Building a knowledge base?

[Lyonel]

Hi,

This might be far fetch or simply crazy, but can Document Manager app be used efficiently to host a Knowledge base / Wiki? If so, what would be the best way to proceed?

I am trying to find a tool that would enable my organisation to register, consult and maintain information on services we support with a good search engine. I was thinking of using the document manager with tags, libraries and collections to organise my content. But I am not sure Docs manager is the best way forward... Any advice or experience would be highly appreciated

[Daniel Dekel]

Hi @Lyonel,

Depends on what you need. We are working right now on a new feature that will allow you to share a library in the Portal.

The portal will display the list of documents and allow to open them. No Timeline not information will be displayed as in the Collaboration Core.

You will also be able to search based on Tags.

As mentioned before, this work is in progress and will be within more or less within 90 days.

Hope this make things more clear.

Thanks,

Daniel.

[Martyn Houghton]

@Daniel Dekel, @Lyonel

This is something we are very interested in as well. Ideally we would want to link the library to one or more Services, so only subscribers to a service can seem them. The reason being we have a large volume of services and shortly multiple desk operating within Service Manager, so content of the 'Knowledge base' needs to be context based not just a single repository.

Cheers

Martyn

[Daniel Dekel]

Hi @Martyn Houghton,

I've checked with the Service Manager team and they do have a Change Request to display Documents for Services but there is no estimated time for this, so it can take some time.

Thanks,

Daniel

[Everton1878]

This would be great for us too

[Alex8000]

We would love to see this functionality added as well! Will follow thread for updates.

[Martyn Houghton]

@Ehsan , @James Ainsworth

Just wondering if there was any update on the timescales to have the ability to link Document Manager - Documents to Services and make the visible on the Service/Customer Portal as Knowledge Base articles?

Cheers

Martyn

[Dan Munns]

You can publish libraries to the portals now @Martyn Houghton

You need to add the role "MyLibrary Portal" to the user and then share the library with the role.

This will then add a "My Documents" at the top of the service portal.

I couldn't find any documents about the change anywhere however and had to find it myself so there may be a way to add documents to a service (other than as FAQs) but if there is I haven't found it yet.

[Martyn Houghton]

@Dan Munns

Thanks for the pointer on the role, but I am presuming this is only for the Service Portal, where as the majority of our customers are external so are a contacts not coworkers in the system, so are not able to be assigned a role directly, though I give it a go via the portal guest account.

It is the direct link to the service and it subscription that we are after. We have multiple desk and 100+ services, so we want to present only the documents that are relevant to the end users based on there service subscriptions rather than overwhelm them with everything.

Cheers

Martyn

[Guest Ehsan]

Hi @Martyn Houghton,

Please accept my apologies for the late response.

As confirmed by @Daniel Dekel, we are aware of this feature request and it is in our list however it is not on the 90-day board although I am positive that it will be considered in the near future. I'm afraid I cannot give any timescales but as soon as this is on our 90-day board, we'll notify you.

Thanks,

Ehsan

[Alex8000]

Hi @Ehsan,

Me and @m.vandun would like to say that this is a feature that we too have been waiting on for a long time. 
As an organisation only supporting external customers we look forward to being able to publish documents for them to use. This will save a lot of phone calls to our servicedesk every day.

Thanks,

Alex

[Guest Ehsan]

Hi @Alex8000,

Thank you for expressing your interest in this feature. I have registered your interest against the feature request. As mentioned, hopefully it will be considered in the near future.

Thanks

[Martyn Houghton]

@Daniel Dekel

Is there an update on having the ability to link Documents/Document Library to a Service so that they can be displayed on the Service and Customer Portal's?

Cheers

Martyn

 

On 30/01/2017 at 3:33 PM, Daniel Dekel said:

Hi @Martyn Houghton,

I've checked with the Service Manager team and they do have a Change Request to display Documents for Services but there is no estimated time for this, so it can take some time.

Thanks,

Daniel

 

[Guest Ehsan]

Hi @Martyn Houghton,

The requirement to link a Document to a Service has not made it to the 90-day board yet but the development teams have progressed with the integration between Document Manager and Service Manager.  In the last Service Manager update, we introduced the ability to link a Document to a Request. Have you had a play around with this addition yet?

Thanks,

Ehsan

[Martyn Houghton]

@Ehsan

Thanks for the update. Not had a chance to try the linking to an individual request as yet, but will give it a try and see how this shown on the Customer Portal.

Out of interest what file types are we limited to when importing external files into Document Manager and is this configurable?

Cheers

Martyn

[Daniel Dekel]

Hi @Martyn Houghton,

There is a System Setting - security.fileUploadRestriction.webdav.types . The current default file types is set to executable files (exe;bat;cmd;js;vbs) but you can add more. I suggest you don't remove the current ones for security reasons.

Thanks,

Daniel.

 

[Guest Ehsan]

@Martyn Houghton As @Daniel Dekel mentioned, this can be restricted but to name a few - You can link Word, Excel, Power Point and PDF documents as well as text and zip files. You can also create a drawing (if webapp.mylibrary.document.experimental.drawingTool Application Setting is enabled). Just about anything that is useful to share with colleagues (instead of sending them around in emails!) 

[Martyn Houghton]

@Daniel Dekel, @Ehsan

Thanks for your replies. 

With reference to the linking a 'document' to a Request, can this be done via a BPM Node?

I thinking of pushing the boundary a bit of Document Manager to distribute zip files via an automated Service Request workflow.

Also is there an individual file size limit to each 'document', other than our total disk space on our instance?

I am presuming that by linking the document it is not duplicated, only using the storage space for the original?

Cheers

Martyn

[Guest Ehsan]

@Martyn Houghton It is not possible to link a Document via BPM - The development focus was around making this available in the User App to begin with before we consider the orchestration around the integration.

Yes there is a maximum upload size (communications.maxfileUploadSize System Setting).

Linking a Document to a Request does not duplicate the file. It's an integration that links Document Manager to Service Manager.

[Martyn Houghton]

@Ehsan, @James Ainsworth

Is there any update on the development item, to be able to link Documents to Services and said Documents to be available from the Customer and Service Portals?

Cheers

Martyn

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @Martyn Houghton

I'm afraid that there is no movement yet with the feature.  I will review the change and get back to this post when I have an update.

Regards,

James

 

[Martyn Houghton]

@James Ainsworth

The inability to publish document libraries and in essence build a knowledge base on the portal which 'tuned' to the service subscriptions of the customer accessing it, is becoming an increasing blockage to our plans to continue the expansion of Hornbill Service Manager within our wider group, as systems we are attempting to replace already have document/knowledge base publishing contained with them.

With us having many different services across many different domains, publishing the libraries to allow access by customer irrespective of their service subscription is not practical nor appropriate, given the type of content/areas such as Health, Elections, Private and Public Sectors etc.

Is there anything further we can do to try move this up in terms of development priority?

Cheers

Martyn

[samwoo]

@Martyn Houghton - I hope I can help in some way to boost this...

+1 to publishing documents to Services on the Portal

[Giuseppe Iannacone]

+1 for us too:

- Linking documents to Service

- Tag search available from the global search bar in service portal

[Darren Rose]

another +1 from us to link docs to services