Knowledge Management and Self-Service
What the exam tests
Knowledge and self-service questions test article lifecycle, visibility, search, and portal behavior. You must know how internal and external content is separated and how articles become answers in self-service.
Core rules and concepts
- Article lifecycle: draft, review, approved or published, retired. Versioning preserves history; validation ensures required fields and review are complete.
- Visibility is not just a flag: internal vs external, locale, product, and audience determine who can find and open an article.
- Self-service search depends on metadata, keywords, and article structure. Poor titles and missing synonyms cause deflection failures.
- Feedback loops-helpful or not helpful, escalation to case-should feed review, not auto-publish.
- Localization: translate or author locale-specific articles; do not assume one language serves all portals.
Worked example
A software company wants a public FAQ for a new release but internal runbooks for support. Create two article types: public FAQ with external visibility and approval by product marketing; internal runbook with internal-only visibility and support lead approval. Publish the FAQ only for the release locale. The reasoning: the article type and visibility control exposure; the approval workflow enforces ownership; locale prevents premature disclosure.
Traps
- Publishing an internal article by changing visibility without review.
- Assuming search finds articles with missing metadata.
- No retirement plan; obsolete articles erode trust.
- Ignoring locale and audience in visibility rules.