Article States

Issue/Question

What are the Knowledge Article States?

Environment

• TeamDynamix

Resolution

Article Confidence – Level of confidence in the article structure

Indicates the status of the article in the article life cycle that is used to imply trust and/or identify pending action.   As an article evolves and is used, reviewed and enhanced, the article is updated.

TeamDynamix Article Status - the current status of the article Not Submitted, Submitted and Approved

• Not Submitted = KCS in process
• Submitted = KCS not validated
• Approved = KCS validated

Knowledge Centered Service Article Attributes:  Custom attributes ITS added to show status of the article WIP, Not Validated and Validated 

1. Work In Progress (WIP) – Only the problem and environment are available
   1. Only Issue/Question and Environment are captured
   2. WIPs are temporary. They should become Not Validated, once the resolution is started
2. Not Validated – A Resolution has been captured and is available for internal use, and the quality is not trusted as we do not have confidence in or validation of the resolution
   1. Not Validated gives us a way to capture and distinguish between those articles we have confidence in (Validated) and those we don't (Not Validated). This allows you to capture and share your experiences. 
   2. Confidence - The Not Validated  If the issue is worth answering or solving for the requestor, it is worth having in the KB. It also supports the concept of sufficient to solve.  Not Validated provides a way to indicate, here is what I did in this situation, but I have not been able to validate the resolution or answer.
   3. Use Not Validated if you have started the resolution but were not able to complete it
      • coming back to finish at a later time or allowing KCS process to work and another person completes the steps is okay
3. Validated - The article is considered complete and reusable, it has been created or edited by a Contributor or reviewed by a coach, there is confidence in the quality of the article.
   1. Confidence - Responder confidence can be the result of confirmation from the user that the resolution worked, or the problem was recreated, and the responder was able to validate the resolution, or, simply based on their experience, the responder is confident in the resolution. 
       

An article can move through from the Not Validated to validated qualities several times throughout its lifecycle.  It will vary depending on

1. ITS maturity
2. The usage of the KCS article
3. The license level of the person interacting with the article.

Article Visibility – Control allowing different users access

Adds an additional layer of control that allowing different access to different audiences.

To manage the audience for KCS articles, we use article visibility.  

INTERNAL -  Only an audience internal to an organization will be able to see the article.  Note: anything with wider visibility than Internal is referred to as External.

WITHIN A DOMAIN - A group associated with a particular product domain, topic, job function, department etc.

PARTNERS - Someone who is not an employee but acts as a trusted extension of the organization.

Example BlackBeltHelp

CUSTOMERS - Customers or users of our products or services .  These articles typically are made accessible via a web-based self-service portal for registered users.

PUBLIC -The KCS article is intended for anyone unidentified in the public domain. A common practice is to have this article optimized and indexed for a publicly available search appliance like Google.