About Article Types and Templates

Every article created by authors must have an article type and article template selected. Types and templates can be assigned by the application automatically, or a user can be prompted to select the appropriate type and template upon creating an article. If the author needs to change the template or type while working on the article, the author can do so. However, changing a template or type resets the content of the article.

To prompt users to select the article type and template when they create a new article, make sure that the department level setting Select article type and article template on create is enabled.

Article Types

The application comes with the following out-of-the-box article types:

  • Data Link: Used to associate guided help questions with external data sources.

  • General: Basic article type intended for the most common articles.

  • Guidance: Used for articles that would normally function as Additional Information in guided help questions. While articles with other article types are displayed as a link when they are used as Additional Information for a question, when an article with this article type is used as Additional Information for a question, the content of that article is automatically displayed as part of the question in a portal. This provides the distinct and convenient advantage of content being displayed automatically in this situation. The Say This, Do This template, specific to this article type, is available for use.

  • Guided Help Session: To be used for creating guided help session articles that allow users to jump directly to a question within a guided help session.

  • Rich Message: Used for sending chat messages with rich content (for example, date pickers or links) to mobile devices.

  • Suggestion: Used exclusively for articles containing suggestions made by agents or customers for new articles or existing articles. Suggestion articles are processed by a knowledge workflow and consequently appear in the designated folder when they require a review.

  • Topic Home: Used exclusively for articles that act as the home page for a topic on the portal. Topic Home articles provide a space on the knowledge portal to share more information about the topic and the type of articles the topic contains. When associated with a topic, through a new topic attribute, the article content is displayed as part of a topic in a portal. The article selector for the new topic attribute only displays articles with the Topic Home article type, and therefore, only allows articles with this type to be selected. These articles need to be created before they can be associated with a topic. A Topic Home folder is already created in the Knowledge Building Blocks folder in the Folder List of the Knowledge Console and contains Topic Home articles.

  • Virtual Assistant Action: Used exclusively for actions performed by the virtual assistant. The built-in article templates that are of this article type include Escalation and Page Push. Escalation allows the virtual assistant to escalate a customer to an available agent. Page Push enables the virtual assistant to push a URL and navigate the customer to a different web page within the virtual assistant’s domain.

You can create new article types as you deem necessary. When authors create new articles, they select the type of article they are creating. Article types are used in knowledge workflows to define the type of articles that the workflow can process.

Users with the following actions can work on article types: Article Type folder - View, Create, Edit, Delete. These actions are part of the out-of-the-box Knowledge Manager role.

Article Templates

For each article type in the system, you can create a different set of article templates. Article templates are standard article layouts containing the formatting and styles to be used by authors to create new articles quickly. In other words, they act as a standard starting point for new articles to help speed up the authoring process and maintain consistency across articles.

Users with the following actions can work on article templates: Article Templates - View, Create, Edit, Delete. These actions are part of the out-of-the-box Knowledge Manager role.

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