You can use articles to provide help guides, how-to information, FAQ answers - any information that you want users to be able to look up for themselves.

To create an article from scratch:

1. Select the Article option from the Quick-add drop-down menu.
2. A New Article tab will open.

3. Choose which Brand the article will belong to. The article will be published in that brand's knowledgebase.
4. Select a Category that the article will appear in. You can add extra categories later.
5. Choose the Status the article should have when you save it.
   • Published - article visible to users on the web portal, appears in the Knowledgebase section of the filter pane
   • Unpublished - article not visible to users, still appears in the Knowledgebase section of the filter pane
   • Draft - article not visible to users, appears in the Pending section (under My Drafts for articles you create)
6. Enter a Title, and then write the article in the rich text editor. See the section Knowledgebase article editing controls below for more details.
7. Click Properties to add a label to the article.
8. Click Fields to add a field value to the article.
9. Click Attachments to attach a file to the article.
10. Click Create Article to save the article with your chosen status.

Note

Saving a new article as **draft** is useful if you don’t want to publish it straight away; for example, if you haven’t finished it yet, or you want to get someone else to check it over before you publish it. Because draft articles appear in the **Pending** section, saving them with draft status makes it more obvious to other agents that there is an article in progress.
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When you have finished creating your article, you should consider helping users find it by linking it to related articles, setting search terms, or adding labels. See  Helping users find content for details.

Pending articles

Pending articles are a way to keep track of which articles need to be written.

Select the Pending Articles filter (at the top of the Pending section) to view all pending articles.

From this view, you can use the Add button at the top left of the list pane to create a new pending article.

Enter a brief description of the article and click Add.

Often an article that needs to be written will be about an issue that has come up in a ticket. You can make a pending article based on a ticket using the Create a new pending article action available from the ticket Actions menu.

A pending article created this way is linked to the ticket.

When you click Create Article, the new article takes the title of the original ticket, and the first message from the ticket is inserted into the article, formatted as a question.

You can edit the content from the ticket as the basis for the beginning of the article.

If you want to refer to more details of the original ticket, click the link to it at the top of the new article window to open it in the content pane.

Adding attachments and images to a Knowledgebase article

Note that when editing an article, you can’t use drag and drop to add attachments or images as you can with a ticket message.

You can attach a file to the article using the Attachments section at the bottom.

1. Click Choose Files and select the attachment(s) you want. You can upload multiple files at once by holding down Ctrl/Cmd.

2. Click Upload.

Maintaining articles

To help you keep content up to date you can add a review date to article properties:

When the article reaches its review date, it is moved into a pending status visible in the publish area. An agent with sufficient permissions will be able to edit the content and re-submit this for review.

Managing outdated articles

You should make sure to review your Knowledgebase regularly and update articles.

Some Knowledgebase articles will eventually become obsolete: for example, because they’re about a product that hasn’t been available for a long time, or they explain how to solve a problem that doesn’t happen any more.

It’s best not to have obsolete articles visible in your Knowledgebase. It makes it seem as if your content is not being updated regularly, as well as making it harder to find articles that are more likely to be relevant. On the other hand, there may still be users who want to read an ‘obsolete’ article - for example, die-hard users of an old product who don’t want to upgrade.

There are several ways to deal with outdated articles:

1. You could simply delete them. The disadvantage is that if there are still a few users who want the information, they won’t be able to access it.
2. You could set them to archived status. This means they are not shown when browsing the Knowledgebase by categories, but they are still accessible if a user goes to the exact URL. So if a few users still need to refer to the information, it’s still available - provided they’ve bookmarked it or asked one of your agents.
3. You could create a category just for outdated articles and move them there (perhaps arranged into subcategories). Moving an article into a different category does not change its URL. This approach makes it clear that you are updating your Knowledgebase, and also makes it easy for those users who do still need the obsolete content to find it.

If you are using approach 2 or 3, you could also edit obsolete articles to add a disclaimer saying that they relate to an older product/issue, perhaps with a link to more up to date articles on a similar issue.

Knowledgebase article editing controls