The Freshservice knowledge base provides more flexibility and clarity by letting you categorize your knowledge base into a three-level hierarchy. These include top-level categories that hold a group of related content, folders under each category, and finally solution articles inside each folder. This structure is maintained across your knowledge base and can be seen from the Solutions tab.
Solution Articles or knowledge base posts promote self-help in your support portal. These should ideally cover all aspects of your company, product or service such as "how-to" instructions and FAQs. For example, in an IT service desk store, your knowledge base articles would probably include common answers to questions regarding connectivity issues, broken printers, and hardware or software related queries.
Quick guide for creating a solution article:
- Login to your Freshservice portal.
- Go to the Solutions tab.
- Click on the desired folder within which you are about to create an article.
- Click on the Add Solution button.
- Give a name to your solution and enter the content in the rich text editor.
- Attach a file if required by clicking on the Choose File button.
- A dialog box pops up which lets you browse through and choose the file.
- Click on Open after selecting the appropriate file.
- Mention the keywords under tags for the solution to show up when customers search for the particular keyword.
- Choose the folder from the available drop-down menu under which you wish to list this solution.
- Specify if the solution is a permanent solution or is just a temporary workaround for your customers.
- Set the status as Published if you wish to publish the solution or mark it as Draft if you still need to work on it.
- Hit Save to save your solution or Save and create another to create another solution.
A collection of related solutions articles are organized together into Folders. Folders make it convenient for users to read similar articles and other relevant solutions to their problem. They can also provide a quick way to find out everything you can know about one particular section in your knowledge base. For example, you would club solutions related to login credentials and permission related articles under the "Privileges" folder.
Quick Guide for creating a new Folder under a category:
- Login to your Freshservice portal.
- Go to the Solutions tab.
- Click on the Add Folder button corresponding to the category in which you wish to create.
- Enter an appropriate name and description for the folder you are about to create.
- Choose the visibility for this folder.
- You can choose if this folder is visible to all, only to logged in users or agents alone. You can go further and make it visible to specific departments by entering their names.
- Hit Save for saving the folder.
- Click Save and Create Another to go ahead and create another folder
At the top level, Categories broadly classify your solutions page into several segments. For example, you could place Printers, Hard Drives and Drivers related information under the Hardware category. Another interesting application of the top level category is when you are providing support across multiple brands or products. You can learn more about multiple branded support portals here.
Quick guide for creating a new solution category:
Caution: Deleting a solution category deletes all articles and folders within it and this is irreversible.
- Go to the Solutions tab.
- Click on the New Solution Category button.
- Enter an appropriate name and description for the category you are about to create.
- Hit Save for saving the category.
- Click Save and Create Another to go ahead and create another category.