Working on Suggested Articles

About Suggestions

An up-to-date knowledge base is an important asset for any business. A good way to keep it updated is to set up an article suggestion process that allows agents to contribute to articles. Establishing this process requires a knowledge workflow configured for the Suggestion article type. This workflow must also have contributors assigned with the necessary permissions in each stage to review and publish or send the potential article back through the workflow.

For more information about article types, see About Article Types and Templates.

For more information about configuring knowledge workflows, see About Knowledge Workflows.

Reviewing Suggestions

Suggestions can be viewed at three places in the Knowledge Console:

  • In Authoring > My Work if you are a contributor in a review stage of the suggestion workflow.

  • In the specified suggestion folder in the suggestions configuration. By default, this is the Authoring > Articles > Content Suggestions folder. Suggestions can be viewed here if you have the Author or the Knowledge Manager role and the necessary permissions to manage suggestions in the folder.

  • In the Properties pane, you can view the suggestion for the article by navigating to the Authoring > Articles section and selecting an article from the Articles list.

After reviewing a suggestion, you can perform one of the following actions:

  • Close: End the review of the suggestion. When performing this action, you must also apply one of the following resolutions to the suggestion:

    • Accept: The suggestion meets the standards and requirements of a knowledge article and has been accepted.

    • Decline: The suggestion does not meet the standards and requirements of a knowledge article and has been declined.

    • Duplicate: There is at least one other suggestion, which may be open or closed, that has the same content and this suggestion is being declined for that reason.

  • Send To: Depending on how the workflow is configured, you can either send the suggestion to the next stage in the workflow or back to the previous stage for editing. Sending the suggestion back to a previous stage requires that you provide feedback in a comment.

To review a suggestion:

  1. In the Navigation menu, browse to Authoring > My Work. You can also view and work on articles from the folder that has been specified in the portal configuration.

  2. From the My Work list, select the suggestion you want to work on.

  3. Check out the suggestion by clicking the Edit button. You can view and edit various properties of the suggestion. For more information about article properties and what types of changes you can make, see Editing Articles.

  4. You can also track the status of the suggestion in the workflow by clicking the current_stage_name from the Content pane.

    Track the status of the suggestion in the workflow

  5. From the Properties pane, in the Attachments section, you can view any attachments the suggestion might have.

  6. From the Properties pane, in the Articles section, you can view if the suggestion is associated with an existing article. Click the number_of_articles link and in the Related Articles window, you can view the following:

    • If the suggestion was submitted on an existing article, it is displayed in the Selected Articles list.

    • If the suggestion is for a new article and not an existing article, you cannot add any articles from the Available Articles list.

  7. After reviewing the suggestion, you can either move it to a workflow stage or close it.

    • If you wish to choose the Send To option to send the suggestion back, then provide feedback for the submitters in the previous stages. To add feedback to the suggestion, do the following:

      • In the Properties pane, navigate to the Comments section and click the Edit   button next to it.

      • From the Comments window, click the New  button.

      • In the New Comment window, provide the required text. 

      • Click the Done button.

        Add comments to the suggestion before sending it back in the workflow

    • If you wish to choose the Close option, in the Properties pane, click the Edit  button from the Resolution field. In the Resolution window that opens, click the Resolution dropdown menu and select one of the following options: 

      • Accept

      • Decline

      • Duplicate

        Select a resolution for the suggestion before closing it

Creating a New Article with a Suggestion

A suggestion that is closed with the resolution as accepted can be copied to create a new article.

Once a suggestion has been accepted, it is removed from the contributor's My Work list. Therefore, the suggestion must be accessed from the Content Suggestions folder. With a suggestion selected, the Create New Article option becomes available in the Context Menu in the Content pane.

To create a new article with an accepted suggestion:

  1. In the Navigation menu, browse to Authoring > Articles. 

  2. From the Folders List, select Content Suggestions.

  3. From the Articles List, select a suggestion that has been closed with a resolution of Accept.

  4. In the Content pane, go to the Context Menu More button button.

  5. From the dropdown menu, select the Copy Article option.

    Create a new article from the suggestion

  6. The new article is created in the same folder as the suggestion with the name Copy of Suggestion_Name. The new article has the same content and attachments as the suggestion.

    Before publishing the new article, it is highly recommended to move the article to a designated folder to be processed by an appropriate workflow.

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