors to create new knowledge articles maintaining consistent branding, language, and messaging.
Customers can thus get out-of-the-box templates that can be readily use. They can also get the ability to create, edit, or delete templates as per the needs of the business. Knowledge articles thus can be rolled out in a jiffy by Knowledge authors belonging to customer’s organization.
Thus, there are two ways to create Knowledge articles:
1. Create Knowledge Article from scratch:
Please follow the steps mentioned in step II below to create Knowledge Article from scratch. However, in step 4, click on “New” button instead of “New From Template” button.
2. Create Knowledge Articles from Template:
To create a knowledge article from knowledge article template, the template needs to be created first. As per the template selected on knowledge article by Knowledge Authors, the information on knowledge articles are prepopulated from the selected template. Few minor variation in details can be edited.
Please follow the following steps to create Knowledge Article template:
1. The User should have permissions to Create and Read for the Knowledge Article entity. By default, the security roles “Knowledge Manager”, “Customer Service Manager”, or “Customer Service Representative” have these permissions. Since templates are nothing but a type of Knowledge Article, these permissions are applicable to create Knowledge Article Template as well.
2. Go to Customer Service Hub app:
3. Go to “Service Management” Area:
4. Click on Article Templates and then click on + New as below:
5. After clicking on + New, New Knowledge Article form will open up where you need to choose language which will be used to create the template:
6. After selecting the language and clicking on OK, input appropriate data for the template:
Also, enter appropriate data for the content. Please find sample data entered:
7. The Knowledge Article template is created after clicking on Save or Save and Close:
Thus a Knowledge Article Template is created.
Please follow the following steps to create Knowledge Articles from Template:
1. Go to Customer Service Hub app:
2. In the Site Map, go to Service Area:
3. Click on Knowledge Articles:
4. As per Wave 2 release, now a new button is visible in the Ribbon named “New From Template”. You can click on that. (The “New” button is used to create Knowledge Article from scratch).
5. On the Select Knowledge Article Template dialog box, select the template to use as a base on which you author the article, by entering a name or searching for the same and then select OK.
6. Thus all the data will be pre-filled in the new Knowledge Article from the Knowledge Article template.
7. The details can be edited and customized as per the need. Thus a new Knowledge Article can be created.
Conclusion
Thus, the new Knowledge Article Templates functionality can be used to create knowledge articles quickly by Knowledge Authors for efficient knowledge management and excellent customer service of the company. This will reduce the time required to create a Knowledge Article and will help in maintaining uniformity.