Creating Announcements and Articles

Knowledge Center articles and announcements are created in the Knowledge Management process app. You can:

If you use Serena Service Manager, you can also use one of these methods to create Knowledge Center articles:

With the exception of importing articles, these tasks are performed in Work Center.

Regardless of the origination point, articles are submitted into the Knowledge Management Articles project. The articles are assigned to contributors, who add content to the article. Contributors can save the articles as drafts so they can work on them later.

Articles contain two types of data:

Article Metadata

Article metadata is added on the Details tab. The following information can be added as metadata.

  • Article Type
    Knowledge Management articles are divided into four types, and some types are associated with particular items. The four types with their respective items in parentheses follow:
    • Announcement (Changes)
    • FAQ
    • How To
    • Tech Note (Incidents, Requests, Tech Notes)
    Note: For details on creating urgent announcements, refer to Creating Urgent Announcements.

    You can create custom article templates and associate them with article types. For details, refer to Creating Article Templates.

  • Article Category

    You can assign article to a particular category when they are created or modified. This allows Knowledge Center users can filter articles based on categories, which makes it easier to find articles.

    For details on modifying categories, refer to Managing Categories.

  • Visibility

    By default, articles have public visibility, which means that all SBM users can see them in Request Center.

    To make an article private, select Private in the Article Visibility field, and then select a group in the Visibility Group field. Only users and groups that are assigned to that visibility group can see the article on the Knowledge tab.

    For details on visibility groups, refer to Assigning Knowledge Center Privileges.

  • Duration

    You can define how long an article is available to users in Knowledge Center by selecting the Article Duration. Does not expire means that you define when the article becomes active in Knowledge Center; the article will not be removed automatically at a specific date. Expires allows you define both the Start Date and Expiration Date for when the article will be available in Knowledge Center.

    For example, you may be performing maintenance on your e-mail server this weekend, and you want to inform your users that the services will be offline from noon to midnight on Saturday. You would set expiration date and time at the end of the Saturday. The announcement will no longer appear in Knowledge Center after the expiration date.

    Users who have the privilege to submit articles can view expired articles by selecting Include Expired articles in Request Center.

  • Title, Summary, and Keywords

    When a user performs a Knowledge search in Request Center, the search is performed against all words in the content, title, and summary of the article. You can type additional keywords that you anticipate users will use to search in the Keywords field.

    The words in these fields are also used for the item match search that is performed when a user submits an item.

    Note: Search options need to be configured on the Smart Search tab in SBM Configurator. For details, refer to SBM Installation and Configuration Guide.

Article Content

Article templates and content are added on the Content tab.

The following options are available:
  • Load Template

    Click this link to load an article template associated with the specified article type. The article template includes sample data and headings to assist in completing the different sections according to company standards.

    For details on creating article templates, refer to Creating Article Templates.

  • Show Labels/Hide Labels

    Click this link to show or hide label text in the article.

  • Populate Sections

    Click this button to add template content to the article.

    If your template contains multiple sections, use the Select sections to Copy drop-down list to the sections to copy template content from.

  • Section Labels/Content

    Add content by placing your cursor in each section and adding the text. The HTML editor opens, allowing you to apply formatting to the text and insert links or images.

  • Save as Draft

    Choose to save the article as a draft or to send it to a publisher.