The Knowledge Base (KB) enables you to build a library of articles in the Self-Service Portal (SSP) that provides necessary information for users: instructions, service descriptions, release notes, and other. Here, you can store articles for users with specific roles and public articles for any authorized user.

The KB allows you to categorize the content on different levels and arranging articles in a particular hierarchy to easily navigate through them. The KB consists of five essences:

User roles

Knowledge base articles are displayed to all authorized users if the content item class is external.

Users with the following roles can access internal articles:

• admin
• itsm_agent (and its related roles such as problem_manager and incident_manager)
• service_owner
• service_catalog_manager
• knowledge_admin
• knowledge_agent

See the Role Structure article to learn more.

Create a content database 

Content databases are designed to store knowledge base content items. The content database is the most general and wide section of the KB.

To create a content database, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to KB Dictionary → Content DB.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.

3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes. 

Create a content category  

Content categories help arrange items in the content databases. They provide the addition of new article groups within one content database.

To create a content category, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to KB Dictionary → Content Categories.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.

3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Create a Knowledge Base category 

KB categories define a tree of articles on the SSP. Use categories to group articles.

To create a new KB category, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to KB Dictionary → KB Categories.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Create a content item class 

The content item class defines the content item purpose and the application area:

• External – external service specifications essential for the business user of the service.
• Internal – service internal specifications available to the owner of the IT service (agent) responsible for task handling.

To create an item class, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to KB Dictionary → Content Item Class.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.

3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.

Create a content item 

As discussed previously, each service documentation has a set of specifications – external and internal. The KB contains these service specifications as content Items.

Create an article

To create an article to be displayed on the SSP, perform the following steps:

1. Navigate to Knowledge Base → All Articles.
2. Click New and fill in the fields.
   For the description of fields, see the table at the end of the article.
3. Click Save or Save and Exit to apply the changes.