Style Guide

Issue/Question

What is the KCS Style Guide?

Environment

• TeamDynamix
• KCS

Resolution

Every article should follow the KCS Style Guide Commandments. They are as follows:

1. Thou shall maintain the context of the client
2. Thou shall remember the audience
3. Thou shall not create duplicates
4. Thou shall reference neither a client nor an incident
5. Instructions shall be numbered steps
6. Product names shall be proper
7. Graphics shall be used as a last resort
8. Attachments shall be visible
9. Thou shall refrain from abbreviations and acronyms
10. Thou shall use spell checker

Along with adhering to the commandments, every article should follow these style rules as set when you choose the knowledge article template in Team Dynamix. 

• Click Templates and choose between: 
  • Customer Facing with Internal Article Template
  • Internal Knowledge Article Template
  • Knowledge Article Template
• Set all text as Helvetica.
• Every section header (Issue/Question, Environment, Cause, and Resolution/Answer) should be Heading 2 (H2) format.
• Sub headers should be Heading 3 format.
  Note: Service Desk heading should only be used when the Service Desk is needed to complete the steps, if the only step is assign to XXX team do not utilize Service Desk heading
• Headers below the sub headers should be Heading 4 format.
• All text except headers is automatically set to 14 point font size.
• Error messages (under Issue/Question) need to be a 14 point font size, include a colon and be italicized like this example:
  • Error: Access Denied: Resource does not exist
• If emphasis other than bolding is needed, underline the word or phrase also.
• Quotation marks should “not” be used in articles. Any text that would have been between quotation marks should be bolded instead (Press enter).
• If you have additional information that would be important for the user to know before proceeding, place a line at the beginning of the section (under Resolution) starting with Note:  in a bold, Firebrick red font
• Remove all white space at the end of the body.
  
   

Do's and Dont's

Adding a Note

If you have additional information that would be important for the user to know before proceeding

1. Press Shift + Enter to create a new blank line
2. Start the sentence with Note: 
3. Type the whole sentence
4. Highlight Note:
5.  Add bolding  Note: 
6. Change the color to Firebrick red  Note: 

Tags

Focus on adding tags for words that do not already exist in the article to improve findability

1. Example: a Datatel tag for articles about Colleague
2. Different spellings (common misspellings)
   • Example:  email, e-mail and wifi, wi-fi, wi fi
   • Example: logging in, log on and login
3. Tags that consist of two words need a hyphen (e.g. article-structure)

Note: Too many article tags can cause search issues, articles could be displayed when not relevant

Adding ITS Internal

Note: Use of the Insert ITS Instructions Box, adds a box to the article which can be seen by the customer

1. Click in the article where you would like to place the ITS internal box
2. Click Templates
3. Below KCS Template Click ITS Internal Box
4. An ITS Staff Only box is added to the article
5. Content about assigning a ticket or task to another team should be moved to the ITS internal article and replaced with a link to the ITS internal article
   Note: Information only ITS should see should not be in this box, add this content to the ITS Internal article Example ITS Network path, or steps a customer should not do 
6. Example:

   ITS STAFF ONLY

   1. See article KCS Article Structure

7. Add the customer-facing article as a Related Article to the ITS internal article 

Adding Font Awesome

Note: Use of Font Awesome will add common icons to your article

1. Click Insert Font Awesome 
2. Browse through the icons available or search 
3. Click the icon you want to use
4. Click Okay

Linking to other Articles

Note: All Related Articles will appear in a section titled Related Articles along the right side of the article screen beneath the article's Details panel.

Note: Any articles linked in the body of another article should be added as a related article.

1. Open the article you'd like to link
2. Click Edit Article
3. Click Related Articles tab
4. Click 
5. Search and locate the related article
6.   the article you want to add
7. Click Insert Checked (on the top of the page)
8. Click Add 
   Note: Repeat steps 4-8 until you've associated all desired articles